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OpenAI's investors are making efforts to bring back Sam Altman, the chief executive officer who was ousted Friday, the latest development in a fast-moving chain of events at the artificial-intelligence company behind ChatGPT.
Wall Street Journal
China's Yangtze Memory Technology is readying its next-generation 3D NAND memory architecture - Xtacking 4.0 - despite severe sanctions against the company, according to a document seen by Tom's Hardware. The company has no plans to increase the number of layers with the two Xtacking 4.0 devices currently in development, but the family may get broader over time.
TG Daily
Apple has been interested in graphene for thermal management for some time, filing patents related to its exploration of the material for heat dissipation in portable devices.
Mac Rumors
Decades old norms are being challenged in the power semiconductor industry as Omdia predicts an explosion in novel semiconductors due to the electric vehicle (EV) revolution. Will the AI boom have a similar impact?
Company release
Canon's new nanoprint lithography tool will take years to rival the EUV equipment that ASML alone provides to make the world's most advanced semiconductors, analysts told EE Times.
EE Times
"Consistent execution by our sales teams and partners drove a strong start to the fiscal year with Microsoft Cloud revenue of $31.8 billion, up 24% (up 23% in constant currency) year-over-year," said Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Microsoft.
Company release
Chip technology design maker Imagination Technologies plans to lay off 20% of the company's staff, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Reuters
Japanese chipmaker Rapidus says it is working on an alliance with Canadian startup Tenstorrent, which has an edge in AI chip design.
NHK World
The 741 page annual report, released by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, takes aim at the Biden administration's Oct. 2022 export curbs, which seek to bar Chinese chipmakers from getting U.S. chipmaking tools if they would be used to manufacture advanced chips at the 14 nanometer node or below.
Reuters
There are four primary "buckets" of node sizes of wafer fabrication: below 11nm, 11-19nm, 20-64nm, and 65nm and above. Each serves a unique purpose and application. After the most recent chip shortages, inventory is rebalancing across the market. Semiconductor manufacturers have shifted their production strategies and are reconsidering which node sizes to focus on.
EE Times
Japan's Kioxia on Tuesday reported a JPY100.8 billion (US$664.5 million) operating loss in the second quarter as earnings were hit by a slump in demand for memory chips used in smartphones and personal computers (PC).
Reuters
South Korea's memory-chip exports increased in October for the first time in 16 months, offering more evidence for the revival of demand for the country's most important products.
Bloomberg
New US export controls may compel artificial-intelligence giant Nvidia to cancel billions of dollars in next-year orders for its advanced chips to China, a move that could deprive Chinese tech companies of crucial AI resources.
Wall Street Journal
China's state-backed chip investment fund has invested CNY14.56 billion (US$1.99 billion) in a memory chip company called Changxin Xinqiao, records showed.
Reuters
Japan is aiming to secure an additional JPY1.49 trillion (US$10 billion) in subsidies for two key semiconductor projects, according to a key ruling party lawmaker for chips.
Bloomberg
Beijing dropped a bombshell when it unveiled a tax and land-use probe into the world's largest assembler of iPhones.
Bloomberg
Chip manufacturing equipment supplier Lam Research forecast second-quarter revenue slightly below Wall Street estimates on Wednesday due to weak memory chip demand, even though its China business continues to boom.
Reuters
The world's chipmakers are failing to meet an international target to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, experts told EE Times. The first milestone is for emissions to peak in 2025 and steadily fall, one said.
EE Times
Chinese companies have emerged as the top suppliers in the automotive display market in the first half of 2023, extending their dominance in the displays industry after also dominating the TV and smartphone display markets.
Company release
Canon's nanoimprint lithography (NIL) technology enables patterning with a minimum linewidth of 14nm, equivalent to the 5nm-node required to produce most advanced logic semiconductors which are currently available. Furthermore, with further improvement of mask technology, NIL is expected to enable circuit patterning with a minimum linewidth of 10 nm, which corresponds to 2nm-node.
Company release
The global economy is facing tremendous uncertainty from the war between Hamas and Israel in the Middle East, on top of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. Those conflicts don't just threaten the regions where they're unfolding; they may also fray the weakening interconnectedness that remains among the world's largest economies.
CNN
Tech companies are touting new AI technology that can spit out business memos or computer code. They are still figuring out how those products will generate a profit.
Wall Street Journal
With this all-cash acquisition, Microsoft is now the third-largest gaming company by revenue, behind Tencent and Sony.
Ars Technica
Leading chipmakers in recent years spent tens of billions of dollars on advanced-chip-packaging facilities-to prepare for building processors in multi-chiplet packages that will offer consistent performance increases and ensure continuity of Moore's law.
EE Times
The chief executive of JP Morgan Chase told investors that he was concerned about the risks to the economy from rising geo-political tensions.
BBC News
Russia has an ambitious plan to build up to ten supercomputers by 2030, each potentially housing 10,000 to 15,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs. From a computing perspective, this would provide the nation with performance on a scale similar to that which was used to train Chat GPT. Formidable in general, a system featuring so many H100 GPUs could produce some 450 FP64 TFLOPS, which is half of an ExaFLOP, a level of supercomputer performance that has only been achieved by the US so far.
Tom's Hardware Guide
They included a unit of Taiwanese chip material reseller Topco Scientific and a subsidiary of Taipei-based L&K Engineering, according to a Bloomberg News investigation. Across town at another Huawei-affiliated site, Bloomberg identified workers from a subsidiary of construction specialist United Integrated Services (UIS).
Bloomberg
Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is allocating up to JPY192 billion (US$1.29 billion) in subsidies for US chipmaker Micron Technology's work in Hiroshima prefecture, Nikkei has learned, in a move to bolster domestic semiconductor supply chains.
Nikkei Asia
Nvidia's office in France was raided this week as part of an investigation by that country's Competition Authority into the graphics card sector.
The Register
Apple has identified the causes of an overheating problem with its latest iPhone series, including a software bug and using certain apps.
The Guardian
Apple's chief executive Tim Cook said the firm wants to hire more staff in the UK, in contrast to redundancies seen across the tech sector.
BBC News
As the iPhone 15 arrives in stores on September 22, Apple Store staff across France will go on strike over pay.
Apple Insider
Oil prices are on track to reach $100 a barrel this month for the first time in 2023 after surging by almost 30% since June, after Russian and Saudi Arabian production cuts and rising demand from China.
The Guardian
It appears that a third Chinese exascale supercomputer, long thought to be halted indefinitely due to the impact of US sanctions, has come online.
TG Daily
Apple's new iPhone 15 series experienced a surge in advance orders when pre-sales started on Friday. However, buyers noted that obtaining the new phones is not as challenging this year compared to previous years.
Global Times
China's exports have dropped for fourth month in a row as the "world's factory" struggles with weak demand at home and abroad.
BBC News
The Korean maker says it hasn't worked with Huawei since sanctions.
Bloomberg
The significance of the latest phones made by China's Huawei has been overstated.
Barron's
Restrictions on foreign devices are the latest step in Beijing's campaign to reduce reliance on overseas technology and could hurt Apple's success in the country.
Wall Street Journal
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