June 17, 2025

Round-up

1. Senate super-charges fab incentives. A draft bill now moving in the U.S. Senate would lift the semiconductor investment tax credit to 30 %, up from 25 %, if projects break ground before the end of 2026, giving chipmakers an extra push to pour concrete in the next 18 months.(trendforce.com) ¹
2. Samsung clears Broadcom’s HBM3E hurdle. The Korean giant’s 8-high HBM3E stack has finally passed Broadcom’s qualification, teeing up fresh memory competition just as AI demand explodes.(trendforce.com) ²
3. Intel’s factory cutbacks look far deeper than first feared. A memo leaked overnight suggests up to 20 % of fab jobs—thousands of positions—could go by July, eclipsing yesterday’s estimates and sparking anxieties across Oregon’s “Silicon Forest.”(trendforce.com) ³

Other developments

• Nvidia will send senior executives to Beijing’s supply-chain expo in July—its first official China trade-show appearance under the new U.S. export-control regime.(reuters.com) ⁴
• Analog Devices launched ADVentures, a corporate VC fund targeting advanced systems, robotics, and climate tech.(globalventuring.com) ⁵
• Huawei filed patents for a quad-chiplet Ascend 910D AI processor, betting on advanced packaging to sidestep EUV limits.(trendforce.com) ⁶
• Coherent debuted a diamond-SiC heat-spreader material with >800 W/m-K thermal conductivity—double copper—for AI/HPC packages.(trendforce.com) ⁷
• SK hynix is slowing 1c-DRAM cap-ex to focus on richer-margin HBM3E/4 built on the 1b node.(trendforce.com) ⁸
• Washington is pressing Vietnam to strip Chinese components from U.S.-bound phones and VR headsets ahead of a July tariff deadline.(reuters.com) ⁹
• India paused rare-earth exports to Japan to build its own magnet supply chain—yet another materials wrinkle for EV and motor makers.(trendforce.com) ¹⁰

Did you know? Bumping the credit to 30 % would shave US $750 million off the capital bill for a US $2.5 billion mid-size fab—and roughly US $3 billion on a US $10 billion mega-fab.(trendforce.com) ¹

In-depth

1. Government & Corporate Policy

• Bigger carrot, same stick.

  • Senate bill boosts the fab tax credit to 30 % and keeps 2026 as the sunset date.(trendforce.com) ¹
  • Trump-era officials also floated broader export restrictions on lithography and etch tools in the run-up to London trade talks, signaling more levers remain on the table.(wsj.com) ¹¹

• Supply-chain realignment pushes south-east.

  • U.S.–Vietnam talks now link tariff relief to lower Chinese content in Vietnam-assembled electronics.(reuters.com) ⁹

• Show-and-tell diplomacy.

  • Nvidia’s Beijing expo presence lets it court customers while demonstrating “compliance confidence” to regulators on both sides of the Pacific.(reuters.com) ⁴

• Critical minerals chess.

  • India’s export freeze on neodymium aims to move magnet value-add on-shore but raises flags for Japanese motor makers.(trendforce.com) ¹⁰

2. Economics, Finance & Business Outlook

• Factory head-count shock.

  • Yesterday’s newsletter flagged Intel layoffs; today’s leaked memo shows cuts could reach one-in-five fab workers, with Oregon hardest hit.(trendforce.com) ³
  • Investors fear schedule slip for Intel 18A ramps if experienced technicians walk.

• Corporate cash for startups.

  • Analog Devices’ US $undisclosed ADVentures fund will chase sensing, new compute architectures, and climate-energy plays; ex-Climate Tech strategy head Kimberly Blakemore will lead.(globalventuring.com) ⁵

• Memory margin moves.

  • Samsung’s HBM3E green-light from Broadcom could divert some orders away from SK hynix, re-balancing contract pricing in Q3.(trendforce.com) ²
  • SK hynix, meanwhile, is deferring 1c DRAM cap-ex to keep capital light until HBM4E volumes justify node migration.(trendforce.com) ⁸

3. Technology & R&D

• HBM3E milestone.

  • Samsung’s validated 8-Hi stack uses re-worked TSVs and under-fill to hit 9.2 Gb/s pin speed in Broadcom’s accelerator test boards.(trendforce.com) ²

• Advanced packaging race.

  • Huawei’s quad-chiplet patent sketches bridge-type interconnects akin to TSMC’s CoWoS-L—pointing to >4,000 mm² of compute silicon.(trendforce.com) ⁶

• Cooler running AI.

  • Coherent’s diamond-SiC substrate matches silicon’s CTE, promising drop-in replacements for copper heat-spreaders and halving junction-to-case resistance.(trendforce.com) ⁷

• IP-in-minutes.

  • India’s InCore claims its RISC-V SoC generator can create synthesizable RTL in 15 minutes—down from weeks—using parameterized micro-architectures.(eetimes.com) ¹²

• Power MOSFET for AI servers.

  • Alpha & Omega’s new 25 V DFN3.3×3.3 source-down device handles 319 A continuous current at 175 °C, suiting next-gen VRMs.(markets.ft.com) ¹³

• Research notebook.

  • Semiconductor Engineering’s technical-paper roundup features a KAIST HBM roadmap, NIST hardware-security metrics, and a fully automated SoC design flow from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.(semiengineering.com) ¹⁴

Footnotes