On July 1st, Reuters reported that the French antitrust authority plans to file charges against NVIDIA for alleged anti-competitive practices, marking France as the first country to take such action against the tech giant. This follows a raid on NVIDIA's local offices in September 2023, as we reported here, which was part of a broader investigation into the graphics card and cloud computing sectors. A recent report released by French authorities regarding competition in generative AI highlighted concerns about potential abuses of power by chip suppliers, specifically noting the industry reliance on NVIDIA. If NVIDIA is to be found guilty of charges made by French authorities it can be facing fines of up to 10% of its global annual revenue. However, NVIDIA may have the option to make concessions to avoid such penalties.

As the world's largest manufacturer of AI chips and computer graphics cards, NVIDIA is under intense scrutiny from antitrust authorities in Europe and the United States. The European Commission is gathering informal feedback to assess whether NVIDIA had breached its antitrust rules, though it has not yet launched a formal investigation. The Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission are reportedly conducting joint investigations into NVIDIA, Microsoft, and OpenAI, reflecting growing regulatory concern in the United States over these tech giants' market influence.

The European Commission has preliminarily concluded that Microsoft breached EU antitrust rules by tying its Teams communication product to Office 365 and Microsoft 365 productivity suites. The Commission considers Microsoft dominant in the global SaaS productivity applications market and is concerned that since at least April 2019, the company has been unfairly promoting Teams by bundling it with core productivity applications.

This practice allegedly restricts competition in the communication and collaboration products market, prevents customers from choosing whether to acquire Teams, and may limit interoperability with competitors' products. The Commission fears this could hinder innovation and harm customers in the European Economic Area, potentially violating Article 102 of the TFEU, which prohibits abuse of a dominant position.

Silicon Box, a cutting-edge, advanced panel-level packaging foundry announced its intention to collaborate with the Italian government to invest up to $3.6 billion (€3.2 billion) in Northern Italy, as the site of a new, state-of-the-art semiconductor assembly and test facility. This facility will help meet critical demand for advanced packaging capacity to enable next generation technologies that Silicon Box anticipates by 2028. The multi-year investment will replicate Silicon Box's flagship foundry in Singapore which has proven capability and capacity for the world's most advanced semiconductor packaging solutions, then expand further into 3D integration and testing. When completed, the new facility will support approximately 1,600 Silicon Box employees in Italy. The construction of the facility is also expected to create several thousand more jobs, including eventual hiring by suppliers. Design and planning for the facility will begin immediately, with construction to commence pending European Commission approval of planned financial support by the Italian State.

As well as bringing the most advanced chiplet integration, packaging, and testing to Italy, Silicon Box's manufacturing process is based on panel-level-production; a world leading, first-of-its-kind combination that is already shipping product to customers from its Singapore foundry. Through the investment, Silicon Box has plans for greater innovation and expansion in Europe, and globally. The new integrated production facility is expected to serve as a catalyst for broader ecosystem investments and innovation in Italy, as well as the rest of the European Union.

Apple has just been hit with a massive €500 million fine by the European Union over a complaint filed by Spotify over anti-competitive practices. The crux of the complaint is that while Spotify subscriptions purchased on its website are competitive to those of Apple Music, subscriptions purchased on Apple devices via the App Store incur a 30% commission to Apple, which would result in Spotify having to increase its subscription prices, making Spotify lose competitiveness to Apple Music, which comes pre-installed on iOS devices, is deeply integrated with the operating system, and costs less. The Spotify complaint was filed with the European Commission way back in 2019, with the ruling coming out just now. Apple is already facing the EU's heat over barriers to App Store alternatives in the Epic Games case. The company is implementing several platform-level changes with the upcoming iOS 17.4 update scheduled for March 2024, as well as changes to its terms of service. Hopefully Spotify gets its due.

Apple today announced changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store impacting developers' apps in the European Union (EU) to comply with the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The changes include more than 600 new APIs, expanded app analytics, functionality for alternative browser engines, and options for processing app payments and distributing iOS apps. Across every change, Apple is introducing new safeguards that reduce—but don't eliminate—new risks the DMA poses to EU users. With these steps, Apple will continue to deliver the best, most secure experience possible for EU users.

The new options for processing payments and downloading apps on iOS open new avenues for malware, fraud and scams, illicit and harmful content, and other privacy and security threats. That's why Apple is introducing protections—including Notarization for iOS apps, an authorization for marketplace developers, and disclosures on alternative payments—to reduce risks and deliver the best, most secure experience possible for users in the EU. Even with these safeguards in place, many risks remain.

After almost two years, Microsoft has finally closed the $68.7 billion deal and acquired Activision Blizzard. Confirmed by Phil Spencer, head of gaming at Microsoft, the deal comes after the final approval from UK's Competition and Markets earlier today. The acquisition puts Activision Blizzard, developers Infinity Ward, Raven Software, Sledgehammer Games, Treyarch, Toys for Bob, Beenox and High Moon Studios, as well as the mobile game maker King, which is known for its Candy Crush game, all under Xbox Game Studios.

In case you missed it, Microsoft announced its intention to acquire Activision Blizzard back in January 2022, after which it started its battle with various regulators, including UK's CMA, the European Commission, the US Federal Trade Commission, and others. In its extensive statement, Phil Spencer, head of gaming at Microsoft, once again confirmed that they will continue to make more games available in more places, as it promised to the European Commission, and they can now start the work to bring all those franchises to Game Pass and other platforms. Earlier this week, Activision Blizzard confirmed it expected to start adding titles to Game Pass in 2024, if the aforementioned deal goes through.

The European Commission has today announced that it has granted conditional approval—under EU Merger Regulation—for the $61 billion acquisition of VMware by Broadcom: "The approval is conditional upon full compliance with the commitments offered by Broadcom. Today's decision follows an in-depth investigation of the proposed acquisition. Broadcom is a hardware company that offers, among other products, Fibre Channel Host-Bus Adapters ('FC HBAs'), storage adapters and Network Interface Cards ('NICs'), which are hardware components that connect servers to storage or network. Broadcom has recently started expanding into software markets, mainly for security and mainframe applications. VMware is a software supplier offering mainly virtualization software that interoperates with a wide range of hardware, including FC HBAs, storage adapters and NICs.

A company spokesperson commented on the EU administration's conditional approval of the deal: "Broadcom provided the European Commission with a technology access remedy that preserves interoperability, a core principle that would not have changed as a result of this transaction...Broadcom did this to fully address the concerns expressed by the European Commission, and Broadcom welcomes the Commission's decision to accept this access remedy." The aforementioned "concerns" relate to the acquisition resulting in a possible restriction of "competition in the market for certain hardware components which interoperate with VMware's software." Broadcom is aiming to finalize their purchase of VMware by November 1, but they have to contend with forthcoming judgements from US and UK regulators prior to that date.

Intel and the German federal government have signed a revised letter of intent for Intel's planned leading-edge wafer fabrication site in Magdeburg, the capital of Saxony-Anhalt state in Germany. The agreement encompasses Intel's expanded investment in the site, now expected to be more than 30 billion euros for two first-of-a-kind semiconductor facilities (also known as "fabs") in Europe, along with increased government support that includes incentives, reflecting the expanded scope and change in economic conditions since the site was first announced.

Intel acquired the land for the project in November 2022, and the first facility is expected to enter production in four to five years following the European Commission's approval of the incentive package. Given the current timeline and scale of the investment, Intel plans to deploy more advanced Angstrom-era technology in the facilities than originally envisioned. The Magdeburg site will serve Intel products and Intel Foundry Services customers.

The European Union yesterday (April 18) has announced a substantial investment of $47 billion (€43 billion) as part of its already established plan to support native semiconductor industries. The European Parliament and EU member states have agreed upon new measures to boost the supply of semiconductors in Europe, as the bloc navigates a solution to reduce its dependency on manufacturers located in Asian territories. Thierry Breton, Commissioner for Internal Market of the European Union, released his own statement about the agreement: "We have a deal on EU Chips Act! In a geopolitical context of de-risking, Europe is taking its destiny into its own hands. By mastering the most advanced semiconductors, EU will become an industrial powerhouse in markets of the future."

China and Taiwan are currently the dominant nations in the field of manufacture and export of semiconductor products. The European Union is also playing catch-up with North America, where the United States Chips and Science Act has been effect since last summer - around $280 billion in new funding will be meted out over time to boost domestic research and development, as well as manufacturing of semiconductors in the USA. Governing bodies around the world are shoring up domestic silicon-based manufacturing efforts in order to reduce reliance on products sourced from Asia - where supply chain issues and manufacturing delays have caused global shortages of essential electronic goods.

Around 20 years ago, most people replaced their phones on a yearly basis in some countries, largely due to the fact that if you signed the right mobile service contract, you got a free phone. These days, it's not nearly as common to get a free device with your service, but then again, mobile service contracts also tend to cost much less these days in many countries. As such, people retain their devices longer, which has put the device upgrade cycle somewhere around the two or three year mark. Now the EU is proposing new regulations that will force the mobile device makers to re-think the current status quo, as the European Commission regulators are considering asking mobile device makers to offer not just better battery life, but also spare part availability for as long as five years after a device was launched.

When it comes to battery life, the EU Commission is intending to offer the device manufacturers two options. The first is that they'll have to offer batteries that can deliver 83 percent of their rated capacity after 500 charging cycles, followed by 80 percent capacity after 1000 charging cycles. Alternatively, they can offer replacement batteries and phone back covers to its end-user customers, so they can replace their batteries once the batteries no longer hold charge that meets the owners expectations.

STMicroelectronics, a global semiconductor leader serving customers across the spectrum of electronics applications, and GlobalFoundries Inc., a global leader in feature-rich semiconductor manufacturing, today announced they have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to create a new, jointly-operated 300 mm semiconductor manufacturing facility adjacent to ST's existing 300 mm facility in Crolles, France. This facility is targeted to ramp at full capacity by 2026, with up to 620,000 300 mm wafer per year production at full build-out (~42% ST and ~58% GF).

ST and GF are committed to building capacity for their European and global customer base. This new facility will support several technologies, in particular FD-SOI-based technologies, and will cover multiple variants. This includes GF's market leading FDX technology and ST's comprehensive technology roadmap down to 18 nm, which are expected to remain in high demand for Automotive, IoT, and Mobile applications for the next few decades. FD-SOI technology has origins in the Grenoble (France) area. It has been part of ST technology and product roadmap in its Crolles facility since the early beginnings, and it was later enabled with differentiation and commercialized for manufacturing at GF's Dresden facility. FD-SOI offers substantial benefits for designers and customers, including ultra-low power consumption as well as easier integration of additional features such as RF connectivity, mmWave and security.

Back in January, Intel overturned an antitrust ruling by the EU and didn't have to pay the $1.2 billion fine, but it seems like the company isn't satisfied with getting out of having to pay a huge fine, but is now asking the EU to compensate the company for interest lost. As such, Intel has filed for "payment of compensation and consequential interest for the damage sustained because of the European Commissions refusal to pay Intel default interest" with the EU General Court. The sum of money Intel is asking for is based on the European Central Bank's refinancing rate and as the original fine was levied back in 2009, Intel claims they're owed more than half of the value of the fine.

Intel is also expecting further interest on the money, if the payment is late from the EU. It should be noted that the European Commission has already paid Intel €38 million in interest on the fine that was paid back in 2009, but Intel is clearly not happy and is asking for a much greater sum. However, the battle between the European Commission and Intel isn't over, as the Commission is working on appealing the ruling, so depending on the outcome of that appeal, Intel might have to pay back the fine to the EU. For those that don't remember the original reason for the antitrust fine, Intel was accused of giving rebates to certain partners and system integrators to make sure they didn't use AMD products in their systems, among other things.

This past week, the EU's Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee agreed on adopting USB Type-C as the union's standard charging connector, with 43 votes in favour and two against. It's part of the Radio Equipment Directive and it means that USB-C is now very close to becoming the de facto connector for charging a wide range of consumer electronics. The charging standard will apply to what the committee calls small and medium-sized electronic gadgets and include mobile phones, tablets, digital cameras, headphones and headsets, handheld videogame consoles and portable speakers. Exemptions will apply for devices that are too small to incorporate a USB-C port, such a smart watches, health trackers and some sports equipment.

The directive still has to be approved by the EU parliament, which is expected to happen in May during the plenary session. There will be an initial transition period and the new requirements aren't expected to start to apply until early 2024. In addition to the new directive, the MEPs also want to see clear labelling on devices in terms of how much power they can deliver, since this can sometimes be hard to figure out as a consumer. They also want to see clear labelling on product packaging if a charger is supplied or not. Furthermore, the MEPs want the European Commission to present a strategy with regards to wireless chargers by the end of 2026, to make sure there's some kind of minimal interoperability between the various wireless charging standards. This is said to be to try and avoid market fragmentation, as well as to reduce e-waste and to try and prevent consumer "lock-in" to proprietary charging standards. The EU is said to end up with 11 to 13-thousand tons of e-waste from chargers alone on a yearly basis, so it's not hard to see why the union wants to see a unified charging standard for most electronics.

Remember that €1.06 billion antitrust lawsuit that Intel was slapped with by the European Commission back in 2009? It's ok if you don't, but it involved Intel being accused of "market malpractice, by influencing computer hardware manufacturers to postpone and/or cancel launches of their products that use CPUs made by its rival AMD" based on our own reporting from 2009. As these thing goes, Intel appealed to a higher court and that higher court handed back the case to the lower court who has now withdrawn the fine and the judges went as far as to say "The (European) Commission's analysis is incomplete and does not make it possible to establish to the requisite legal standard that the rebates at issue were capable of having, or likely to have, anticompetitive effects,".

The European Commission has said it will study the new judgement and will consider its next steps, but it seems unlikely that they'll be able to bring this case to court again, without some additional proof of wrongdoing. The end result of this is also likely to make it tougher to bring cases like to court in the future for the European Commission, as they will have to provide more detailed cases where they prove that things like MDF and rebates to their customers cause real, anti-competitive damages to other companies in the same line of business, in this case AMD. The case can still be appealed to the CJEU, so this 13 year saga might still not be over.

According to Margrethe Vestager—the European Commissioner for Competition—the EU is hoping to be able to produce up to 20 percent of leading edge chips within the EU by 2030. Today that number is around 10 percent, down from some 40 percent back in the 1990's.

However, it seems like the EU has understood that it can not be self-reliant on semiconductor parts, no matter how many companies it can entice to build foundries within the EU. However, the EU is very much looking at getting more chip production happening inside the union, especially for the automotive industry. At the same time, the EU understands that it has to work with global suppliers of chips, especially what is being referred to as legacy technology in the interview with CNBC.

It looks like NVIDIA's acquisition of Arm Holdings Plc from Japan's SoftBank, has hit its biggest regulatory hurdle, with the European Commission, the apex executive body of the European Union, deliberating on whether the deal requires a thorough investigation lasting 4 months. Reuters reports that NVIDIA offered the Commission certain "concessions," which may affect the way Arm operates under NVIDIA. The Commission did not disclose these concessions, but mentioned that it will take until October 27 to decide whether or not they merit further investigation.

NVIDIA's Arm acquisition has split the Arm licensee industry along the median. The likes of Apple, Qualcomm, and Samsung, have voiced serious concerns over the deal. They fear that as a high-performance SoC designer itself, NVIDIA will withhold the most advanced bits of the Arm IP to itself, giving it a competitive edge over licensees. Not all companies see it this way, with Broadcom, MediaTek, and Marvell openly endorsing the deal. It's interesting to note here, that Apple, Samsung, and Qualcomm, make faster smartphone SoCs than MediaTek, Broadcom, and Marvell (and their subsidiaries) do.

TSMC, as part of its strategy to build cutting-edge semiconductor foundries in the US and EU, is looking to build a ground-up fab in Germany. The company's chairman, Mark Liu, made an announcement to this effect in the company's annual general meeting (AGM), addressing shareholders, held on July 26. This move is still in its "early stages," according to a DigiTimes report, with the company prospecting a suitable site across the country. The size and scale of TSMC's investment remains under the wraps.

TSMC's expedition to Germany aligns with an ambitious plan by the European Commission to make the EU a net-exporter of semiconductors and electronics by 2030. TSMC will have Intel Foundry Services for company in Germany, as an acquisition of Global Foundries would put Intel in control of its real-estate in Dresden. Intel is still prospecting the EU for a suitable place to invest €20 billion, besides ongoing investments in states such as the Republic of Ireland.

Microsoft announced their plans to purchase ZeniMax Media last year in a deal valued at 7.5 billion dollars which would give them 8 new game studios including Bethesda, id Software, Arkane Studios, and MachineGames. The deal is the largest acquisition by Microsoft yet increasing their game studio count from 15 to 23 and are adding several notable game series to their collection including The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, DOOM, Prey, Dishonored, and Wolfenstein. Microsoft has announced that all these titles will be made available as part of Xbox Game Pass which will make the service even more compelling to gamers. The European Commission has approved the purchase without conditions and pending approval in the US the acquisition looks likely to complete in the coming months. Microsoft has confirmed that the existing Deathloop timed PlayStation exclusive deal will continue and major leadership changes within the company are not expected.

Epic Games today announced it has filed an antitrust complaint against Apple in the European Union (EU), expanding the company's fight to advance fairer digital platform practices for developers and consumers. The complaint, filed with the European Commission's Directorate-General for Competition, alleges that through a series of carefully designed anti-competitive restrictions, Apple has not just harmed but completely eliminated competition in app distribution and payment processes. Apple uses its control of the iOS ecosystem to benefit itself while blocking competitors and its conduct is an abuse of a dominant position and in breach of EU competition law.

The complaint complements legal processes already underway in both the US and Australia, as well as Epic's recent filing before the UK's Competition Appeal Tribunal. "What's at stake here is the very future of mobile platforms." Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney said today. "Consumers have the right to install apps from sources of their choosing and developers have the right to compete in a fair marketplace. We will not stand idly by and allow Apple to use its platform dominance to control what should be a level digital playing field. It's bad for consumers, who are paying inflated prices due to the complete lack of competition among stores and in-app payment processing. And it's bad for developers, whose very livelihoods often hinge on Apple's complete discretion as to who to allow on the iOS platform, and on which terms."

The European Commission has issued a fine to Valve and five game publishers (Bandai Namco, Focus Home Interactive, Capcom, Koch Media, and ZeniMax after an antitrust probe decided the companies violated EU antitrust laws. The Commission investigated regional pricing and geo-blocking practices that were put in place by valve and the hitherto fined publishers, and says that these rule-breaking pricing manipulations resulted from bilateral agreements between game publishers and Valve between 2010 and 2015, as well as from purpose-built licensing and distribution licenses between four out of five fined publishers between 2007 and 2018.

The European Commission found these practices to relieve "European consumers of the benefits of the EU Digital Single Market and of the opportunity to shop around for the most suitable offer in the EU". In particular, the offendants sold video game licenses relative to some 100 different titles at lower pricing in certain Eastern Europe countries, and which could not be activated in Western Europe. The fine's total amount of €7.8 million is shared between Valve (€1,624,000); Bandai Namco (10% fine reduction for cooperation, €340,000); Capcom (15% fine reduction for cooperation, €396,000); Focus Home Interactive (10% fine reduction for cooperation, €2,888,000); Koch Media (10% fine reduction for cooperation, €977,000), and ZeniMax (10% fine reduction for cooperation, €1,664,000). Valve didn't receive any fine reduction because the company elected not to cooperate with the Commission.

NVIDIA today announced that the Italian inter-university consortium CINECA—one of the world's most important supercomputing centers—will use the company's accelerated computing platform to build the world's fastest AI supercomputer.

The new "Leonardo" system, built with Atos, is expected to deliver 10 exaflops of FP16 AI performance to enable advanced AI and HPC converged application use cases. Featuring nearly 14,000 NVIDIA Ampere architecture-based GPUs and NVIDIA Mellanox HDR 200 Gb/s InfiniBand networking, Leonardo will propel Italy as the global leader in AI and high performance computing research and innovation.

Atos, a global leader in digital transformation, today announces its new BullSequana X2415, the first supercomputer in Europe to integrate NVIDIA's Ampere next-generation graphics processing unit architecture, the NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPU. This new supercomputer blade will deliver unprecedented computing power to boost application performance for HPC and AI workloads, tackling the challenges of the exascale era. The BullSequana X2415 blade will increase computing power by more than 2x and optimize energy consumption thanks to Atos' 100% highly efficient water-cooled patented DLC (Direct Liquid Cooling) solution, which uses warm water to cool the machine.

Forschungszentrum Jülich will integrate this new blade into its booster module, extending its existing JUWELS BullSequana supercomputer, making it the first system worldwide the use this new technology. The JUWELS Booster will provide researchers across Europe with significantly increased computational resources. Some of the projects it will fuel are the European Commission's Human Brain Project and the Jülich Laboratories of "Climate Science" and "Molecular Systems". Once fully deployed this summer the upgraded supercomputing system, operated under ParTec's software ParaStation Modulo, is expected to provide a computational peak performance of more than 70 Petaflops/s making it the most powerful supercomputer in Europe and a showcase for European exascale architecture.

The European Processor Initiative(EPI), crucial element of the European exascale strategy, delivers its first architectural design to the European Commission and welcomes new partners Almost six months in, the project that kicked off last December has already delivered its first architectural designs to the European Commission, thus marking initial milestones successfully executed. The project that will be the cornerstone of the EU's strategic plans in HPC initially brought together 23 partners from 10 European countries, but has now welcomed three more strong additions to its EPI family. EPI consortium aims to bring a low-power microprocessor to the market and ensure that the key competences for high-end chip design remain in Europe. The European Union's Horizon 2020 program funds this project with a special Framework Partnership Agreement. The initial stage is a three-year Specific Grant Agreement, which lasts until November 2021.

The Chinese State Administration for Market Regulation has been conducting an anti-monopoly investigation of the global Dynamic RAM market. According to an interview of Wu Zenghou (bureau's head) in the Financial Times, this process has found "massive evidence" against the three companies (Samsung, Hynix, and Micron) that are responsible for the vast majority of this segment. "The anti-monopoly investigation into these three companies has made important progress", points out the investigator. On April these three companies were hit with a price-fixing suit on the same matter in the US, and this investigation seems to confirm those reports.

There is even an older precedent, as Samsung and Hynix were fined both by the US Department of Justice in 2005 and by the European Commission in 2010 on price-fixing allegations. The charges now are similar, and if the companies are found guilty, they could face fines of over $2.5 billion. Some analysts suggest this investigation could be part of the trade war between China and the US, with the former trying to get some leverage pushing the Chinese semiconductor company Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit as a bigger player on this market. One that, by the way, is being investigated on allegations of misappropriated trade secrets from Micron. Samsung and SK Hynix have accused China DRAM makers of industrial espionage, too.

The European Commission today fined, in four separate decisions, consumer electronics manufacturers Asus, Denon & Marantz, Philips and Pioneer for imposing fixed or minimum resale prices on their online retailers in breach of EU competition rules.

The fines totalling over €111 million were in all four cases reduced due to the companies' cooperation with the Commission.