June 16, 2025

Round-up

Highlights

1. Taiwan blacklists Huawei & SMIC for advanced-node gear. Taipei quietly added the two mainland giants to its export-control list, further choking their access to EUV repair parts and EDA updates.¹
2. Nvidia courts Europe with “sovereign-AI” gigafactories. A €18 billion ($20 billion) plan anchored by 18 000 H200 GPUs aims to keep EU workloads off U.S. clouds and on local silicon.²
3. EnCharge’s EN100 puts 200 TOPS of analog in an M.2 card. The compute-in-memory startup says its 40 TOPS/W chip will sample to PC OEMs this year, undercutting discrete GPUs on efficiency.³

Other developments

• U.S.–China rare-earth truce leaves military-grade magnets unresolved.⁴
• South Korea forms a cross-ministry team to blunt incoming U.S. chip tariffs.⁵
• Intel warns Oregon fab floor cuts start in July.⁶

Did You Know? A new Xinhua-reported probe array can test micro-LED wafers with just 0.9 MPa of pressure—one-ten-thousandth that of conventional probes—slashing yield-loss risk for display fabs.⁷

In-depth

1. Government & Corporate Policy

• Taiwan hardens export list.

  • Huawei and SMIC now require individual licenses for any semiconductor equipment at 14 nm and below.¹
  • Firms caught shipping without approval face fines up to NT$10 million (~$308 000).

• Seoul’s tariff task force.

  • New liberal administration names trade-law veteran Yeo Han-koo to lead talks on steel, autos and semiconductors with Washington.⁵
  • Industry groups urged an immediate waiver to preserve DRAM and foundry margins.

• Rare-earth flashpoint in London.

  • Beijing links samarium-cobalt magnet approvals to U.S. AI-chip export curbs, stalling a broader pact.⁴
  • Treasury officials hint at extending 55 % China tariffs past the 10 Aug deadline.

• EXIM’s Greenland gamble.

  • A $120 million letter of interest for the Tanbreez mine would be the first U.S. overseas mining loan since 2019.⁸
  • Project targets 85 000 t/yr concentrate by 2026, enough neodymium for ~8 million EV motors.

2. Economics, Finance & Business Outlook

• Intel trims U.S. fabs.

  • Internal memo says factory layoffs start mid-July as Phoenix and Hillsboro lines shift to 14A pilot runs.⁶
  • Cost-cut comes weeks after CFO’s “$10 billion efficiency” pledge.

• Nvidia’s European courting.

  • First French site will deploy 18 000 H200s, expand to 60 000 across four EU “AI gigafactories” by 2026.²
  • EU funds cover up to 35 % of cap-ex under its €43 billion Chips Act.

• Tariff ‘stacking’ squeezes importers.

  • U.S. companies in tooling and PCB laminate now pay effective rates above 70 % when new China levies pile on old Section-301 duties.⁹

• Lam Research attracts quiet smart-money.

  • QRG Capital lifted its LRCX stake 4.5 % to 449 k shares (~$32.7 million), citing hybrid-bonding tailwinds.¹⁰

3. Technology & R&D

• Passive evaporative cooling for AI racks.

  • UC San Diego fiber membrane removes >800 W/cm² without pumps—potential 40 % data-center energy cut.¹¹
  • Team spinning out a startup to build cold-plates for GPUs.

• Damage-free micro-LED wafer testing.

  • Tianjin University’s flexible 3-D probe maintains integrity after 1 million cycles; key to scaling 8-inch MicroLED lines.⁷

• Analog AI slips into client PCs.

  • EnCharge EN100 packs 200 INT8 TOPS on an M.2 stick, bundles 32 GB LPDDR, and draws 8.25 W—good for on-device Gen-AI.³
  • 40 TOPS/W matches mobile-GPU class efficiency without HBM cost.

• Nvidia’s ‘AI-SSD’ target—100 M IOPS.

  • Silicon Motion CEO says Nvidia wants 33× faster flash to un-bottleneck HBM3E GPUs; Kioxia prototyping XL-Flash drives for 2026.¹²

Footnotes