TSMC has confirmed to Taiwan News this weekend that a fire at its Phoenix-general area, Arizona semiconductor plant was only "limited to an outside trash chute and immediately extinguished" - the chipmaker was responding to an afternoon incident from Friday (April 28). A worker took photos of black smoke rising from a section of the brand new factory, the employee then proceeded to share their snaps online via a discussion board. A local firefighting crew extinguished the blaze soon after evacuating workers from the affected area, a preliminary investigation conducted by the emergency responders found that the fire originated from a waste/refuse chute. A root cause has not yet been identified according to the newspaper's article.

The Arizona plant was not the only TSMC location to play host to an unexpected incident this week - reports from Wednesday (April 26) state that a fire broke out during the (preceding) evening/night at a company facility in North Taiwan. No injuries or casualties were reported following a response by firefighters who had the situation under control soon after 9 pm - TSMC believes that the fire started at around 19:30. The incomplete factory is situated within Taiwan's Hsinchu Science Park, and is set to bolster the company's existing advanced 3D IC package manufacturing efforts. Part of the facility will also be setup as a component testing lab. TSMC has declared that it is conducting an investigation into the incident at its Zhunan, Miaoli County location.

Intel has appointed Deepak Patil as the new corporate vice president and general manager of its Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics (AXG) group. Patil is set to succeed Raja Koduri in this leadership role - company CEO Pat Gelsinger was the first person to announce news (last month) of Koduri's departure from Intel. At the time of his leaving Team Blue, Koduri's official job title was "Executive Vice President and Chief Architect" so the wording of his successor's executive ranking is slightly different. Patil is the current chief technology and strategy officer at the Intel Data Center and AI Group, and was previously senior vice president at Dell APEX USA. He will be taking over directly from interim AXG division leader Jeff McVeigh.

The official Intel statement regarding its new leadership appointment states: "Intel will deliver competitive accelerated computing products and build scalable systems with easy-to-program software on a predictable cadence. Deepak Patil will serve as the CVP and General Manager of the Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics (AXG) group. Deepak recently held the position of DCAI Chief Technology and Strategy Officer. Having held senior engineering leadership positions across the high-tech industry, including being a founding member of Microsoft Azure and leading Dell's APEX as-a-service business, he understands the important role that software and open ecosystems play in enabling application developers and service providers to bring innovative solutions to market, at scale."

Last week the US Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG) Education Fund issued a report titled "Chromebook Churn", and the technology press was quick in its reading and analysis of this PDF document - filled with unfavorable findings. The main focus of the consumer watchdog's investigation was on a great uptake of Chromebooks in the education sector - schools in the United States of America have been providing a high percentage of their students with the relatively cheap ChromeOS-based laptop computers - especially during the pandemic period. The PIRG's Churn report cites numerous sources regarding disappointing Chromebook lifespans - schools are experiencing a high rate of hardware failure and technical issues relating to software updates - and as a result of these problems, irreparable devices are piling up as e-waste.

PIRG has called on Google and its manufacturing partners to effectively "double the life of these widely used laptops, saving schools money and helping the environment." Chromebooks are considered to be a cost effective entry into computing, but the watchdog reckons that a nice starter price tag does not reflect well when stacked up against the product's long term prospects. Schools are experiencing a high rate of Chromebook failures, especially once devices hit a three year long usage mark, and the required repair process is said to be problematic. PIRG states that warranty terms are unfavorable beyond the manufacturer set lifespan, and schools are having to pay for third party renovations and sourcing of spare parts (which is a complicated process in itself). The watchdog posits that schools in the USA could save a total of $1.8 billion (for taxpayers) - if Google doubles the lifespan of Chromebook, not accounting for extra maintenance costs.

Netlist Inc. an enterprise solid state storage drive specialist has been awarded over $303 million in damages by a federal jury in Texas on April 21, over apparent patent infringement on Samsung's part. Netlist has alleged that the South Korean multinational electronics corporation had knowingly infringed on five patents, all relating to improvements in data processing within the design makeup of memory modules intended for high performance computing (HPC) purposes. The Irvine, CA-based computer-memory specialist has sued Samsung in the past - with a legal suit filed at the Federal District Court for the Central District of California.

Netlist was seemingly pleased by the verdict reached at the time (2021) when the court: "granted summary judgements in favor of Netlist and against Samsung for material breach of various obligations under the Joint Development and License Agreement (JDLA), which the parties executed in November 2015. A summary judgment is a final determination rendered by the judge and has the same force and effect as a final ruling after a jury trial in litigation."

US authorities have imposed a $300 million penalty on Seagate Technology Holdings plc, a market leader in data storage solutions, for an alleged violation of export controls. The US Commerce Department has investigated the California-based company's business dealings with Chinese hardware firm Huawei Technologies Co. Limited, specifically for the sale of hard disk drives to operations within mainland China. It has found that Seagate has broken the "foreign direct product (FDP) rule" that was established by the US Government back in 2020. Seagate is said to have sold approximately 7.4 million hard drive units to Huawei after the period in which the new rulings took effect - the total value of these shipments was estimated in the region of $1.1 billion.

The US government's serving of a civil penalty to Seagate appears to be part of a larger drive to prevent North American tech companies from selling advanced computer equipment to Chinese firms. Two other suppliers (not named) of storage solutions had agreed to the government imposed terms and ceased trade with Huawei in 2020. In contrast, Seagate has seemingly become a record breaking heretic according to a statement released yesterday by the Bureau of Industry (BIS) and Security: "This historic foreign direct product enforcement case and settlement represents the largest standalone administrative penalty in BIS history. Today's resolution also includes a multi-year audit requirement and a five-year suspended Denial Order. In August 2020, the Bureau of Industry and Security imposed controls over certain foreign-produced items related to Huawei. Despite this, in September 2020, Seagate announced it would continue to do business with Huawei. Seagate did so despite the fact that its only two competitors had stopped selling HDDs to Huawei, resulting in Seagate becoming Huawei's sole source provider of HDDs."

Sony is not happy about the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) recent provisional approval of Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and has highlighted the apparent removal of a Microsoft-owned game from being developed on the PlayStation 5. According to legal documents submitted to the UK government, Sony has taken issue with the watchdog's sudden change in opinion - the CMA's position was highly critical at the start of the year - and suspects that Microsoft's expensive PR campaign and submitting of "new evidence" to international competition regulators have influenced a change in direction of rulings. Sony's statement bears down on the unfair nature of the bid's approval: "The CMA's reversal of its position on its consoles theory of harm is surprising, unprecedented, and irrational."

Japan's Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) was the latest anti-trust governing body to give the takeover a thumbs-up, almost two weeks ago - a dramatic turn of events given that it happened on Sony's home turf. The embattled electronics corporation has taken notice of fresh developments in the press, and proceeded to mention controversy surrounding the Redfall platform war. Harvey Smith, the game's creative director, let slip too many details during a promotion tour and seemingly admitted that the higher-ups at Microsoft's Xbox division had decided to can the PlayStation 5 version of Redfall in favor of keeping it exclusive to Xbox, Game Pass and PC. Arkane Studios, as part of the ZeniMax Media Group, was acquired by Microsoft in 2021 - and certain games, already in development, were later released on the PlayStation 5 as timed exclusives, Deathloop being a prime example of this.

According to news agencies residing within Russian territories, it has been widely reported that Cisco has destroyed an inventory of unsold equipment with a total worth of $23.5 million. TASS, a Kremlin-controlled news organization, has made reference to account statements provided by Cisco Systems (the remaining legal entity of the Cisco Group based within the Federation) - it reports that the equipment was "physically destroyed" in January 2023, post a termination of sales in Russia and Belarus. The financial statements outline the liquidation of "primarily spare parts," but the agency claims that Cisco engaged in the destruction of network hardware, demo units and office furniture.

Cisco was one of the first tech companies to withdraw from Russian territories, following the full-scale invasion of the Ukraine. Soon after the beginning of the conflict, Cisco Systems announced the cessation of its business dealings, starting with a stoppage of sales in March 2022. A June deadline was specified for a complete shutdown of operations. The company made a decision by August 2022 to dispose of unsold inventories located within affected territories - the necessary permits for re-export of goods had not been obtained. It is not clear whether U.S. sanctions (against Russia) played a part in influencing the North American tech company's decision to engage in a scorched earth policy and obliterate the physical remnants of stock plus premises in Russia and Belarus.

Genesis Market, an online-fraud-facilitation website and marketplace, has today been closed by an international joint effort coordinated by various police forces. Law enforcement agencies around the world took part in synchronized raids, including at locations in the UK and USA. 208 searches have been carried out, beginning at dawn on Tuesday 4 April, and a total of 119 suspected individuals have been arrested. This operation was spearheaded by the FBI in the US and the Dutch National Police. Consequently, users of the genesis.market website have been greeted with a boastful message and infographic on the home and login pages: "Operation Cookie Monster. This website has been seized."

Sophos, a leading software and hardware security vendor, has previously identified genesis.market as: "an invitation-only marketplace" from which buyers can acquire stolen credentials, cookies, and digital fingerprints that are gathered from compromised systems." According to the company's research, the illegal marketplace was also identified as an Initial Access Broker (IAB) - a business that compromises systems and services, steals data, and sells it. Genesis Market has special engagement capabilities in the field of illegally acquiring "credentials, cookies, and digital fingerprints". This stolen data was often sold on under individual lots, but the site also offered a longer term supply of data packages via a subscription service. This would offer the customer an up-to-date information trail, be it the tracking of an individual person or a collective.

Silicon manufacturers in South Korea and Taiwan have questioned the requirements outlined in the United States Chips and Science Act - South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol spoke on Thursday March 30, and said that there was a growing concern within companies Samsung Electronics Corporation and SK Hynix Inc. with regard to criteria for new U.S. semiconductor subsidies. Excess profit sharing is one area of contention, as the U.S. government will expect dividends to be paid under special conditions. The companies are also reluctant to meet the requirements of submitting detailed information about fab capacity and yield estimates. Leaders are pointing to the potential sensitive nature of exposing too much confidential corporate strategy to bodies in the USA, and sources within Samsung and SK Hynix are worried that budgetary planning information will be revealed in minute detail.

The CHIPS Act grants a $52 billion pool of research and manufacturing funds, and subsidies would be sourced from it. SK Hynix's parent group is considering an application in order to gain access to funding via the CHIPS Act, the SK Group has formed plans to invest $15 billion of its own money into the U.S. chip manufacturing sector - a North American location for an advanced chip packaging plant is being decided upon. Samsung has invested a substantial $25 billion into its Texas operation, so is eligible to receive U.S. government subsidies as well.

According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Infrastructure Tracker: Buyer and Cloud Deployment, spending on compute and storage infrastructure products for cloud deployments, including dedicated and shared IT environments, increased 16.3% year over year in the fourth quarter of 2022 (4Q22) to $24.1 billion. Spending on cloud infrastructure continues to outgrow the non-cloud segment although the latter had strong growth in 4Q22 as well, increasing 9.4% year over year to $18.7 billion. For the full year, cloud infrastructure grew 19.4% to $87.7 billion, while non-cloud grew 13.6% to $66.7 billion. The market continues to benefit from high demand, large backlogs, rising prices, and an improving infrastructure supply chain.

On Monday 27 March U.S. President Joe Biden invoked the Defense Production Act in order to form a budget of $50 million, to be spent on domestic and Canadian production of printed circuit boards (aka PCBs). This move was deemed as important to matters of national defense, and technology has been cited as key part of North American security efforts. In a memo issued that day, Biden stated that without presidential action under the act: "United States industry cannot reasonably be expected to provide the capability for the needed industrial resource, material, or critical technology item in a timely manner."

PCBs form the basis of vital components that are integrated into military-purpose missiles and radars, in addition to electronics utilized for energy distribution and the nation's healthcare. The President continues to outline the importance of the Defense Production Act: "I find that action to expand the domestic production capability for printed circuit boards and advanced packaging is necessary to avert an industrial resource or critical technology item shortfall that would severely impair national defense capability."

CD Projekt has admitted to writing off the development funds spent so far expended on Project Sirius - a codename for a satellite studio produced spin-off game in its best selling The Witcher series. The Polish development and publishing group is restarting Project Sirius from scratch, and it is not clear whether their East Coast USA-based outfit, Molasses Flood, will remain as part of the rebooted cycle. Within a recently released company financial report its reasoning was made clear: "The aforementioned decision is based on results of evaluation of the scope and commercial potential of the original concept of Project Sirius, and ongoing work on formulating a new framework for this project."

CD Projekt had spent over $7 million in 2022 on development costs for Project Sirius. More than $2.2 million has been spent in 2023, presumably right up until the decision to bin all currently completed work. Project Sirius was announced in the autumn of 2022, and at around that time Molasses Flood was undertaking a large scale recruitment drive. The game was in a pre-production phase by the end of the year, with over sixty members of staff confirmed to be working on it. Development was also being supported by members of CD Projekt RED's team at their Warsaw headquarters, and now it is very apparent that the overseers were not happy with what was going on in New England.

We're starting to open access to Bard, an early experiment that lets you collaborate with generative AI. We're beginning with the U.S. and the U.K., and will expand to more countries and languages over time. Today we're starting to open access to Bard, an early experiment that lets you collaborate with generative AI. This follows our announcements from last week as we continue to bring helpful AI experiences to people, businesses and communities.

You can use Bard to boost your productivity, accelerate your ideas and fuel your curiosity. You might ask Bard to give you tips to reach your goal of reading more books this year, explain quantum physics in simple terms or spark your creativity by outlining a blog post. We've learned a lot so far by testing Bard, and the next critical step in improving it is to get feedback from more people.

Arm Holdings, the Cambridge, UK-based chip designer, is seeking public listing solely in the USA. This major decision has struck a blow to the UK Government's efforts to encourage a dual public listing. Multiple Prime Ministers and high level staff have been in regular meetings with the Arm Executive Team. The current UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak met with Arm's CEO Rene Haas and SoftBank's founder and Chief Executive Masayoshi Son back in January of this year. It was reported that the meeting was a last ditch attempt to secure an application for UK listing from both companies. Arm Senior Team members have also been in talks with representatives from the London Stock Exchange.

The worldwide semiconductor industry is projected to invest more than $500 billion in 84 volume chipmaking facilities starting construction from 2021 to 2023, with segments including automotive and high-performance computing fueling the spending increases, SEMI announced today in its latest quarterly World Fab Forecast report. The projected growth in global factory count includes a record high 33 new semiconductor manufacturing facilities starting construction this year and 28 more in 2023.

"The latest SEMI World Fab Forecast update reflects the increasing strategic importance of semiconductors to countries and a wide array of industries worldwide," said Ajit Manocha, SEMI president and CEO. "The report underscores the significant impact of government incentives in expanding production capacity and strengthening supply chains. With the bullish long-term outlook for the industry, rising investments in semiconductor manufacturing are critical to laying the groundwork for secular growth driven by a diverse range of emerging applications."

TSMC today announced that in addition to TSMC Arizona's first fab, which is scheduled to begin production of N4 process technology in 2024, TSMC has also started the construction of a second fab which is scheduled to begin production of 3 nm process technology in 2026. The overall investment for these two fabs will be approximately US$40 billion, representing the largest foreign direct investment in Arizona history and one of the largest foreign direct investments in the history of the United States.

In addition to the over 10,000 construction workers who helped with construction of the site, TSMC Arizona's two fabs are expected to create an additional 10,000 high-paying high-tech jobs, including 4,500 direct TSMC jobs. When complete, TSMC Arizona's two fabs will manufacture over 600,000 wafers per year, with estimated end-product value of more than US $40 billion.

Apple and NVIDIA will be among the first customers of TSMC's swanky new $12 billion semiconductor fab in Arizona, USA. Apple will be the first major player to kick off mass-production in the fab, and will be closely followed by NVIDIA. Both companies plan to produce some of their inventory in Arizona, and ramp proportionately up as the fab grows in capacity.

The plan with TSMC's Arizona fab was to originally make 5 nm and 4 nm EUV chips, with an output of 20,000 wafers a month, but the company now expects to deploy a more advanced node to keep up with what will be considered cutting-edge when the fab goes live (think 2 nm-class); and also double the output to 40,000 wafers a month. The capacity should ensure Apple and NVIDIA make their most cutting-edge chips on the node (away from Asia), so there could be tighter export controls, and build supply-chain resilience in the face of security problems arising in the Taiwan straits.

The 60th edition of the TOP500 reveals that the Frontier system is still the only true exascale machine on the list.

With an HPL score of 1.102 EFlop/s, the Frontier machine at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) did not improve upon the score it reached on the June 2022 list. That said, Frontier's near-tripling of the HPL score received by second-place winner is still a major victory for computer science. On top of that, Frontier demonstrated a score of 7.94 EFlop/s on the HPL-MxP benchmark, which measures performance for mixed-precision calculation. Frontier is based on the HPE Cray EX235a architecture and it relies on AMD EPYC 64C 2 GHz processor. The system has 8,730,112 cores and a power efficiency rating of 52.23 gigaflops/watt. It also relies on gigabit ethernet for data transfer.

Semiconductor manufacturers worldwide are forecast to expand 300 mm fab capacity at a nearly 10% compound average growth rate (CAGR) from 2022 to 2025, reaching an all-time high of 9.2 million wafers per month (wpm), SEMI announced today in its 300 mm Fab Outlook to 2025 report. Strong demand for automotive semiconductors and new government funding and incentive programs in multiple regions are driving much of the growth.

"While shortages of some chips have eased and supply of others has remained tight, the semiconductor industry is laying the groundwork to meet longer-term demand for a broad range of emerging applications as it expands 300 mm fab capacity," said Ajit Manocha, SEMI President and CEO. "SEMI is currently tracking 67 new 300 mm fabs or major additions of new lines expected to start construction from 2022 to 2025."

The Intel Arc Alchemist A380 desktop graphics card is now available to pre-order in the USA with Newegg listing ASRock's Challenger ITX model for 139.99 USD and shipping from August 22nd. The ASRock Arc A380 Challenger ITX 6GB OC is a custom design featuring a singular cooling fan and a GPU clock speed of 2250 MHz running at a 75 W TDP paired with a single 8-pin power connector. The card features PCIe 4.0 connectivity and 8 Xe-Cores alongside triple DisplayPort 2.0 connectors and a single HDMI 2.0b. The card will compete with the similarly priced NVIDIA GTX 1650 and the AMD Radeon RX 6400 as seen in our review of the GUNNIR Photon Arc A380 model.

DXRacer, the original high-quality gaming chair manufacturer, breezes past the competition today, unveiling two new editions of the popular Air Series and Master Series. Created with recycled, eco-friendly materials, the updated Air Pro model revamps its lumbar and headrest support, retailing at $499 USD. The updated Master Series model brings the promise of a perfect, cloud nine fit for $539 USD. Both models roll into offices and homes across the USA on Monday, October 17, 2022.

The Air Pro Series offers ultra-breathable, form-fitting, luxury comfort across six different color schemes such as Black/White, Red, and standard Black. Stay cool atop an ergonomic throne constructed with high-strength components complemented by highly-adjustable ergonomics, including a magnetic lumbar support filled with plush memory foam padding.

Today, leading global fabless chipmaker MediaTek Inc., [joined by Indiana Governor Eric J. Holcomb, Deputy Secretary of Commerce Don Graves, Indiana Secretary of Commerce Bradley B. Chambers, and Purdue College of Engineering's Dr. Mung Chiang] announced their commitment to accept a state transition assistance package from the Indiana Economic Development Commission (IEDC) to support its very first Midwest semiconductor chip design center in West Lafayette, Indiana. MediaTek also shared its intention to create a new research partnership with Purdue to collaborate on engineering talent development and new research on next-generation computing and communications chip design. The news was shared with senior leaders, other international investors and policymakers assembled in National Harbor, Maryland for the 2022 SelectUSA Investment Summit.

This novel partnership in Indiana represents a new U.S. growth model for MediaTek USA; outside the traditional centers of gravity for chip design. "We believe strongly that being in Indiana means we'll have access to some of the best engineering talent in the world," said Dr. Kou-Hung Lawrence Loh, Corporate Senior Vice President of MediaTek Inc. and President of MediaTek USA, Inc. "Not just at Purdue, but West Lafayette is only four hours away from nearly a dozen of the top engineering schools in the country. In the post pandemic world, top candidates tell us they want to be closer to home, near family and they want to have a real house and great schools. Indiana offers all that and more."

Hsinchu, Taiwan-based global semiconductor silicon wafer company, GlobalWafers, announced today that it plans to build a state-of-the-art 300-millimeter silicon wafer factory in Sherman, Texas, which is the first of its kind in the USA over twenty (20) years. Construction is expected to commence later this year. This 300-millimeter greenfield investment is consistent with the Company's announcement on February 6th of this year of brownfield and greenfield expansions totaling NTD 100 bn. This new Texas investment could also support as many as 1,500 jobs with production volumes ultimately reaching 1.2 mn wafers per month after multiple stages of equipment installation, in alignment with market demand.

300-millimeter silicon wafers are the starting material for all advanced semiconductor fabrication sites (or fabs), including recently announced United States (US) expansions by GlobalFoundries, Intel, Samsung, Texas Instruments and TSMC. Most of these wafers are currently manufactured in Asia, forcing the US semiconductor industry to highly rely on imported silicon wafers. This investment will represent the first new silicon wafer facility in the US in over two decades and close a critical semiconductor supply chain gap.

You're not going to get an award for guessing who TSMC's biggest customer is, but based on details in TSMC's latest earnings report, its biggest customer stands for no less than 26 percent of TSMC's total revenue. That's up a whole percentage in 2021 over 2020 and as you most likely have already guessed, that company should be Apple. TSMC doesn't, for obvious reasons, reveal who their customers are, but it's no secret that Apple is spending a lot of money with the company. TSMC had a consolidated revenue of NT$1.587 trillion (US$55.73 billion) in 2021, or up 18.53 percent from 2020. The second largest source of revenue for TSMC might surprise some, at least based on the kind of information that the usual analysts tend to claim in their reports.

Although second place in terms of revenue only accounts for another 10 percent of TSMC's total revenue, we're still looking at some serious money here. However, as both Qualcomm and NVIDIA departed for Samsung in 2021, second place is said to be taken by AMD, which might not have been everyone's first guess. Unsurprisingly, 64 percent of TSMC's revenue is coming from companies in the USA, with Taiwan being the second largest source of revenue at 12.8 percent. As far as the PRC is concerned, revenue is said to be down by 29.6 percent and only makes up 10.3 percent of TSMC's revenues for 2021. This is largely due to the US sanctions against Huawei, according to the Taipei Times. The 7 nm node is still the big money maker for TSMC, which pulled in over NT$440 billion, followed by the 5 nm node at over NT$262 billion. However, the 5 nm node revenue grew by 188 percent in 2021, while the 7 nm node only had a revenue growth of 11.5 percent.

Due to the growth of confirmed Omicron cases in the United States, the global leading gaming brand, MSI, officially announced that its on-site CES physical presence in Las Vegas will be canceled for the safety of all employees, customers and fans. The new products for 2022 will be showcased through online events virtually.

"Since December, the rapidly spreading Omicron variant has brought the USA a surge of COVID-19 cases. The health and well-being of our employees, customers and fans are our top priority. Hence, we have decided not to participate in-person at CES 2022 and will join the show virtually with our online product launch," said Sam Chern, MSI Marketing Vice President.