Around the web
29 Jun 202328 Jun 202327 Jun 202326 Jun 202314 Jun 202313 Jun 20239 Jun 20238 Jun 20236 Jun 20235 Jun 20232 Jun 202325 May 202323 May 202318 May 202317 May 20238 May 20234 May 20233 May 20232 May 202326 Apr 202324 Apr 2023
Oracleis spending "billions" of dollars on chips from Nvidia as it expands a cloud computing service targeting a new wave of artificial intelligence (AI) companies, Oracle founder and Chairman Larry Ellison said on Wednesday.
Reuters
A majority of Korean semiconductor companies responded to a Bank of Korea (BOK) survey by saying that their exports to China were unlikely to fully recover.
BusinessKorea
When former Samsung executive Choi Jinseog won a contract with Taiwan's Foxconn in 2018, he tapped his former employer's supplier network to steal secrets to help his new client set up a chip factory in China, an indictment by South Korean prosecutors alleges.
Reuters
Micron Technology plowed through the worst quarter in its history and is setting its sights on a recovery in the memory chip market, but issues in China could set back its recovery efforts.
MarketWatch
Sony Semiconductor Solutions president Terushi Shimizu on Friday said that the land the company plans to acquire in Kumamoto Prefecture will be the site of a planned image sensor plant.
The Japan News
Even if the Federal Reserve had begun raising interest rates nine months earlier, US inflation wouldn't be any lower today than it is now.
Fortune
Government-backed Japan Investment Corp. is in talks to acquire JSR, the leading producer of photoresist for semiconductor manufacturing, for roughly JPY1 trillion (US$7 billion), Nikkei has learned.
Nikkei Asia
A group of investors led by Apollo Global Management is making a debt investment between $1 billion to $2 billion in chipmaker Wolfspeed to support its expansion in the US, media outlets reported on Sunday.
Reuters
After the pandemic and war in Ukraine, and the inflation shock that followed, the global economy is in a precarious state. The last thing it needs right now is another nasty surprise.
CNN
Apple knows its products are already used across the manufacturing industry; this week it held a special event dedicated to Industry 4.0 at the heart of its APAC manufacturing chain in Korea.
Computerworld
This year's 618 shopping festival, which lasted for several weeks until June 18, is the first since China ended its virus control policies and was highly anticipated to stimulate an increase in consumer spending. However, the actual sales between June 1 and June 7 in the smart devices market didn't meet expectations. Consumers opted for high-quality products but were more price sensitive this year.
IDC
On Tuesday, BBC Radio 4's Today program aired an interview with Paul McCartney in which he announced that thanks to AI technology, a "final Beatles record" has been finished and will be released later this year. He said that AI techniques have isolated John Lennon's vocals from an old cassette tape demo, enabling him to complete the song.
Ars Technica
Apple, having debuted the Vision Pro headset at $3,500, is already working on a cheaper model to get the new product category onto the faces of more people.
Bloomberg
With the influx of consumer generative AI programs like Google's Bard and OpenAI's ChatGPT, the generative AI market is poised to explode, growing to $1.3 trillion over the next 10 years from a market size of just $40 billion in 2022, according to a new report by Bloomberg Intelligence (BI).
Bloomberg
Though technology companies announced massive layoffs last year, 2023 has been much worse. So far, layoffs have far outpaced those in all of 2022, as tech giants including Amazon, Facebook parent company Meta, Microsoft, Google, IBM, SAP, and Salesforce - as well as many smaller companies - announce sweeping job cuts.
Computerworld
Analysts say the move will weaken export-control measures aimed at curbing Beijing.
Wall Street Journal
A Hong Kong court's decision whether to grant an injunction against the distribution of protest song Glory to Hong Kong highlights the increasingly shaky ground upon which internet platforms are treading there. It could also be the final catalyst foreign players need to exit the market - a move that would be more damaging to Hong Kong than the companies calculating whether the legal minefield is still worth navigating.
Bloomberg
British chip designer Arm, backed by SoftBank, is in talks with potential strategic investors including Intel to anchor what will be one of the largest initial public offerings of the year, according to people familiar with the matter.
Bloomberg
Nvidia has become synonymous with AI, AMD will need to "step up its game" to better compete in this space.
Forbes
TikTok's owner ByteDance has been accused of allowing Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members to access the data of Hong Kong civil rights activists and protesters.
BBC News
The exhibitors and speakers at both Computex and its related InnoVEX Forum certainly demonstrated a mood of optimism for Taiwan's crucial role in the AI economy.
EE Times
As generative AI revolutionizes tech, governments around the world are trying to come up with regulations that encourage its benefits while minimizing risks such as bias and disinformation.
Computerworld
The ecosystem for commercial chiplets-one where a marketplace of chiplets from many vendors can be incorporated into a multichip SoC by multiple packaging vendors with mix-and-match ease-has yet to appear.
EE Times
Shares in computer chip designer Nvidia have soared over the past week, taking the company's valuation above the one trillion dollar mark.
BBC News
It's been rumored that Apple would release a mixed-reality headset to the public for several years. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has steadily dripped details about the headset in recent months ahead of its expected WWDC 2023 unveil.
Tom's Hardware Guide
Speaking to the Financial Times, Jensen Huang said US export controls introduced by the Biden administration to slow Chinese semiconductor manufacturing had left the Silicon Valley group with "our hands tied behind our back" and unable to sell advanced chips in one of the company's biggest markets.
The Financial Times
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company has reopened a lead over internet giant Tencent Holdings as Asia's biggest company by market value, helped by a resumed rally in chip stocks.
Bloomberg
Singapore is benefiting from the US-China discord in at least one respect: semiconductor sales.
Bloomberg
The UK government has announced an investment of up to GBP1 billion (US$1.24 billion) in the domestic semiconductor industry, but has been criticized for declining to join the spending race that has seen the US and EU announce significantly bigger programs.
Guardian
Seoul has signalled it will not intervene to stop South Korean companies Samsung and SK Hynix from filling in a market gap after China imposed a ban on US chipmaker Micron, in an escalation of the tech battle between the superpowers.
The Financial Times
With Apple stock near an all-time high, it's worth asking how it got there - and how long that can last. The world's most valuable company makes great products, but it may turn out that the biggest driver of its share price has been the close relationship CEO Tim Cook has cultivated with China.
The Financial Times
Dongfang Jingyuan Electron, a semiconductor software firm, is weighing filing for an initial public offering in China as soon as next year, according to people familiar with the matter, as the country spars with developed democracies over access to chipmaking technology.
Bloomberg
Cutting economic ties with China is unrealistic, the chief executive of luxury carmaker Mercedes-Benz told tabloid newspaper Bild am Sonntag, and said attempting to do so would put most of Germany's industry at risk.
Reuters
Ford Motor is hitting the brakes in China, the world's largest auto market, with new plans to scale back investment in order to improve profitability.
Bloomberg
Arm has secretly filed for a public listing that its owner, SoftBank, says will see the chip design firm remain a subsidiary.
The Register
A man widely seen as the godfather of artificial intelligence (AI) has quit his job, warning about the growing dangers from developments in the field.
BBC News
The Alibaba co-founder, who has an estimated fortune of $33 billion, has largely kept a low profile since the Chinese government began a fierce crackdown on the tech sector more than two years ago.
CNN
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said the company expects to pause hiring for roles it thinks could be replaced with artificial intelligence in the coming years.
Bloomberg
"We think TSMC will move to normal wafer-based pricing on N3 with Apple during the first half of 2024, at around $16-17K average selling prices," Brett Simpson, senior analyst at Arete Research, said in a report. "At present, we believe N3 yields at TSMC for A17 and M3 processors are at around 55% [a healthy level at this stage in N3 development], and TSMC looks on schedule to boost yields by around 5+ points each quarter."
EE Times
Seagate yesterday agreed to pay a $300 million fine for selling hard disk drives to Huawei, settling US government officials' allegation that shipments to the Chinese company violated export controls imposed in 2020. The fine is "the largest standalone administrative penalty" ever issued by the US Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), the agency said.
Ars Technica
5/1504 pages