U.S. Semiconductor Reboot
Tough Questions for Intel CEO and Its Board
By Bolaji Ojo
A U.S. semiconductor revival may hinge on the fortunes of a reeling semiconductor pioneer.
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So You Want to Build a Fab
By Ron Wilson
With global technology supply chains suddenly one miscalculation away from seizing up, is building a foundry the answer?
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Enlisting the Semiconductor Army
By George Leopold
Chip manufacturers are increasingly turning to military veterans to help run a batch of new U.S. fabs.
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CHIPS Act: Opening a Pipeline for New Engineers
By Junko Yoshida
A Georgia Tech EE professor shares his views on how to spend the $52 billion earmarked for domestic manufacturing support.
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Beware the Semiconductor 'Bullwhip Effect'
By Peter Clarke
With IC demand softening, vendors of semiconductor manufacturing equipment are bracing for a slowdown in 2023.
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Podcast: The CHIPS Act and How Best to Spend $52B
By George Leopold
Arijit Raychowdhury, Georgia Tech engineering professor, discusses investments in U.S. semiconductor manufacturing and bridging the skills gap.
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Volvo Needs to Radically Rethink Ride Pilot
By Colin Barnden
In 2017 Volvo promised self-driving cars for sale by 2021. Here's what happened.
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What Caught Our Eye This Week
U.S. Targets China Memory Maker YMTC
U.S. lawmakers are pressing the Commerce Department to add emerging Chinese memory maker Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (YMTC) to its technology blacklist.
Along with national security concerns, legislators asserted that YMTC should be added to a U.S. Entity List as it gains market share and courts potential smartphone customers like Apple. “YMTC is an immediate threat,” warned a letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Riamondo signed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and six other U.S. senators.
According to a?Reuters?report, lawmakers also warned that YMTC’s emergence and continued access to U.S. manufacturing technology could eventually drive American chipmakers such as Micron and Western Digital from the global memory market, or force U.S. manufacturers to consolidate. The U.S. military has long sought to preserve domestic production of memory chips.Legislators also noted that YMTC is a supplier to Huawei Technologies, which was placed on the Entity List in 2019.
According to the report, failure to add YMTC to the blacklist undermines U.S. sanctions against Huawei.The blacklisting effort also illustrates how U.S. memory makers are pressing export officials to restrict technology access for heavily subsidized Chinese competitors.
Pelosi Huddles with TSMC
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s brief visit to Taiwan included a meeting with the chairman of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), Mark Liu, reportedly to discuss implementation of the recently approved?Chips and Science Act.
Readouts on what transpired during the meeting between Pelosi and Liu were not immediately available, and eligibility for CHIPS Act funding remains unclear for non-U.S. manufacturers.
According to legislative language approved last week, the Commerce Department will oversee disbursement of CHIPS Act funds, including “clarify[ing] the eligibility of upstream suppliers.”The?Commerce Department?said it would give preference to companies investing in domestic chip manufacturing, research as well as work force development and “not engag[ed] in stock buybacks."
TSMC is currently building a fab near Phoenix. The world’s leading chip foundry had joined other chipmakers in lobbying for passage of the CHIPS Act. Separately, in response to Pelosi’s visit,?Bloomberg News?reported that Chinese EV battery CATL has delayed its announcement of a North American factory to supply Ford Motor Co. and Tesla.
Washington Post:?Pelosi to meet with Taiwan’s biggest semiconductor manufacturer
Reducing AI’s Carbon Footprint
Dedicating entire data centers to bitcoin mining drains local power grids while generating huge carbon footprints. The training of sophisticated machine-learning models is also adding to the carbon-climate conundrum.
One remedy is running those training jobs at cloud data centers located near sustainable energy sources like hydroelectric power.The journal?Nature?reports that Microsoft researchers monitored electricity consumption for 11 common AI models to estimate emissions from power grids connected to Microsoft Azure cloud servers.
In one example, training the machine-learning model BERT at U.S. and German data centers emitted up to 28 kilograms of carbon dioxide, depending on time of year. (Electricity costs are on average much higher in Germany than the U.S.) That total was more than double the emissions performing the same experiment in Norway, a leader in hydroelectric power generation, and France, which relies mostly on nuclear power.
As AI models grow in complexity, developers must take energy generation into consideration when deciding which data centers to use. Otherwise, they may acquire a reputation similar to unsavory bitcoin miners.
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