Industry watchdogs have held the belief that Samsung's foundry business has lost several key clients due to alleged yield problems—the South Korean megacorp appears to be diligently working on major improvements with currently "in-progress" manufacturing processes; namely 2 nm GAA (aka SF2). Semiconductor industry insiders believe that TSMC is still leading the way with a recently completed trial run of their own 2 nm design, but rumors of elevated prices have reportedly upset certain important customers. According to a fresh Sedaily news article, Qualcomm has conducted negotiations with Samsung Foundry top brass—semiconductor industry moles claim that a "Snapdragon 8 Elite 2nd generation product" was the main topic of discussion. This next-gen flagship mobile chipset was previously linked to a 3 nm TSMC node, but newer rumors point to a possible spin-off that will utilize a "more advanced 2 nm process"—courtesy of Samsung Electronic's prime "Hwaseong S3" facility.

Sedaily and Jukanlosreve reckon that mass production will kick off at this cutting-edge early next year. Earlier today, Jukanlosreve added extra conjecture/context via a long social media bulletin: "the completed chips are expected to be integrated into Samsung Galaxy smartphones slated for launch in H2 2026. Design work is to finish in Q2 2025, after which mass-production preparations will begin and wafer runs will start in Q1 2026. Output is estimated at roughly 1,000 twelve-inch wafers per month. Given that Samsung's current 2 nm capacity is about 7,000 wafers/month, this project would utilize only around 15 % of its available capacity—suggesting this is a modest order rather than a large-scale win." These predictions have surprised many industry observers; Samsung leadership has seemingly tried to prioritize the in-house Exynos mobile processor designs within futuristic flagship Galaxy smartphone devices. Jukanlosreve reckons that the Samsung Foundry is keen to embrace any new "golden opportunities," given the operation's weakened track record across the past half decade. One unnamed insider posited: "this Qualcomm partnership could pave the way for orders from other big tech players." Sedaily sent a query to Samsung HQ, regarding the latest inside talk—a company spokesperson replied with: "we cannot confirm anything related to customer orders."

TrendForce's latest research reveals that although the U.S. has granted a 90-day grace period before implementing reciprocal tariffs—offering temporary relief for notebook brands—the broader market remains clouded by policy and economic uncertainty. Brands began frontloading inventory in late 2024, pushing Q4 shipment growth to 5.1%, with 1Q25 seeing a 7.2% YoY increase.

However, given persistent economic weakness and rising tariff risks, TrendForce has revised the full-year 2025 notebook brand shipment growth forecast downward from 3.6% to just 1.4%.

Customers evaluating AI infrastructure today rely on a combination of industry-standard benchmarks and real-world model performance metrics—such as those from Llama 3.1 405B, DeepSeek-R1, and other leading open-source models—to guide their GPU purchase decisions. At AMD, we believe that delivering value across both dimensions is essential to driving broader AI adoption and real-world deployment at scale. That's why we take a holistic approach—optimizing performance for rigorous industry benchmarks like MLperf while also enabling Day 0 support and rapid tuning for the models most widely used in production by our customers.

This strategy helps ensure AMD Instinct GPUs deliver not only strong, standardized performance, but also high-throughput, scalable AI inferencing across the latest generative and language models used by customers. We will explore how AMD's continued investment in benchmarking, open model enablement, software and ecosystem tools helps unlock greater value for customers—from MLPerf Inference 5.0 results to Llama 3.1 405B and DeepSeek-R1 performance, ROCm software advances, and beyond.

Cyan friends and family, we have some difficult news to share today. We would like to share with you some very unfortunate news. Despite our best efforts to avoid it, Cyan has made the difficult decision to reduce our overall staff size resulting in the layoff of twelve talented staff members, roughly half the team-effective at the end of March. Industry conditions have forced us into a tricky spot where we are having to weigh the future health of our studio against the month-to-month realities of game development in 2025.

Throughout the past year, we have been ultra-transparent with the entire Cyan team about the choppy waters we find ourselves in, as well as the dangers ahead. While the news of a layoff was not a surprise to the team, it was (and is) still deeply saddening for all of us. Although we have done our best to pad the landing for those affected with severance packages, we would implore any fellow developers looking for world-class talent to reach out. For now, our number one priority is to secure financing for our next project, and to restabilize the studio. We've been around for a very long time, and have been through tough times before. Our sincere hope is to continue to be around, and to provide the types of experiences that only Cyan can deliver.

As always, we are grateful for all the love and support from our amazing player community.
Sincerely, Cyan Leadership

Earlier in the week, Apple specialist press outlets picked up on a noted industry analyst's technological forecast for a future iPhone processor design. Jeff Pu—of GF Industries, Hong Kong—predicted that the next-generation A20 SoC would be produced via a TSMC 3 nm (N3P) nodes process. Despite rumors of Apple gaining front row seats at the "2 nm ballgame," the partnership between fabless chip designer and foundry could potentially revisit already covered ground. The A19 chipset was previously linked to N3P (by insiders), with Pu expressing the belief that A20 would utilize the same fundamental lithographic underpinnings; albeit enhanced with TSMC's Chip on Wafer on Substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology (for AI improvements).

This morning, MacRumors followed up on their initial news article—they reported that "wires were crossed" at GF Industries, regarding projections for the (2026) iPhone 18 generation. The publication received direct feedback from the man of the hour: "Jeff Pu (lead Apple analyst) has since clarified that he believes the A20 chip will be manufactured with the N2 process, so the information about the chip using the N3P process should be disregarded. Earlier reports had said the A20 chip would be 2 nm, so rumors align again. This is ultimately good news, as it means the A20 chip should have more substantial performance and power efficiency improvements over the A19 chip." Cutting-edge smartphone processor enthusiasts expressed much disappointment when A20 was (regressively) linked to N3P; the latest revisement should instill some joy. According to industry moles, TSMC is making good progress with its cutting-edge 2 nm node process—mass production is expected to start at some point within the second half of 2025.

Seeking to explore semiconductor policy measures that can strengthen the industrial policy in the European Union, SEMI and the European Semiconductor Industry Association (ESIA) have successfully held a high-level roundtable event in the European Parliament under the auspices of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) Bart Groothuis (Renew Europe), Oliver Schenk (European People's Party) and Dan Nica (Socialists and Democrats Party).

The 2023 European Chips Act marked an important milestone for Europe's semiconductor industry and overall industrial ecosystem, providing concrete measures to enhance competitiveness and technological capabilities. In order to build on the success of the Chips Act, after the roundtable, MEPs signed a joint declaration to the European Commission's Executive Vice President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, Henna Virkkunen, calling for an ambitious follow-up to the Chips Act that adds new research and development (R&D) funds, attracts new investments, and increases European competitiveness.

Intel Corporation today announced that its board of directors has appointed Lip-Bu Tan, an accomplished technology leader with deep semiconductor industry experience, as chief executive officer, effective March 18. He succeeds Interim Co-CEOs David Zinsner and Michelle (MJ) Johnston Holthaus. Tan will also rejoin the Intel board of directors after stepping down from the board in August 2024. Zinsner will remain executive vice president and chief financial officer, and Johnston Holthaus will remain CEO of Intel Products. Frank D. Yeary, who took on the role of interim executive chair of the board during the search for a new CEO, will revert to being the independent chair of the board upon Tan becoming CEO.

"Lip-Bu is an exceptional leader whose technology industry expertise, deep relationships across the product and foundry ecosystems, and proven track record of creating shareholder value is exactly what Intel needs in its next CEO," Yeary said. "Throughout his long and distinguished career, he has earned a reputation as an innovator who puts customers at the heart of everything he does, delivers differentiated solutions to win in the market and builds high-performance cultures to achieve success."

After more than two decades, a team of industry veterans has united to bring back one of gaming's most iconic brands. Acclaim, the legendary video game publisher known for its groundbreaking titles in the '80s and '90s, is officially returning with a bold vision aimed at revitalizing the gaming landscape.

Originally founded in 1987, the relaunch marks an exciting new chapter for the publisher, as it seeks to support indie developers and reignite classic franchises. Acclaim will provide much-needed resources such as funding, marketing and PR support, giving independent studios the opportunity to bring their creative visions to a broad audience.

TrendForce's latest research reveals that global DRAM industry revenue surpassed US$28 billion in 4Q24, marking a 9.9% QoQ increase. This growth was primarily driven by rising contract prices for server DDR5 and concentrated shipments of HBM, leading to continued revenue expansion for the top three DRAM suppliers.

Most contract prices across applications were seen to have reversed downward. However, increased procurement of high-capacity server DDR5 by major American CSPs helped sustain price momentum for server DRAM.

The global semiconductor manufacturing industry closed 2024 with strong fourth quarter results and solid year-on-year (YoY) growth across most of the key industry segments, SEMI announced today in its Q4 2024 publication of the Semiconductor Manufacturing Monitor (SMM) Report, prepared in partnership with TechInsights. The industry outlook is cautiously optimistic at the start of 2025 as seasonality and macroeconomic uncertainty may impede near-term growth despite momentum from strong investments related to AI applications.

After declining in the first half of 2024, electronics sales bounced back later in the year resulting in a 2% annual increase. Electronics sales grew 4% YoY in Q4 2024 and are expected to see a 1% YoY increase in Q1 2025 impacted by seasonality. Integrated circuit (IC) sales rose by 29% YoY in Q4 2024 and continued growth is expected in Q1 2025 with a 23% increase YoY as AI-fueled demand continues boosting shipments of high-performance computing (HPC) and datacenter memory chips.

Synopsys, Inc. today announced the expansion of its industry-leading hardware-assisted verification (HAV) portfolio with new HAPS prototyping and ZeBu emulation systems using the latest AMD Versal Premium VP1902 adaptive SoC. The next generation HAPS-200 prototyping and ZeBu-200 emulation systems deliver improved runtime performance, better compile time and improved debug productivity. They are built on new Synopsys Emulation and Prototyping (EP-Ready) Hardware that optimizes customer return on investment by enabling emulation and prototyping use cases via reconfiguration and optimized software. ZeBu Server 5 is enhanced to deliver industry-leading scalability beyond 60 billion gates (BG) to address the escalating hardware and software complexity in SoC and multi-die designs. It continues to offer industry-best density to optimize data center space utilization.

"With the industry approaching 100s of billions of gates per chip and 100s of millions of lines of software code in SoC and multi-die solutions, verification of advanced designs poses never-before seen challenges," said Ravi Subramanian, chief product management officer, Synopsys. "Continuing our strong partnership with AMD, our new systems deliver the highest HAV performance while offering the ultimate flexibility between prototyping and emulation use. Industry leaders are adopting Synopsys EP-Ready Hardware platforms for silicon to system verification and validation."

Aaaaaand… action! Time to become a Hollywood mogul! The Executive is now officially released with a 10% launch discount! Produce your dream movies. Tackle production challenges. Build your empire…And much more! We're thrilled to finally let you get your hands on it! We're incredibly proud of this project, and after your feedback on the demo, we can't wait to hear your thoughts on the full game!

Shape the history of the Hollywood movie industry in this sandbox business simulation game. Create the movies you've always wanted to see, hire the best team, research cutting-edge technologies, and dominate the Box Office. Can you rise from a small studio to a Hollywood giant? The Executive is a sandbox business simulation game that lets you rewrite the history of Hollywood from the 1970s to today. As the founder of a scrappy production company, you'll produce the movies you've always dreamed of, manage ambitious franchises, and build a studio that rivals the industry's greatest. Navigate the challenges of the movie business, outmaneuver your competition, and decide whether to chase critical acclaim or box office domination.

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) today announced global semiconductor sales hit $627.6 billion in 2024, an increase of 19.1% compared to the 2023 total of $526.8 billion. Additionally, fourth-quarter sales of $170.9 billion were 17.1% more than the fourth quarter of 2023, and 3.0% higher than the third quarter of 2024. And global sales for the month of December 2024 were $57.0 billion, a decrease of 1.2% compared to the November 2024 total. Monthly sales are compiled by the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) organization and represent a three-month moving average. SIA represents 99% of the U.S. semiconductor industry by revenue and nearly two-thirds of non-U.S. chip firms.

"The global semiconductor market experienced its highest-ever sales year in 2024, topping $600 billion in annual sales for the first time, and double-digit market growth is projected for 2025," said John Neuffer, SIA president and CEO. "Semiconductors enable virtually all modern technologies - including medical devices, communications, defense applications, AI, advanced transportation, and countless others - and the long-term industry outlook is incredibly strong."

A few days ago, we reported on the US reading a massive 500 billion US Dollar package called "Stargate Project" to build AI infrastructure on American soil. However, China is also planning to stay close behind, or even overlap the US in some areas, with a one trillion Yuan "AI Industry Development Action Plan". Translating into around 138 billion US Dollars at the time of writing, the Chinese AI plan is similar to the US Stargate project: develop AI infrastructure through data center expansion and AI accelerator scale-up. Unlike the Stargate project, led by private initiatives and OpenAI at the helm, the Chinese AI Industry Development Action Plan is an entirely state-sponsored initiative that will fund firms like Baidu, ByteDance, Alibaba, and DeepSeek with additional AI accelerators (or sanction-abiding GPUs) to create more advanced AI systems.

Over the past few days, DeepSeek, a branch of a Chinese hedge fund, has not only open-sourced its R1 reasoning model but made it entirely free to use for everyone. This has challenged moat of Western competitors like OpenAI, pushing its CEO Sam Altman to offer an O3-mini reasoning model for up to 100 queries per day for the ChatGPT Plus user tier. Not only did DeepSeek provide a model equally intelligent to OpenAI's best, but it also offered it completely free. This has stirred up the tech community quite a bit and showed that Chinese companies are not much behind Western competitors. With this AI action plan, the Chinese government wants to push its domestic AI makers even further ahead and allow them to overtake cutting-edge model development potentially. Of course, getting GPUs for these projects remains an intricate task, but with export control loopholes and domestic AI accelerator development, the AI arms race is picking up quite a bit.

The semiconductor industry is expected to start 18 new fab construction projects in 2025, according to SEMI's latest quarterly World Fab Forecast report. The new projects include three 200 mm and fifteen 300 mm facilities, the majority of which are expected to begin operations from 2026 to 2027.

In 2025, the Americas and Japan are the leading regions with four projects each. The China and Europe & Middle East regions are each tied for third place with three planned construction projects. Taiwan has two planned projects, while Korea and Southeast Asia have one project each for 2025.

Micron Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: MU) broke ground today on a new High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM) advanced packaging facility adjacent to the company's current facilities in Singapore. Micron marked the occasion with a ceremony attended by Gan Kim Yong, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade and Industry of Singapore, Png Cheong Boon, Chairman of the Singapore Economic Development Board, Pee Beng Kong, Executive Vice President of the Singapore Economic Development Board, and Tan Boon Khai, CEO of JTC Corporation.

The new HBM advanced packaging facility will be the first facility of its kind in Singapore. Operations for the new facility are scheduled to begin in 2026, with meaningful expansion of Micron's total advanced packaging capacity beginning in calendar 2027 to meet the demands of AI growth. The launch of this facility will further strengthen Singapore's local semiconductor ecosystem and innovation.

The World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) organization has unveiled its latest projections for the global semiconductor market, highlighting robust growth expectations for 2024 and 2025.

2024: A Year of Strong Rebound
In its updated fall forecast, WSTS has revised its 2024 projections upward, anticipating a significant 19.0% year-over-year growth in the semiconductor market. The global market value for 2024 is now estimated to reach $627 billion, reflecting improved performance in second and third quarter of 2024, particularly in the computing sector.

The Biden administration is rolling out a third major export control package aimed at China's semiconductor industry, as per a report from Reuters. Estimated to affect 140 companies, including China's chip equipment maker Naura Technology Group, Piotek, and Huawei Technologies, the effort aims to limit China's access to advanced chip making technology. In particular, technology that could be used in military products and artificial intelligence. Important sanctions include export controls to specific chip equipment manufacturers, blocking the delivery of high-performance memory chips and the addition of several semiconductor investment companies to the list of export-restricted entities.

The package expands U.S. regulatory authority through foreign direct product rules. It regulates chip manufacturing equipment manufactured around the world with U.S. technology, Japan and the Netherlands are exempt. However, the rules could have an impact on manufacturers outside U.S. such as those based in Israel, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and non-U.S. firms (i.e. ASML) due to the complexity of the technological and supply chain. This continues the Biden administration's strategy to limit China's semiconductor capabilities and comes just weeks before the Trump administration made changes. When asked about US new restrictions Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said at a regular press conference on Monday that such behavior undermines the international economic and trade system, and disrupts global supply chains. China will take measures to protect companies' rights and interests.

TrendForce's latest investigations reveal that the global DRAM industry revenue reached US$26.02 billion in 3Q24, marking a 13.6% QoQ increase. The rise was driven by growing demand for DDR5 and HBM in data centers, despite a decline in LPDDR4 and DDR4 shipments due to inventory reduction by Chinese smartphone brands and capacity expansion by Chinese DRAM suppliers. ASPs continued their upward trend from the previous quarter, with contract prices rising by 8% to 13%, further supported by HBM's displacement of conventional DRAM production.

Looking ahead to 4Q24, TrendForce projects a QoQ increase in overall DRAM bit shipments. However, the capacity constraints caused by HBM production are expected to have a weaker-than-anticipated impact on pricing. Additionally, capacity expansions by Chinese suppliers may prompt PC OEMs and smartphone brands to aggressively deplete inventory to secure lower-priced DRAM products. As a result, contract prices for conventional DRAM and blended prices for conventional DRAM and HBM are expected to decline.

Japan has proposed a $65 billion (or more) plan to strengthen the semiconductor and AI industries in the country through grants and financial support by fiscal year 2030. The government plans to present this proposal at the next parliamentary session. The draft includes support for mass production of next-generation chips, focusing on AI chipmakers such as Rapidus, the government estimates an economic impact of about 160 trillion yen from this investment. Rapidus plans to start mass production of advanced chips in Hokkaido from 2027 and will work with IBM and Belgian research organization Imec.

According to the report from Reuters, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said the government would not issue deficit-financing bonds to fund the support plan, although specific financial details are not yet known. The new initiative builds on last year's 2 trillion yen investment in the chip industry, and it is part of a broader economic package. Expected to be approved by the Cabinet on November 22, the plan calls for combined public and private investment in the semiconductor industry of more than 50 trillion yen over the next decade.

According to a recent Reuters report, the US government, under Biden's administration, will allow a few criteria-matching semiconductor fabs to circumvent environmental protection laws. On Wednesday, President Joe Biden signed legislation that effectively enables these fabs to not follow the strict regulations designed for maximum preservation of the environment. The Semiconductor Industry Association has noted that without this new legislation, companies that are extending facilities on US soil would be significantly slowed down due to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969. The CHIPS Act's primary force driver isn't just domestic production but near-future completion so that future geopolitical shifts don't impact US companies. The speed of getting permits to manufacture advanced chips is essential for every CHIPS Act recipient company, like Intel, Samsung, TSMC, and Micron.

The grass isn't always greener on the other side, especially as we're running out of sides in the advanced semiconductor manufacturing sector. A recent report by Business Korea highlights Samsung Securities' July publication titled "Geopolitical Paradigm Shift and Industry," which paints a less-than-optimistic picture of Samsung's current state of affairs. The report even evaluates a possible spinoff of Samsung Foundry. The Korean tech giant has faced various business setbacks related to its state-of-the-art 3 nm Gate-All-Around (GAA) FET node. Reports indicate that this node only manages to yield 10-20% of working silicon, making potential customers reluctant to secure partnerships with Samsung. Samsung Securities projects that Samsung Foundry, along with the LSI division, will suffer a 500 billion won (about $385 million) loss this year.

Poor yields and difficulty securing customers have left Samsung facing tough choices, including the possible sale of its massive Foundry unit, which manufactures logic for external customers. It's noteworthy that Samsung is one of only three companies left in the advanced semiconductor manufacturing field, alongside TSMC and Intel. Many companies struggled to deliver results when transitioning to sub-7 nm nodes. Global Foundries dropped out of the race to focus on mature nodes, while Intel faced delays. TSMC has been the only company so far to consistently set and execute its goals, positioning itself as the industry leader. With low yields on the 3 nm GAA FET node, Samsung currently holds 11.5% of the global foundry market share in Q2, while TSMC dominates with 62.3%.

Industry leader AAEON has expanded its RISC computing product portfolio with the release of the SRG-IMX8PL and PICO-IMX8PL, a Mini PC and 2.5" PICO-ITX board, respectively. Both products are powered by the NXP i.MX 8M Plus platform, featuring a quad-core Arm Cortex -A53 processor with a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) operating at up to 2.3 TOPS.

Built to provide cost-efficient IoT Gateway solutions in rugged environments, the SRG-IMX8PL and PICO-IMX8PL both offer wide temperature ranges of -40°C to 80°C with the use of a fanless heatsink, a 9 V to 36 V power input range. The SRG-IMX8PL Mini PC also features enhanced shock, drop, and vibration resistance. Dual LAN ports with IEEE 1588 and TSN capabilities, alongside Wi-Fi and 4G module support via M.2 2230 E-Key and full-size mini card, provide each device with broad connectivity options for industrial IoT use. Additionally, both the PICO-IMX8PL and SRG-IMX8PL support a wide range of operating systems, including Debian 11, Android 13, Windows 10 IoT, and Yocto, as well as data communication protocols such as Modbus, MQTT, and OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA).

The PC (desktops, notebooks, and workstations) market in Mainland China is forecast to contract by 1% in 2024 according to the latest Canalys data. The first quarter of the year already saw a sharp decline, with shipments down 12%, in contrast to the global market which returned to growth. Desktop shipments are expected to perform well in 2024, growing 10% annually as they benefit from commercial sector refresh demand, especially from large state-held enterprises and local governments. Notebook shipments are set to drop 5%, as demand from consumers and the private sector is anticipated to remain cautious on short-term expenditure such as PCs.

China's PC market trajectory is diverging from global trends in its recovery journey. In Q1 2024, the commercial sector bore the brunt of the market downturn, undergoing a 19% decline due to weak IT spending by large enterprises. The decline in consumer shipments was milder, with shipments dropping 8%. However, despite the muted performance in 2024, significant local developments point to a stronger market in 2025, in which PC shipments are expected to grow 12%.

Beijing has doubled down on its push for semiconductor self-sufficiency with the establishment of a new $47.5 billion investment fund to accelerate growth in the domestic chip sector. The fund, officially registered on May 24th under the name "China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund Phase III", represents the largest of three state-backed vehicles aimed at cultivating China's semiconductor capabilities. The announcement comes as tensions over advanced chip technology continue to escalate between the U.S. and China. Over the past couple years, Washington has steadily ratcheted up export controls on semiconductors to Beijing over national security concerns about potential military applications. These measures have lent new urgency to China's quest for self-sufficiency in chip design and manufacturing.

With a war chest of 344 billion yuan ($47.5 billion), the "Big Fund" dwarfs the combined capital of the first two semiconductor investment vehicles launched in 2014 and 2019. Officials have outlined a multipronged strategy targeting key bottlenecks, focusing on equipment for chip fabrication plants. The fund has bankrolled major projects such as flash memory maker Yangtze Memory Technologies and leading foundries like SMIC and Huahong. China's homegrown chip industry still needs to catch up to global leaders like Intel, Samsung, and TSMC. However, the immense scale of state-directed capital illustrates Beijing's unwavering commitment to developing a self-reliant supply chain for semiconductors—a technology viewed as indispensable for economic and military competitiveness. News of the "Big Fund" sent Chinese chip stocks surging over 3% on hopes of fresh financing tailwinds.