Trump Antics on Taiwan, "King is Dead" Rumors, Earning Beats, Intel Supports Chinese AI Startups, Manhattan Defense AI projects ☢️🏯

Donald Trump said this week he thinks Taiwan should pay the U.S. for defense claiming the country “doesn’t give us anything.”

Hello Everyone,

This is an issue for the week up to July 18th, and frankly some crazy things have occured. There may be times during the summer or a slow week in news, where I miss a week or two. I’m always watching this stuff, just won’t be publishing as often (June/July).

This is one of my “new” Newsletters, and over 10+ now covering various aspects of emerging tech. Thanks for the support, I hope to learn along with you about these topics.

Support me doing this for as low as $1 a week. Please see my archives for more on what to expect.

• Welcome to the 13th edition of Semiconductor Things™, where I seek to break down some of the news in the Semiconductor, AI chips and datacenter space globally to make it more accessible and easy to follow.

• With the rise of Generative AI, Nvidia and TSMC and the geopolitical importance of Taiwan, this is now a major topic of me in my watching of the emerging tech space that I do as an analyst, writer, curators and news watcher.

• The Technology category is an underdog relative to Substack’s baseline audience, this means I’m an outlier here. To survive, I’m building 10+ Newsletters in “emerging tech” coverage. A pilot never seen before on Substack for a one-person team. Full disclosure, I may not make it.

• Importe note: I am not native to the Semi space, and it might take a while to get up to speed. So we’ll be effectively learning about these things together.

Analyzing and Curating News 🔔

I’m a news fanatic always analyzing the latest in exponential and emerging tech like robotics, semiconductors & AI chips, quantum, synthetic biology and other fields - as well as BigTech in AI.

When to Expect this Newsletter ⏰

This Newsletter will typically go out on Thursday at 7am Eastern Time (though sorry not today). Posts are partially paywalled and paid subscriptions are cheap.

What? It will attempt to summarize some of the most important news in the semiconductor industry of the last week.

• For rundowns: Semiconductor Things

• For deep dives: Semiconductor Reports

We have some bizarre things to cover this week, so let’s get to it:

Wild Profits are Occuring in 2024 for top Semi names

• ASML’s net bookings, or orders for its machinery, totaled 5.6 billion euros in the June quarter, rising more than 24% year-on-year. This is a key metric watched by the market.

• Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, whose customers include Apple and Nvidia, has benefited from the surge towards AI. Revenue for TSMC in the April-June period of this year came in at T$673.51 billion ($20.67 billion).

• For June alone, TSMC reported that revenue rose 33% year-on-year to T$207.87 billion.

• That represents growth of 32% on-year, compared with $15.68 billion in the year-ago period.

“We currently see strong developments in AI, driving most of the industry recovery and growth, ahead of other market segments,” ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet said in a statement. Follow him on LinkedIn here.

Semiconductor Bits & Bites 📱

I call Dan the Chip whisperer, crazy what you can notice when you are based out of Taiwan. TSMC is the center of the world in this territory.

• Rumor: There is reportedly an issue with Nvidia GB200 Bianca modules overheating, but even if the rumor is true, such an issue is common when introducing new products and will likely be resolved before it goes into mass production in a few months, media report. Nvidia partner Foxconn is said to be working to fix the problem. A researcher is quoted saying the production schedule for Bianca has not been changed yet, and that the issue will likely be resolved by the end of August.

• China’s Huawei and CXMT are working to produce HBM2 memory chips by 2026, media report. Huawei partnered with DRAM maker Fujian Jinhua Integrated (JHICC) on HBM2, while CXMT teamed with chip packaging firm Tongfu Microelectronics to compete to be 1st to mass produce HBM2. CXMT is also working on HBM3. HBM are known as AI memory chips as they provide more memory bandwidth for graphics processors (GPUs), the top AI processing chip.

• King is not dead? There is a bizarre rumor that the leader of China has had a stroke. A Chinese social media rumor Chinese President Xi Jinping suggests that someone important has suffered a stroke during the Third Plenum meetings of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The rumor is quite a scandal on Chinese social media.

What Donald Trump said about Taiwan

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