June 4, 2025

Round-up

Highlights

1. Broadcom starts shipping its 3 nm “Tomahawk 6” Ethernet switch, doubling port speed to 1.6 Tbit/s and promising to cut AI-cluster switch counts by half¹².
2. The White House plans to waive key Defense Production Act hurdles to fast-track domestic critical-mineral projects—an echo of CHIPS, but for the raw materials behind it³.
3. Nvidia’s market cap leap-frogs Microsoft at $3.45 trillion after a fresh Blackwell margin boost, even as it quietly works on a “China-compliant” AI GPU⁴⁵.

Other developments

• Barclays downgrades ASML, warning 2026 growth hinges on just three High-NA EUV shipments⁶.
• GlobalFoundries commits €1.1 billion (~$1.19 billion) to expand its Dresden fab, chasing European automotive and IoT demand⁷.
• Samsung hires former Intel/TSMC veteran Margaret Han to run its U.S. foundry push⁸.
• Capitol Hill briefing today sees SIA press lawmakers for faster CHIPS outlays and workforce visas⁹.
• Nuveen trims its ASML stake by 1.4 million shares ahead of the downgrade¹⁰.
• Infineon debuts 80 / 100 V OptiMOS & MOTIX parts for UAV motor drives¹¹.
• Tower Semi to unveil a pSemi co-designed RF switch at IMS 2025, aiming at 5G handsets¹².

Did you know? A single 1.6 Tbit/s Tomahawk 6 chip can move 230 GB of data every second—the equivalent of copying a full Blu-ray disc about 46 times in that blink².

In-depth

1. Government & Corporate Policy

• DPA waiver for critical minerals

  • Administration will sidestep the $50 million congressional review threshold to speed new graphite and gallium projects³.
  • Move aims to blunt China’s latest hold-back on rare-earth export licences highlighted in yesterday’s FT scoop¹³.

• Samsung’s U.S. leadership shuffle

  • Margaret Han takes charge of North-America foundry sales and procurement after stints at Intel IDM 2.0 and TSMC supply-chain teams⁸.
  • Signals Samsung is doubling down on Austin-based 2 nm risk production slated for 2H 2026.

• SIA “America’s Chip Resurgence” Hill briefing

  • Industry lobby urges quicker CHIPS grants and H-1B visa cap relief; staffers floated a “CHIPS-for-Skills” rider for FY-26 appropriations⁹.

• Rare-earth spat heats up

  • Beijing delays export licences, while President Trump calls Xi “hard to make a deal with,” reviving tariff overhang fears¹³.

2. Economics, Finance & Business Outlook

• ASML downgrade checks equipment rally

  • Barclays cuts target from €770 to €650, citing Intel and Samsung cap-ex pauses and tepid High-NA uptake—an interesting reversal after yesterday’s newsletter noted fund rotation into wafer-tool names⁶.

• GlobalFoundries’ Dresden upgrade

  • New clean-room adds 12K wafer starts/week for 22 FDX and SiGe lines, with Saxony state covering 20% of costs⁷.

• Nvidia tops U.S. market cap table

  • Stock closes at $141.40 (+2.9%), buoyed by Jefferies’ “top pick” call and 70–80% projected GM on Blackwell⁴.

• Institutional flows

  • Nuveen sheds ~$600 million of ASML shares, while smaller funds pile into Applied Materials and Lam, underscoring mixed sentiment on the equipment cycle¹⁰.

3. Technology & R&D

• Broadcom Tomahawk 6 lands

  • First 3 nm switch ASIC uses chiplets and on-package bridge interconnect; supports up to 256 × 800 G ports and adaptive congestion control¹².
  • Designed for Ethernet-based GPU pods scaling to 1 million accelerators, challenging Nvidia’s InfiniBand lock-in.

• Infineon OptiMOS/MOTIX for UAVs

  • 80 / 100 V devices hit 97% efficiency in Reflex Drive quad-rotor tests; integrates programmable gate driver to slash BOM by 20%¹¹.

• Tower Semi + pSemi RF switch

  • IMS 2025 paper touts sub-0.15 dB insertion loss at 6 GHz using SOI-based MEMS actuation; sampling to handset OEMs this quarter¹².

• Next-gen materials & compute

  • Researchers demo self-healing stretchable transistors patterned at wafer scale—key for neural implants¹⁴.
  • Overlapping moiré lattices in stacked 2D semiconductors yield tunable flat-band quantum states, hinting at programmable qubits¹⁵.
  • Germany’s Q.ANT will run the first public hands-on with its photonic NPS co-processor at ISC 2025, claiming 10× energy gains over GPUs for CFD workloads¹⁶.

Footnotes