May 20, 2025

Round-up

Intel trims fat, memory makers tighten belts, and 2 nm is officially on the calendar.

Highlights

1. Intel shops its Networking & Edge (NEX) business. The unit that booked $5.8 bn last year may be sold as CEO Lip-Bu Tan doubles-down on PC and datacenter cores, echoing the recent Altera stake sale ¹.
2. Top five NAND vendors slash wafer starts 10–15 %. TrendForce now expects a 3–8 % Q2 price bounce after Q1’s 20 % plunge, resetting a supply glut that had hammered margins ².
3. MediaTek locks in a September 2 nm tape-out at TSMC. The Computex announcement puts the mobile designer neck-and-neck with Apple for first silicon on the GAA-based node ³⁴.

Other developments

• Xiaomi begins mass production of its in-house 3 nm Xring O1 SoC ⁵
• Nintendo picks Samsung’s 8 nm line for the Switch 2 processor, edging out TSMC ⁶⁷
• Foxconn and Nvidia unveil a 100 MW AI “factory” that will phase-in Blackwell GPUs across Taiwan ⁸
• Imec pitches “programmable” AI tile architectures to curb hardware obsolescence ⁹¹⁰
• Maxsun shows the first dual-Intel Arc Pro B60 board with 48 GB VRAM at Computex ¹⁰
• Thales, Radiall and Foxconn weigh a new assembly/test site in eastern France as Paris dangles incentives ¹¹

Did You Know? A 100 MW facility like Foxconn–Nvidia’s would draw enough power to supply roughly 80 000 average U.S. homes (100 000 kW ÷ 1.23 kW per home) ⁸¹².

In-depth

1. Government & Corporate Policy

• Beijing pushes back on fresh U.S. Huawei chip findings.

  • China’s commerce ministry said the May 13 Commerce-Dept. directive “undermines” this month’s tariff détente ¹³.
  • Officials framed the action as discriminatory and hinted at retaliatory steps.

• Xi Jinping doubles-down on self-reliance.

  • Touring a Henan factory, Xi called for “integration of industry and academia” to close tech gaps under Made in China 2025 ⁹.
  • Economists worry the focus on heavy industry will delay badly needed consumption reforms.

• U.S. Senate Democrats warn on Gulf AI-chip sales.

  • An Elizabeth Warren–led letter says recent Nvidia/AMD deals with the UAE & Saudi Arabia risk leakage to China and Russia ¹⁴.
  • Lawmakers also fear the loosening could siphon scarce GPUs from domestic projects.

• France courts Foxconn for an advanced OSAT hub.

  • A feasibility study with Thales and Radiall targets EU defense and automotive supply chains ¹¹.
  • Paris could tap its €6.8 bn chip-fund for grants and discounted energy.

2. Economics, Finance & Business Outlook

• Intel weighs NEX exit.

  • Potential divestiture would shrink exposure to a crowded networking ASIC field and free cash for 1.8 nm fabs ¹.
  • Analysts see a sale fetching $6–8 bn and sharpening Intel’s Foundry pitch.

• NAND makers cut output to arrest price slide.

  • Samsung, Kioxia, Solidigm, SK Hynix and Micron are trimming Q2 wafer starts by up to 15 % ².
  • Contract prices are already 5 % higher week-on-week, TrendForce says.

• Samsung snaps up Nintendo’s Switch 2 die.

  • Bloomberg reports a short, exclusive run on Samsung’s mature 8 nm node, a blow to TSMC’s consumer-SoC share ⁶.
  • TrendForce adds that Nvidia designed the quad-core Arm CPU and Ada Lite GPU inside ⁷.

• Xiaomi’s first 3 nm chip hits the line.

  • The Xring O1 cost 13.5 bn yuan to develop and will debut in next week’s 15S Pro phone and Pad 7 Ultra ⁵.
  • Management pledges another ¥50 bn over the next decade for custom silicon.

3. Technology & R&D

• MediaTek books TSMC 2 nm.

  • CEO Rick Tsai confirmed tape-out in September with risk production by Q2 2026 ³⁴.
  • Early silicon targets sub-3 W mobile APs and a co-packaged Wi-Fi 8 combo.

• Imec outlines ‘super-cell’ AI tiles.

  • Modular logic-memory stacks connected by network-on-chip aim to cut redesign cycles as models evolve ⁹¹⁰.
  • Requires 3-D stacking breakthroughs Imec is already licensing to TSMC.

• Foxconn–Nvidia launch Taiwan’s first AI factory.

  • Phased build hits 20 MW in 2026, scaling to 100 MW once grid upgrades finish ⁸.
  • Uses liquid-cooled Blackwell racks to serve 350 local partners and TSMC’s design teams.

• Maxsun squeezes two Arc Pro GPUs onto one board.

  • The prototype offers 48 GB GDDR6 and 19.5 TFLOPS FP32 for workstation rendering in a single-slot card ¹⁰.
  • Board partners hinted at 96 GB dual-card SLI for generative-AI inference clusters.

Footnotes