June 18, 2025

Round-up

Highlights

1. Taiwan swings its first export-control hammer – Huawei and SMIC now sit on Taipei’s new entity list, formally aligning the island with Washington’s tech-security playbook and tightening Beijing’s access to advanced AI silicon¹.
2. PCIe 7.0 spec lands with 512 GB/s lanes – Doubling bandwidth yet again, the freshly released standard answers hyperscale-AI demand—years before most engineers will even sample PCIe 6.0².
3. ASML locks in Connecticut growth – After state budget tweaks clarified incentive eligibility, the lithography giant confirmed it will keep adding headcount and clean-room floor space in Wilton, reinforcing its U.S. foothold beyond last week’s buy-back news³.

Other developments

• Malaysia probes reports of a China-linked LLM cluster running Nvidia GPUs inside local data centers⁴
• Nvidia confirms first-ever booth at Beijing’s July supply-chain expo despite export-control headwinds⁵
• Volvo & Daimler build rare-earth inventories as China’s new licensing regime bites motor-magnet supply chains⁶
• Nvidia’s rally pushes market cap within sight of $3 trillion, fanning chip-stock momentum⁷
• SandboxAQ (Nvidia-backed) releases 5.2 million synthetic protein-binding molecules to speed drug discovery with GPU compute⁸
• Institutional money keeps flowing into tools: Chicago Capital, Grove Bank & Trust add Lam Research shares on ex-dividend day⁹
• Microsoft and AMD co-engineer custom silicon for a next-gen Xbox console and handheld family¹⁰

Did you know? A single wafer-scale Cerebras WSE-3 chip can deliver up to 125 quadrillion operations per second while using roughly one-sixth the power of an equivalent multi-GPU cluster, according to UC Riverside researchers¹¹.

In-depth

1. Government and Corporate Policy

• Taiwan’s Huawei/SMIC blacklist

  • First use of the island’s Strategic High-Tech Commodities Entity List against major Chinese chip firms¹.
  • Mirrors U.S. restrictions and signals closer supply-chain coordination with Washington.
  • Beijing called the step “self-harm,” but analysts see limited near-term TSMC revenue impact.

• Malaysia Nvidia-chip investigation

  • Trade ministry is verifying whether a Chinese operator skirted AI-chip curbs by training LLMs in Kuala Lumpur data centers⁴.
  • Comes weeks after U.S. guidance demanding firms prevent indirect China access.

• Nvidia heads back to Beijing

  • Company will join July’s China International Supply-Chain Expo—its first appearance—aiming to reassure customers while remaining within new U.S. licensing limits⁵.
  • Foreign exhibitors are up 15 % YoY, per CCTV, despite geopolitical friction.

• Rare-earth export bottleneck

  • Daimler Truck is stockpiling magnets, Volvo scouting non-Chinese sources after April’s new Chinese licence rules⁶.
  • Executives liken the scramble to the 2021 chip crisis and vow deeper tier-3/4 supplier audits.

2. Economics, Finance, and Business Outlook

• ASML Connecticut expansion

  • State officials say > 3 200 staff already onsite; $14 M grants and $6 M tax credits preserved under new budget clarifications³.
  • Adds U.S. manufacturing depth just as EUV demand surges.

• Nvidia flirts with $3 T valuation

  • Shares closed within 2 % of the milestone as hyperscale orders and Blackwell road-maps keep momentum strong⁷.
  • The rally lifts broader SOX index and fuels IPO chatter for AI hardware start-ups.

• Capital still loves equipment vendors

  • Chicago Capital and Grove Bank & Trust disclosed fresh Lam Research stakes on June 18, signalling confidence in etch/deposition demand through the next node shrink⁹¹².

• China’s STAR Market readies ‘Growth Segment’

  • Regulators will let pre-profit deep-tech firms list in Shanghai, promising easier exits for domestic chip design and packaging start-ups¹³.

3. Technology and R&D

• PCIe 7.0 specification released

  • Doubles per-lane speed to 128 GT/s and pushes aggregate x16 bandwidth to 512 GB/s—squarely aimed at AI accelerators and quantum interconnects²¹⁴.
  • Backward-compatible design eases board-maker migration; PCIe 6.0 consumer products remain at least a year out.

• Wafer-scale accelerators study

  • UC Riverside review finds wafer-scale chips (Cerebras WSE-3, Tesla Dojo) can cut data-center energy per TFLOP by up to 6×, though 10 kW cooling remains a hurdle¹¹.

• HBM standards vs. customization debate

  • Synopsys and Siemens bloggers argue 3D-IC packaging is shifting EDA workflows, as designers balance commodity HBM stacks against bespoke interposers for AI ASICs¹⁵.

• Microsoft-AMD next-gen Xbox silicon

  • Partnership spans console, handheld, cloud and accessories; AMD to supply custom APUs, reaffirming its console semi-custom dominance¹⁰.

Footnotes