The US Trade Representative (USTR) under Biden administration is preparing to reinstate tariffs on certain technology products imported from China, including GPUs and motherboards. The 25% duties, initially imposed by the Trump administration in 2019 but later suspended, are being revived as part of broader efforts to address concerns over China's economic and trade practices. The tariffs are intended to protect American companies from what the administration describes as unfair Chinese trade actions like intellectual property theft and forced technology transfers that undermine U.S. competitiveness. While no specific effective date was provided, the reinstated tariffs are expected to impact major Chinese computing component suppliers significantly. The revival of the Trump-era tariffs marks a reversal from the previous administration's move to temporarily suspend the duties in 2020 as a goodwill gesture during broader trade negotiations with Beijing.

However, those talks ultimately stalled amid the COVID-19 pandemic and rising bilateral tensions over economic and national security issues. Industry groups have expressed concerns that reviving the tariffs could disrupt tech supply chains, increase costs for U.S. companies and consumers, and potentially invite further Chinese retaliation. The tariffs would apply to GPUs, motherboards and other computing components assembled in China regardless of whether the raw components themselves originated from the country. With tensions already elevated over issues like Taiwan and advanced semiconductor production, the tariff announcement could set the stage for further economic friction between the world's two largest economies absent a negotiated resolution on tech trade.

AMD has reached a significant milestone, capturing a record-high share of the X86 CPU market in the first quarter of 2024, according to the latest report from Mercury Research. This achievement marks a significant step forward for the chipmaker in its long battle against rival Intel's dominance in the crucial computer processor space. The surge was fueled by strong demand for AMD's Ryzen and EPYC processors across consumer and enterprise markets. The Ryzen lineup's compelling price-to-performance ratio has struck a chord with gamers, content creators, and businesses seeking cost-effective computing power without sacrificing capabilities. It secured AMD's 23.9% share, an increase from the previous Q4 of 2023, which has seen a 19.8% market share.

The company has also made major inroads on the data center front with its EPYC server CPUs. AMD's ability to supply capable yet affordable processors has enabled cloud providers and enterprises to scale operations on AMD's platform. Several leading tech giants have embraced EPYC, contributing to AMD's surging server market footprint. Now, it is at 23.6%, a significant increase over the past few years, whereas AMD was just above 10% four years ago in 2020. AMD lost some share to Intel on the mobile PC front due to the Meteor Lake ramp, but it managed to gain a small percentage of the market share of client PCs. As AMD rides the momentum into the second half of 2024, all eyes will be on whether the chipmaker can sustain this trajectory and potentially claim an even larger slice of the x86 CPU pie from Intel in the coming quarters.Below, you can see additional graphs of mobile PC and client PC market share.

Once trusted as the staple of technology journalism, the website CNET has been publically demoted to Untrusted Sources on Wikipedia. CNET has faced public criticism since late 2022 for publishing AI-generated articles without disclosing humans did not write them. This practice has culminated in CNET being demoted from Trusted to Untrusted Sources on Wikipedia, following extensive debates between Wikipedia editors. CNET's reputation first declined in 2020 when it was acquired by publisher Red Ventures, who appeared to prioritize advertising and SEO traffic over editorial standards. However, the AI content scandal accelerated CNET's fall from grace. After discovering the AI-written articles, Wikipedia editors argued that CNET should be removed entirely as a reliable source, citing Red Ventures' pattern of misinformation.

One editor called for targeting Red Ventures as "a spam network." AI-generated content poses familiar challenges to spam bots - machine-created text that is frequently low quality or inaccurate. However, CNET claims it has stopped publishing AI content. This controversy highlights rising concerns about AI-generated text online. Using AI-generated stories might seem interesting as it lowers the publishing time; however, these stories usually rank low in the Google search index, as the engine detects and penalizes AI-generated content probably because Google's AI detection algorithms used the same training datasets as models used to write the text. Lawsuits like The New York Times v. OpenAI also allege AIs must scrape vast amounts of text without permission. As AI capabilities advance, maintaining information quality on the web will require increased diligence. But demoting once-reputable sites like CNET as trusted sources when they disregard ethics and quality control helps set a necessary precedent. Below, you can see the Wikipedia table about CNET.

Dylan Patel, of SemiAnalysis, has highlighted worrying industry trends from an October 2021 published report—the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) document explored and "(outlined) infrastructure investments and regulatory reforms that could make the United States a more attractive place to build new chipmaking capacity and ensure continued U.S. access to key inputs for semiconductor manufacturing." Citing CSET/World Fab Forecast findings, Patel expressed his dissatisfaction with the apparent lack of progress in the region: "The United States is the slowest relevant country in the world to build a fab thanks to NIMBY assholes and the garbage regulatory/permitting system." The SemiAnalysis staffer likely believes that unsuitable conditions remain in place, and continue to hinder any forward momentum—for greenfield fabrications projects, at least.

The CSET 2021 report posited that the proposed $52 billion CHIPS Act fund would not solve all USA chip industry problems—throwing a large sum of money into the pot is not always a surefire solution: "The United States' ability to expeditiously construct fabs has declined at the same time as the total number of fab projects in the United States has declined. Some of this is due to changes in the global semiconductor value chain, which has concentrated resources in Asia as foundries have risen in prominence, and countries like Taiwan, South Korea, and China have established significant market share in the industry from 1990 to 2020. However, during this same 30-year period, the time required to build a new fab in the United States increased 38 percent, rising from an average of 665 days (1.8 years) during the 1990 to 2000 time period to 918 days (2.5 years) during the 2010-2020 time period (Figure 2). At the same time, the total number of new fab projects in the United States was halved, decreasing from 55 greenfield fab projects in the 1990-2000 time period to 22 greenfield fab projects between 2010 and 2020." Intel's work-in-progress Ohio fabrication site has suffered numerous setbacks (including delayed CHIPS Act payments)—the latest news articles suggest that an opening ceremony could occur in late 2026 or early 2027. Reportedly, TSMC's Arizona facility is a frequently runs into bureaucratic and logistical headaches—putting pressure on company leadership at their Hsinchu (Taiwan) headquarters.

According to the latest teardown from TechInsights, China's biggest technology maker, Huawei, has been shipping laptops with technology supposedly sanctioned by the United States. As the teardown shows, TechInisights has discovered that Huawei's Kirin 9006C processor is manufactured on TSMC's 5 nm semiconductor technology. Originally, the United States have imposed sanctions on Huawei back in 2020, when the government cut off Huawei's access from TSMC's advanced facilities and forbade the use of the latest nodes by Huawei's HiSilicon chip design arm. Today's findings show signs of contradiction, as the Qingyun L540 notebook that launched in December 2023 employs a Kirin 9006C chipset manufactured on a TSMC 5 nm node.

TechInsight's findings indicate that Kirin 9006C assembly and packaging occurred around the third quarter of 2020, whereas the 2020 Huawei sanctions started in the second quarter. Of course, the implication of the sanctions likely prohibited any new orders and didn't prevent Huawei from possibly stockpiling millions of chip orders in its warehouse before they took place. The Chinese giant probably made orders beforehand and is using the technology only now, with the Qingyun L540 laptop being one of the first Kirin 9006C appearances. Some online retailers also point out that the laptop complies with the latest security practices required for the government, which means that they have been in the works since the chip began the early stages of design, way before 2020. We don't know the stockpile quantity, but SMIC's domestic efforts seem insufficient to supply the Chinese market alone. The news that Huawei is still using TSMC chips made SMIC's share go for a 2% free fall on the Hong Kong stock exchange.

Intel is in the process of discontinuing its eleventh generation Tiger Lake-U CPU lineup according to the company's own Product Change Notification (PCN) system. Team Blue's database points to the final batch of (x86 Willow Cove architecture) processors getting shipped out on December 29, with an October 2023 cutoff point for last orders. These 11th Gen Core units (with Iris Xe iGPUs) have been part of laptops, mobile devices and small-form-factor (SFF) systems since launching in 2020. Intel started the end-of-life (EOL) for more powerful variants (some Tiger Lake-H models and the entire Tiger Lake-B range) back in April of this year.

Tiger Lake was an early example of a 10 nm++ SuperFin product, with improved production yields leading to the creation of high performance gaming laptop CPUs (the aforementioned H and B models), alongside the basic low power U-series. Intel has also added Tiger Lake-H35 models to the discontinuance list (totaling 42 models), and a trio of 500-series chipsets that were designed to accommodate their embedded 11th generation processor family: RM590E, HM570E and QM580E. Plenty of Tiger Lake-based stock still exists on the market, but Intel will be very keen to clear that excess - in favor of making way for its 12th and 13th generation product ranges.

Intel has posted two product change notifications regarding the Gemini Lake Refresh, which is now reaching the end of its life. Launched in 2019 as a refresh to the original Gemini Lake, these low-end products had a longer lifespan than the original Gemini Lake (2017-2020). Most commonly found on low-end PCs, AIOs, and Mini PCs, these Gemini Lake Refresh CPUs were based on the 14 nm Goldmont Plus microarchitecture. Coming with up to four cores without HyperThreading, these CPUs were ideal for lower-power applications as their TDP was rated between 6-10 Watts.

Intel has separated the product change into two categories, with the first consisting of Celeron N4120, Celeron 4020, and Pentium Silver N5030, while the other features Celeron J4025, Pentium Silver J5040, Celeron N4020C, and Celeron J4125. Intel will ship the first group of CPUs by May 24, 2024, and the second by February 23, 2024. The last round of orders will go out by November 24, 2023, and August 25, 2023, respectively.

Two years and a half into its storied career, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 GPU has finally dropped below MSRP in one European territory. German customers will be stoked to jump on e-tailer CaseKing's new offer - ZOTAC's Gaming GeForce RTX 3070 Twin Edge LHR graphics card is currently available for 449 EUR (not counting additional fees), so a saving of 50 Euros from the recommended retail price (499 EUR/$499). 3DCenter seems to be the first hardware news outlet to report on an RTX 3070 GPU dropping under RRP. The RTX 3070 and 3060 Ti models have been best sellers for NVIDIA (and board partners) since late 2020, yet buyers have long complained about unreasonable asking prices, and semi-generous discounts have been very late in arriving - just in time for the succeeding model.

3DCenter has created an overview of the graphics card market in Germany and Austria, and its findings for May 2023 indicate a trend where: "GPU prices in Euros have consistently dropped by ~10% since the end of January, in single cases up to 20%." The overview places the RTX 3070 8 GB in a price bracket position between AMD's Radeon RX 6750XT 12 GB and RX 6800 16 GB (non-XT) SKUs, which brings recent marketing strategies to mind - Team Red thinks that their cards offer the buyer more VRAM for their money when cross examined with the competition.

On the heels of a weaker than expected 2022, International Data Corporation (IDC) has lowered its forecast for augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) headsets in 2023. Global shipments are now expected to reach 10.1 million units this year, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Augmented and Virtual Reality Headset Tracker. Despite the revised outlook, total AR/VR headset shipments are expected to grow 14% in 2023 and accelerate over the 2023-2027 forecast period with a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 32.6%.

According to TrendForce's latest survey of the server market, many cloud service providers (CSPs) have begun large-scale investments in the kinds of equipment that support artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. This development is in response to the emergence of new applications such as self-driving cars, artificial intelligence of things (AIoT), and edge computing since 2018. TrendForce estimates that in 2022, AI servers that are equipped with general-purpose GPUs (GPGPUs) accounted for almost 1% of annual global server shipments. Moving into 2023, shipments of AI servers are projected to grow by 8% YoY thanks to ChatBot and similar applications generating demand across AI-related fields. Furthermore, shipments of AI servers are forecasted to increase at a CAGR of 10.8% from 2022 to 2026.

The global Listan group of companies continues its impressive success story and announces today, with great pleasure, the acquisition of the innovative premium peripheral brand MOUNTAIN. The full acquisition makes MOUNTAIN the third wholly owned subsidiary alongside the popular products of be quiet! and Xilence brands. With MOUNTAIN as a brand for peripherals, the Listan Group expands into the category of high-quality input devices.

MOUNTAIN was founded in 2018 and was able to raise the bar in 2020 with its trend-setting Everest Max keyboard. Since then, MOUNTAIN has received hundreds of endorsements and awards from leading tech and gaming media around the world. Not to mention increased attention from influencers on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Twitch. The Makalu 67 lightweight gaming mouse was praised for its innovative exceptional design and, like the Everest Max, won the iF Design Award 2021. In October 2022, MOUNTAIN launched the DisplayPad and MacroPad. These are software-enabled controllers for streaming and content creation that further expand MOUNTAIN's ecosystem and customer reach.

Worldwide tablet shipments were down 8.8% year over year in the third quarter of 2022 (3Q22), totaling 38.6 million units, according to preliminary data from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker. This was the fifth straight quarter of decline for the tablet market. Chromebook shipments also struggled in 3Q22, falling to 4.3 million units and a year-over-year decline of 34.4%. Both markets have now shifted from supply constrained industries to ones that are demand challenged as consumer and education spending has slowed in the face of economic uncertainties.

Chinese vendors continue to do well in emerging markets where there is low-end demand. Sanctions from many vendors also enabled Chinese vendors like Huawei to perform well in the Russian market. Meanwhile, the emergence of low-priced Chinese OEMs like Realme, Xiaomi, Oppo and others, has fueled strong competition in the lower range devices. However, these gains still couldn't offset the decline experienced by the main tablet vendors.

According to the report from Reuters, SoftBank has managed to regain control of the Arm China branch office that went rogue under the chairman and CEO Allen Wu's leadership. Arm China is SoftBank's venture to operate Arm Ltd. business in the Chinese region. That means that Arm can use all the licensing and development done on the mainland with SoftBank's supervision and conduct business. However, that idea was tough to pull off when now ex-chairman/CEO Allen Wu decided not to give up his leadership role for almost two years, despite being fired in 2020.

Not everything is terrible, as the SoftBank operation managed to make some progress in getting back the control of the Arm China venture. The company reports that the Arm China board has voted to replace Allen Wu unanimously and appoint Dr. Renchen Liu alongside Eric Chen as two co-CEOs. Dr. Liu is a vice dean at the Research Institute of Tsinghua University in Shenzhen, and the agency in Shenzhen has registered him as the company leader and general manager. Eric Chen is a managing partner at the SoftBank Vision Fund, helping Dr. Liu with business operations. Later after this decision, Allen Wu posted a letter signed by 430 employees that stated that there were law enforcement errors in his replacement process and that he would continue to lead the company. It is a matter of time before Chinese authorities take this action a step further and see more details.

In 4Q21, NAND Flash bit shipments grew by only 3.3% QoQ, a significant decrease from the nearly 10% in 3Q21, according to TrendForce's investigations. ASP fell by nearly 5% and the overall industry posted revenue of US$18.5 billion, a QoQ decrease of 2.1%. This was primarily due to a decline in the purchase demand of various products and a market shift to oversupply causing a drop in contract prices. In 4Q21, with the exception of enterprise SSD, the supply of which was limited by insufficient upstream components, the prices of other NAND Flash products such as eMMC, UFS, and client SSD, all fell.

TrendForce's summary of NAND Flash market sales performance in 2021 is as follows: although there have been signs of weakening since 2H21, thanks to remote services and cloud demand driven by the pandemic, revenue performance still grew significantly compared to 2020. Revenue reached US$68.6 billion, up 21.1% YoY, the second-biggest increase since 2018.

From 2020 to 2025, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12-inch equivalent wafer capacity at the world's top ten foundries will be approximately 10% with the majority of these companies focusing on 12-inch capacity expansion, which will see a CAGR of approximately 13.2%, according to TrendForce's research. In terms of 8-inch wafers, due to factors such as difficult to obtain equipment and whether capacity expansion is cost-effective, most fabs can only expand production slightly by means of capacity optimization, equating to a CAGR of only 3.3%. In terms of demand, the products primarily derived from 8-inch wafers, PMIC and Power Discrete, are driven by demand for electric vehicles, 5G smartphones, and servers. Stocking momentum has not fallen off, resulting in a serious shortage of 8-inch wafer production capacity that has festered since 2H19. Therefore, in order to mitigate competition for 8-inch capacity, a trend of shifting certain products to 12-inch production has gradually emerged. However, if shortages in overall 8-inch capacity is to be effectively alleviated, it is still necessary to wait for a large number of mainstream products to migrate to 12-inch production. The timeframe for this migration is estimated to be close to 2H23 into 2024.

The European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) has launched 3 new research and innovation projects. The projects aim to bring the EU and its partners in the EuroHPC JU closer to developing independent microprocessor and HPC technology and advance a sovereign European HPC ecosystem. The European Processor Initiative (EPI SGA2), The European PILOT and the European Pilot for Exascale (EUPEX) are interlinked projects and an important milestone towards a more autonomous European supply chain for digital technologies and specifically HPC.

With joint investments of €140 million from the European Union (EU) and the EuroHPC JU Participating States, the three projects will carry out research and innovation activities to contribute to the overarching goal of securing European autonomy and sovereignty in HPC components and technologies, especially in anticipation of the European exascale supercomputers.

Global semiconductor sales revenue grew by a more than comfortable 25% in 2021, hitting a new record above $500 Billion for the first time. The data, part of Gartner's preliminary report on the state of the industry in 2021, bookends yet another year plagued with shortages and too little supply for the thirst of the consumer and business sectors. Naturally, supply constraints have led to higher ASP (Average Selling Prices) for the hardware that does get manufactured and distributed, as we've seen all too well in the graphics card market.

"As the global economy bounced back in 2021, shortages appeared throughout the semiconductor supply chain, particularly in the automotive industry," said Andrew Norwood, research vice president at Gartner. "The resulting combination of strong demand as well as logistics and raw material price increases drove semiconductors' average selling price higher (ASP), contributing to overall revenue growth in 2021.

3DMark Fire Strike Hall of Fame is where overclockers submit their best hardware benchmark trials and try to beat the very best. For years, one record managed to hold, and today it just got defeated. According to an extreme overclocker called "biso biso" from South Korea and a part of the EVGA OC team, the top spot now belongs to the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card. The previous 3DMark Fire Strike world record was set on April 22nd in 2020, when Vince Lucido, also known as K|NGP|N, set a record with four-way SLI of NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti GPUs. However, that record is old news since January 27th, when biso biso set the history with AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT GPU.

The overclocker scored 62389 points, just 1,183 more from the previous record. He pushed the Navi 21 XTX silicon that powers the Radeon RX 6900 XT card to an impressive 3,147 MHz. Paired with a GPU memory clock of 2370 MHz, the GPU was probably LN2 cooled to achieve these results. The overclocker used EVGA's Z690 DARK KINGPIN motherboard with Intel Core i9-12900K processor as a platform of choice to achieve this record. You can check it out on the 3DMark Fire Strike Hall of Fame website to see yourself.

Worldwide semiconductor revenue increased 25.1% in 2021 to total $583.5 billion, crossing the $500 billion threshold for the first time, according to preliminary results by Gartner, Inc.

"As the global economy bounced back in 2021, shortages appeared throughout the semiconductor supply chain, particularly in the automotive industry," said Andrew Norwood, research vice president at Gartner. "The resulting combination of strong demand as well as logistics and raw material price increases drove semiconductors' average selling price higher (ASP), contributing to overall revenue growth in 2021.

IBM today announced its new 127-quantum bit (qubit) 'Eagle' processor at the IBM Quantum Summit 2021, its annual event to showcase milestones in quantum hardware, software, and the growth of the quantum ecosystem. The 'Eagle' processor is a breakthrough in tapping into the massive computing potential of devices based on quantum physics. It heralds the point in hardware development where quantum circuits cannot be reliably simulated exactly on a classical computer. IBM also previewed plans for IBM Quantum System Two, the next generation of quantum systems.

Quantum computing taps into the fundamental quantum nature of matter at subatomic levels to offer the possibility of vastly increased computing power. The fundamental computational unit of quantum computing is the quantum circuit, an arrangement of qubits into quantum gates and measurements. The more qubits a quantum processor possesses, the more complex and valuable the quantum circuits that it can run.

The 58th annual edition of the TOP500 saw little change in the Top10. The Microsoft Azure system called Voyager-EUS2 was the only machine to shake up the top spots, claiming No. 10. Based on an AMD EPYC processor with 48 cores and 2.45GHz working together with an NVIDIA A100 GPU and 80 GB of memory, Voyager-EUS2 also utilizes a Mellanox HDR Infiniband for data transfer.

While there were no other changes to the positions of the systems in the Top10, Perlmutter at NERSC improved its performance to 70.9 Pflop/s. Housed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Perlmutter's increased performance couldn't move it from its previously held No. 5 spot.

While the global electronics supply chain experienced a chip shortage, the corresponding shortage of foundry capacities also led various foundries to raise their quotes, resulting in an over 20% YoY increase in the total annual revenues of the top 10 foundries for both 2020 and 2021, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. The top 10 foundries' annual revenue for 2021 is now expected to surpass US$100 billion. As TSMC leads yet another round of price hikes across the industry, annual foundry revenue for 2022 will likely reach US$117.69 billion, a 13.3% YoY increase.

TrendForce indicates that the combined CAPEX of the top 10 foundries surpassed US$50 billion in 2021, a 43% YoY increase. As new fab constructions and equipment move-ins gradually conclude next year, their combined CAPEX for 2022 is expected to undergo a 15% YoY increase and fall within the US$50-60 billion range. In addition, now that TSMC has officially announced the establishment of a new fab in Japan, total foundry CAPEX will likely increase further next year. TrendForce expects the foundry industry's total 8-inch and 12-inch wafer capacities to increase by 6% YoY and 14% YoY next year, respectively.

The Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) traditional PC market, (desktops, notebooks, and workstations) grew 12.7% YoY in 2021Q3, for a total of 24.4 million units, according to International Data Corporation (IDC). A strong commercial performance throughout the region is the main driver of this growth, offsetting a slowdown in consumer, which could not keep up with the unfavorable growth rates seen in 2020Q3.

The Western European PC market enjoyed solid growth (15.8% YoY). Desktops continued their upward trend and increased 21.8% YoY—outgrowing notebooks (+13.1%) for the first time in six quarters. Desktop growth can be attributed to strength on the commercial side, as employers look to equip and refresh their increasingly populated offices. Notebooks also saw solid commercial shipments but were stifled by component shortages, primarily in IC boards and panels.

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic led to severe delays in manufacturing and logistics. In particular, governments worldwide began implementing border restrictions in 2Q20 to combat the ongoing health crisis, leading to a sudden decline in order volumes for channel-market SSDs, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. Annual shipment of SSDs to the channel (retail) market reached 111.5 million units in 2020, a 15% YoY decrease. In terms of market share by shipment, Kingston, ADATA, and Kimtigo once again occupied the top three spots, respectively.

Looking at the channel market for SSDs as a whole, NAND Flash suppliers (among which Samsung possessed the largest market share) accounted for around 35% of the total shipments in 2020, while SSD module makers accounted for the other 65%. The top 10 module makers accounted for 71% of channel-market SSD shipments from all SSD module makers. Taken together, these figures show that the market remained relatively oligopolistic in 2020. However, it should be noted that TrendForce's ranking of SSD module makers for 2020 takes account of only products bound for the channel market and under brands owned by the module makers themselves; NAND Flash suppliers were therefore excluded from the top 10 ranking.

Contract prices of NAND Flash products are expected to undergo a marginal drop of 0-5% QoQ in 4Q21 as demand slows, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. Hence, the current cyclical upturn in NAND Flash prices will have lasted for only two consecutive quarters. Looking ahead, NAND Flash suppliers' capacity expansion plans will be affected by the outlook on future trends and the supply of other non-memory components. At the same time, attention will have to be paid to the demand projection. At the moment, NAND Flash suppliers appear likely to downsize their capacity expansion activities for 2022, resulting in a 31.8% YoY increase in NAND Flash bit supply next year. Annual bit demand, on the other hand, is projected to increase by 30.8% YoY. With demand being outpaced by supply and competition intensifying among suppliers for higher-layer products, the NAND Flash market will likely experience a cyclical downturn in prices in 2022.