May 19, 2025

Round-up

Highlights

1. EU fires a €70 billion shot in the subsidy race. The European Investment Bank unveiled a decade-long “Tech EU” facility aimed at AI and semiconductor projects, bolstering Brussels’ Chips Act with cheap loans that can close funding gaps for 300-mm expansions and advanced-packaging lines. ¹
2. Nvidia opens NVLink Fusion to everyone. From Computex, Jensen Huang said the interconnect that ties Blackwell GPUs together will be licensed to rivals—Marvell and MediaTek are already on board—signalling a shift from vertical stacks to ecosystem play. ²
3. Qualcomm swings back into the data-centre. The company confirmed development of Arm-based CPUs optimised to plug directly into Nvidia-powered AI racks, reviving a market it abandoned in 2018 and throwing fresh competition at Intel and AMD. ³

Other developments

• Xiaomi commits ¥50 bn to its own mobile SoCs ⁴
• Nvidia weighs a strategic stake in quantum-computing start-up PsiQuantum ⁵
• Thales, Radiall and Foxconn start due-diligence for a €250 m OSAT plant in France ⁶
• GlobalWafers cuts the ribbon on a $3.5 bn Texas wafer fab and hints at another $4 bn if CHIPS grants flow ⁷
• The US launches a national-security probe that could slap new duties on imported semiconductors ⁸
• Tom’s Hardware leaks show the RTX 5060 beating its predecessor by up to 25 % ⁹.

Did you know? The EIB’s new €70 bn pot is larger than the combined public incentives that have gone to TSMC’s two Arizona fabs so far (about $11 bn), underscoring how far Europe is willing to go to stay in the game. ¹

In-depth

1. Government & Corporate Policy

• EIB “Tech EU” programme launches.

  • €35 bn in guarantees plus €35 bn in co-financing targets AI accelerators, advanced packaging and power-device capacity. ¹
  • Priority goes to projects that shorten critical supply chains inside the bloc.
  • The scheme answers complaints that Europe’s Chips Act lacked scale versus U.S. CHIPS or Korean incentives.

• Washington’s Section 232 probe widens tariff risk for chips.

  • After suspending some reciprocal levies on Chinese goods, the White House opened a national-security investigation into semiconductor imports. ⁸
  • Analysts fear the carve-out that spared PCs and phones last month could be rolled back, complicating board-level sourcing decisions.

• France courts an OSAT champion.

  • Defence giant Thales, connector maker Radiall and Foxconn began talks on a French assembly-and-test hub capable of 100 m SiP units annually by 2031. ⁶
  • The consortium would tap EU funds and broaden Europe’s back-end footprint beyond Amkor’s Portuguese site.

• CHIPS Act money meets Taiwanese wafers in Texas.

  • GlobalWafers’ 300-mm Sherman plant—the first in the U.S. in 20 years—starts phase-1 output; $406 m of promised grants are still pending as the Trump administration reviews award terms. ⁷

2. Economics, Finance & Business Outlook

• Qualcomm pivots to AI server silicon.

  • New Arm cores will pair with Nvidia’s NVLink Fusion fabric to chase cloud inference sockets. ³
  • Move revives the Centriq lineage and positions Qualcomm against Ampere and Intel’s Sierra Forest.

• Xiaomi’s ¥50 bn silicon moon-shot.

  • The smartphone maker set a decade-long budget (~$7 bn) to design in-house application processors and RF parts, aiming to trim Qualcomm royalties and insulate against export curbs. ⁴¹⁰
  • Hiring has begun for a 500-engineer design centre in Beijing.

• Nvidia eyes quantum hedge.

  • Talks to invest in PsiQuantum could pair Blackwell-class GPU clusters with photonic qubits for error-corrected AI/quantum hybrid workloads. ⁵
  • The strategic stake would diversify beyond silicon and secure early-access IP.

• Nvidia doubles down on Taiwan despite tariff clouds.

  • Huang announced a Taipei HQ and a Foxconn-built AI supercomputer using 10 000 Blackwell GPUs, reinforcing ties with TSMC even as 32 % U.S. tariffs threaten Taiwanese exports. ¹¹

3. Technology & R&D

• NVLink Fusion goes open-architecture.

  • Customers can buy the controller IP, letting custom ASICs share memory coherently with Nvidia GPUs at 1.6 TB/s per link—double the prior spec. ²
  • MediaTek will use Fusion in an Arm-based “N1” PC processor slated for 2026.

• Tin-halide perovskite TFT breakthrough.

  • Korean researchers vapor-deposited CsSnI₃ films with 33.8 cm²/V·s mobility and 10⁸ on/off ratios, edging past IGZO for OLED drivers. ¹²
  • The method aligns with G8 evaporators already in volume display lines.

• Three decades of LED progress mapped.

  • A Nature Energy meta-study finds R&D, not cap-ex, drove most gains in white-LED efficacy, while cost drops came from scale and process learning. ¹³
  • Authors say spill-overs from PV and battery tech sped LED innovation—a clue for future GaN and SiC road-maps.

• RTX 5060 preview hints at mid-range uplift.

  • Controlled benchmarks show up-to-25 % gains over RTX 4060 at 1080p with frame-gen on; full reviews land at launch tonight. ⁹
  • Nvidia’s staggered embargo suggests a push to shape early sentiment before partner cards hit shelves.

Footnotes