April 28, 2025

Round-up

Highlights

1. Nvidia rushes the “B300” AI GPU into production next month, snapping up more of TSMC’s 5 nm and CoWoS-L capacity and hinting at another wave of advanced-packaging bottlenecks. ¹
2. Singapore pries open a tariff carve-out for high-end U.S. chips even as a new 10 % baseline duty kicks in—showing that small, tech-heavy economies can still negotiate room to breathe. ²³
3. Huawei’s 910 D accelerator enters lab tests, giving China its first near-Nvidia-class AI silicon and raising fresh export-control headaches for Washington. ⁴⁵

Other developments:

• South Korea’s front-runner vows a 20 % chip R&D tax credit
• Beijing weighs folding 200 tool makers into 10 national champions
• Taiwan’s Q1 GDP surprise rides an AI hardware boom
• JEDEC publishes HBM4 while SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron scramble.

Did You Know?
The freshly published HBM4 spec doubles per-pin speed to 6.4 Gb/s—meaning a single 16-high stack can push >1.2 TB/s of bandwidth, roughly the throughput of the entire PCIe 5.0 x16 bus. ⁶

In-depth

1 Government & Corporate Policy

• Singapore–US chip détente
  • Deputy PM Gan Kim Yong opened talks with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to secure AI-GPU licences while swapping pharma tariff relief.
  • The city-state emphasised strict re-export controls after a server-smuggling case involving Nvidia H20 boards. ²³
• Seoul’s election sweetener
  • Presidential favourite Lee Jae-myung promised a 20 % investment tax credit for semiconductor fabs and design houses.
  • Korea’s finance ministry says the measure could unlock ₩18 tn ($13 bn) in private cap-ex over five years. ⁷
• China’s consolidation gambit
  • Beijing is drafting a plan to merge some 200 domestic tool vendors into ≈10 conglomerates, betting scale can close the gap to ASML/Lam Research.
  • Korean press reports the move is aimed at beating the latest U.S. export curbs. ⁸
• Tariffs bite back in Singapore
  • The Monetary Authority warned the new U.S. duties could trigger a “demand shock” equivalent to 0.8 pp off 2025 GDP, with electronics hardest hit. ⁹

2 Economics, Finance & Business Outlook

• Taiwan’s quickening GDP
  • Q1 2025 growth is seen at +3.4 % y/y, up from 2.9 %, powered by AI server board exports despite tariff clouds.
  • Economists caution that any U.S. memory levy could halve that tail-wind. ¹⁰
• Chip-stock sentiment holds
  • Global indices hovered at three-week highs as traders framed tariff escalation as “noise” relative to AI demand.
  • Semiconductor ETF inflows totalled $420 m in a single session. ¹¹
• Driver-IC prices finally stabilise
  • Panel driver IC ASPs fell just 1–3 % q/q in Q1, the smallest drop in two years, hinting the display market glut is ending.
  • TrendForce expects flat pricing in Q3 if smartphone builds stay on track. ¹²
• Intel’s cultural reboot
  • A leaked memo shows CEO Lip-Bu Tan pushing a flatter org and “mission teams,” arguing the old hierarchy slows chip decision loops.
  • Investors read the shift as groundwork for faster RibbonFET and glass-core schedules. ¹³

3 Technology & R-D

• Nvidia B300 ramps early
  • Foundry sources say pilot lots start in May on TSMC N5 with CoWoS-L, consuming an extra 10 k wafers/month.
  • Board makers were told to prepare for 45 MB of HBM4 per GPU. ¹
• Huawei Ascend 910D testing
  • The dual-die chip targets 350 TFLOPS FP16, roughly matching Nvidia B200.
  • Initial silicon is said to be on 5 nm at SMIC with advanced packaging from JCET. ⁴⁵
• HBM4 era dawns
  • JEDEC’s JESD270-4 lands; SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron already sampling 12-high stacks, eyeing Nvidia “Rubin.”
  • Faster stacks will demand 14–16 k WPH of hybrid bonding equipment next year. ⁶
• Automotive tie-ups for Intel
  • At Auto Shanghai, Intel inked deals with Black Sesame, Model Best and BOS Semiconductors to co-design ADAS SoCs on Intel-18A.
  • The push bolsters Intel Foundry’s bid for Chinese EV business without running afoul of U.S. rules. ¹⁴

Footnotes