May 12, 2025

Round-up

Highlights

1. China moves first on raw materials. Beijing announced tighter traceability and licensing for gallium, germanium and other “strategic” minerals, re‑igniting worries about upstream choke‑points in the chip stack ¹.
2. Nvidia’s H20 gets another downgrade. Just six months after the H20‑Lite, Nvidia has stripped even more on‑package bandwidth to keep shipments to China flowing under fresh U.S. rules — an immediate sequel to the story we covered Friday ².
3. TSMC scales its Arizona plan to six fabs. New filings show a capital plan now past US $165 billion and 50 000 jobs, including an advanced chiplet‑packing line that will sample 1.4 nm test silicon next year ³⁴.

Other developments

• Qualcomm gets two more weeks to decide on a cash–stock play for Alphawave ⁵
• Seoul opens talks with Washington to blunt incoming semiconductor tariffs ⁶
• AMD Zen 6 “Venice” server leak points to 256‑core parts on TSMC 2 nm ⁷
• Quantum‑software house Classiq lands a US $110 m Series C to productize photonic error‑correction tools ⁸
• SoftBank’s Vision Fund posts a quarterly loss yet commits US $6.5 b for Ampere Computing’s ARM server roadmap ⁹
• SMIC Q1 profit more than doubles on pre‑tariff front‑loading in China ¹⁰

Did you know? China supplies 94 % of the world’s gallium and germanium — precisely the materials now subject to the new export regime ¹.

In‑depth

1 · Government & Corporate Policy

• Mineral export controls – round two

  • Commerce Ministry, customs and MSS officials met in Changsha to launch a “prevention‑first” tracking system for gallium, germanium and rare‑earth flows ¹¹¹.
  • Smelters now need monthly shipment audits; violators lose export quotas for a year.
  • Foundries worry about knock‑on pricing into GaN power and SiGe RF lines.

• South Korea weighs counter‑tariff playbook

  • Finance ministry said it will “actively engage” U.S. counterparts after Washington flagged new levies on mature‑node devices and biopharma precursors ⁶.
  • Strategy task‑force will study rerouting package‑test work to Vietnam to preserve U.S. customer lead‑times.

• Qualcomm–Alphawave clock reset

  • U.K. Takeover Panel pushed the “put‑up‑or‑shut‑up” deadline to 27 May after both sides cited “constructive progress” ⁵.
  • Alphawave’s chiplet‑ready SerDes IP would slot cleanly into Qualcomm’s AI accelerator roadmap.

• Nvidia walks the policy tightrope

  • The revamped H20 drops NVLink and halves HBM stacks to stay under the new performance density cap ².
  • PRC customers get supply, Washington keeps the letter of its controls — for now.

2 · Economics, Finance & Business Outlook

• TSMC’s U.S. cap‑ex snowballs

  • TrendForce puts the full Arizona spend at US $165 b over this decade, with 80 % earmarked for 2 nm and below ³.
  • State filings indicate six fabs, an R&D center and a co‑located OSAT hub ⁴.
  • April sales spiked 48 % YoY as downstream customers pulled in orders ahead of tariff risk ¹².

• SoftBank’s AI pivot under scrutiny

  • Vision Fund logged a ¥26.9 bn loss, blamed on markdowns in Ola & Swiggy, even as it wrote a US $6.5 b cheque for Ampere ⁹.
  • Analysts doubt near‑term cash‑flow but note the move secures a home‑grown Arm server alternative.

• SMIC beats but guides cautiously

  • Profit jumped to US $188 m on rush orders for 28/40 nm auto MCUs and OLED drivers ¹⁰.
  • Management sees Q2 revenue down 4–6 % as China’s subsidy pull‑forward fades.

• Brand equity still matters

  • TSMC cracked Interbrand’s global top‑10 for the first time, giving Taiwan a soft‑power boost amid tariff headwinds ¹³¹⁴¹⁵.

3 · Technology & R&D

• Zen 6 core‑count shock

  • Leaked EPYC 9006 “Venice” silicon shows up to 256 Zen 6c cores on an SP7 socket and 1 GB L3 cache, built on TSMC N2 ⁷.
  • AMD is trial‑running CoWoS‑S versus InFO‑LSI to hit a 700 W envelope.

• Quantum design automation gets real

  • Classiq’s fresh funding bankrolls automated surface‑code synthesis targeting 1 000‑qubit ion‑trap hardware next year ⁸.
  • Airbus and Bosch joined the round, signalling industrial demand.

• Nvidia’s adaptive H20

  • New stepping swaps out HBM3 for standard DDR to stay beneath the U.S. “2,400 GB/s memory bandwidth” ceiling — a blow to performance but a win for compliance ².
  • Board partners in Shenzhen already validating the cut‑down module for July shipments.

• Advanced packaging race heats up

  • TSMC’s Arizona Phase 2 includes a 2.5D “Mega‑CoWoS” line able to stitch 16 reticle‑scale tiles; construction crews have moved from pad to steel this week ³⁴.

Footnotes