The year 2021 was strange, you can read more of it from A 2021 technology retrospective: Strange days indeed. But how strange will 2022 be? Here are some predictions for year 2022:
2022 preview: Will the global computer chip shortage ever end?
The growing demand for computer chips, used in everything from cars to fridges, has collided with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, leading to a global shortage that is likely to continue through 2022
Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2022-2022-preview-will-the-global-computer-chip-shortage-ever-end/#ixzz7GqrP1H9A
Industry Transforming In Ways Previously Unimaginable
https://semiengineering.com/industry-transforming-in-ways-previously-unimaginable/?cmid=3dedf05d-0284-497a-b015-daf7747872e6
As we look back over 2021, there have certainly been some surprises, but the industry continues to take everything in its stride.
2022 tech themes: A look ahead
https://www.edn.com/2022-tech-themes-a-look-ahead/
The continued COVID-19 question mark: The world quickly and dramatically changed. It hasn’t yet reverted to pre-pandemic characteristics, and it very likely never will. Sad but true, the pandemic isn’t even close to being over yet.
Deep learning’s Cambrian moment: Look at today’s participant-rich deep learning silicon and software market, spanning both training and inference.
The ongoing importance of architecture: As the number of transistors that it’s possible to cost-effectively squeeze onto a sliver of silicon continues to slow, what you build out of those transistors becomes increasingly critical.
Open source processors’ time in the sun: There is a burgeoning RISC-V movement. It’s likely a little-known fact to some of you, that a public domain instruction set for v2 and earlier versions of the Arm ISA exists. And both Sun (with OpenSPARC) and IBM (OpenPOWER) have also joined the open-source silicon movement.
The normalization of remote work (and the “Great Resignation’s” aftershocks): I suspect that, to at least a notable degree, we won’t ever completely return to the “way it was before.” In fact, I’d wager that having a taste of a work-from-home or “hybrid” employment lifestyle is one of the key factors behind the so-called “Great Resignation” that tech and broader media alike inform me is well underway.
The metaverse starts to stir: Perhaps we’ll look back at 2022 as the year when the crossing of the chasm started in earnest.
Autonomy slowly accelerates: 2021 was another year filled with fully autonomous car tests and premature “coming soon” pronouncements; 2022 will likely be the same.
Batteries get ever denser, ever more plentiful, and ever cheaper
Space travel becomes commonplace
Global semiconductor industry forecasts for 2022
https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20211229VL205.html
“2021 is the year that everyone remembered that chip mattered,” said Wired Magazine. So far 2022 seems likely to be another fruitful year for the semiconductor industry.
World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) also has predicted that the global semiconductor market is projected to grow by 8.8 percent in 2022, to US$ 601 billion, driven by double-digit growth of the sensors and logic category. All regions and all product categories are expected to continue positive growth. Wafer foundry manufacturers sales likely to remain strong due to tight supply. 5G smartphone silicon content increase to drive demand for foundry service higher. Demand for digital transformation is here to stay, no sign of weakening for foundry service sales.
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated digital transformation over the past two years. Work from home, virtual conference, and remote learning have driven up the demand for cloud computing, laptops, and servers, and hence the sales growth of related semiconductor products. Demands for CPU, GPU, AI accelerator (including FPGA) foundry services will remain strong in 2022 because trends such as virtual conferences, live streaming, and large capex of data centers are likely to stay. Long-term demands for customized chips in IoT, 5G infrastructure, HPC, and EV applications, like ADAS, autonomous driving, V2X, in-Vehicle Infotainment, will provide robust growth momentum for chip foundry services.
Chip crunch is not ending in 2022, as the lead time of some electronic components is stretching into 2023. Meanwhile, the increasing adoption of RISC-V open standard instruction set architecture is an important trend that can not be ignored. RISC-V market will double its size in 2022, compared to 2021, as it is attracting small and medium-size chip designers and manufacturers, especially those in China. RISC-V designs are now being used by Qualcomm, Samsung, Google, Microchip, Nvidia, and more.
Taiwan’s chip industry emerges as a battlefront in US-China showdown
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2022/01/01/2003770517
The country dominates production of chips used in almost all civilian and military technologies. That leaves the US and Chinese economies reliant on plants that would be in the line of fire in an attack on Taiwan. The vulnerability is stoking alarm in Washington
40 prosenttia pienempiä latureita
https://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12981&via=n&datum=2021-12-20_14:53:12&mottagare=30929
The size of a standard mobile phone charger can be reduced by up to 40 percent when using GaN components or it can be designed to produce more power in the same size. GaN chargers are becoming the most popular charger technology for billions of devices, so it’s no wonder that European semiconductor giant STMicroelectronics is also excited about them.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
PCI-SIG announces PCIe 7.0 specifications, up to 128 GT/s data rate
https://videocardz.com/press-release/pci-sig-announces-pcie-7-0-specifications-up-to-128-gt-s-data-rate
Announcing the PCIe® 7.0 Specification: Doubling the Data Rate to 128 GT/s for the Next Generation of Computing
At the PCI-SIG Developers Conference 2022, we celebrated our 30-year anniversary with the announcement of the next evolution of PCIe technology: PCIe 7.0 specification. The forthcoming PCIe 7.0 specification is planned to once again deliver a speed increase in three years, expanding the data rate of the recently released PCIe 6.0 specification to 128 GT/s. The PCIe 7.0 specification is targeted for release to members in 2025.
PCI-SIG technical workgroups will be developing the PCIe 7.0 specification with the following feature goals:
Delivering 128 GT/s raw bit rate and up to 512 GB/s bi-directionally via x16 configuration
Utilizing PAM4 (Pulse Amplitude Modulation with 4 levels) signaling
Focusing on the channel parameters and reach
Continuing to deliver the low-latency and high-reliability targets
Improving power efficiency
Maintaining backwards compatibility with all previous generations of PCIe technology
PCIe 7.0 technology will expand the PCI-SIG roadmap to include data-intensive applications and markets, including 800 Gig Ethernet, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML), High Performance Computing (HPC), Quantum Computing, Hyperscale Data Centers and Cloud.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Expanding the World of Software Defined: Software Defined Silicon
Living in a software defined world, CPUs are next to experience the transition from hardware to software defined.
https://www.hackster.io/news/expanding-the-world-of-software-defined-software-defined-silicon-0b1c856144e2
Tomi Engdahl says:
Explore Azure Virtual Machines and the cloud with your Azure free account
Deploy and monitor virtual machines (VMs) using 12 months of free services
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/free/
Tomi Engdahl says:
2D interfaces in future transistors may not be as flat as previously thought
https://phys.org/news/2022-06-2d-interfaces-future-transistors-flat.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://wandb.ai/dalle-mini/dalle-mini/reports/DALL-E-mini-Generate-images-from-any-text-prompt–VmlldzoyMDE4NDAy
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.pcgamer.com/the-us-to-join-forces-with-japan-to-produce-bleeding-edge-2nm-chips-by-2025/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why is the US about to give away $52bn to corporations like Intel?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jun/26/us-chips-act-intel-robert-reich?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=fb_us&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1656284747
The Chips Act would provide an enormous subsidy to chipmakers for making their chips in the US. This is extortion
Congress will soon put final touches on the Chips Act, which will provide more than $52bn to companies that design and make semiconductor chips.
The subsidy is demanded by the biggest chipmakers as a condition for making more chips in America.
It’s pure extortion.
The world’s biggest chipmaker (in terms of sales) is already an American corporation – Intel, based in Santa Clara, California.
Intel hardly needs the money. Its revenue rose to $79bn last year. Its chief executive, Pat Gelsinger, got a total compensation package of $179m (which was 1,711 times larger than the average Intel employee).
Intel designs, assembles, and tests its chips in China, Israel, Ireland, Malaysia, Costa Rica, and Vietnam, as well as in the US.
The problem for the US is Intel is not helping America cope with its current shortage of chips by giving preference to producers in the United States. And it’s not keeping America on the cutting edge of new chip technologies.
Among the other likely beneficiaries of the Chips Act will be GlobalFoundries, which currently makes chips in New York and Vermont – but in many other places around the world as well.
GlobalFoundries isn’t even an American corporation.
The nation where a chipmaker (or any other high-tech global corporation) is headquartered has less and less to do with where it designs and makes things.
Which explains why every industry that can possibly be considered “critical” is now lobbying governments for subsidies, tax cuts, and regulatory exemptions, in return for designing and making stuff in that country.
It’s a giant global shakedown.
India, Japan and South Korea have all recently passed tax credits, subsidies and other incentives amounting to tens of billions of dollars for the semiconductor industry. The European Union is finalizing its own chips act with $30bn to $50bn in subsidies.
Even China has extended tax and tariff exemptions and other measures aimed at upgrading chip design and production there.
“Other countries around the globe … are making major investment in innovation and chip production,”
John Neuffer, the chief executive of the Semiconductor Industry Association (the Washington lobbying arm of the semiconductor industry) warns that chipmaking facilities are often 25 to 50% cheaper to build in foreign countries than in the United States.
Why is that? As he admits, it’s largely because of the incentives foreign countries have offered.
As capital becomes ever more global and footloose, it’s easy for global corporations to play nations off against each other.
People, by contrast, are rooted within nations, which gives them far less bargaining power.
This asymmetry helps explain why Congress is ready to hand over $52bn to a highly profitable global industry but can’t come up with even $22.5bn the Biden administration says is necessary to cope with the ongoing public health crisis of Covid.
there’s no reason to suppose a company’s American owners will be happy to sacrifice investment returns for the good of the nation.
The real question is what conditions the United States (or any other nation that subsidizes chipmakers) should place on receipt of such subsidies.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nyt alkaa PCIe6-testaus
https://etn.fi/index.php/13-news/13748-nyt-alkaa-pcie6-testaus
PCI-SIG-järjestö hyväksyi tammikuussa PCI Express -standardin seuraavan polven 6.0-määritykset. Nyt mittauslaitevalmistajat Anritsu ja Tektronix ovat esitelleet kattavan testausjärjestelmän tuleville PCIe6-laitteille ja -piireille.
Yhtiöt esittelivät ratkaisua tällä viikolla PCI-SIG Developers Conference 2022:ssa Piilaakson Santa Clarassa. Ratkaisussa yhdistyvät Anritsun MP1900A-sarjan signaalilaadun analysaattori Tekin DPO70000SX-reaaliaikaskooppiin. Testissä käytettiin Synopsysin PCIe 6.0 -IP:tä.
PCIe 6.0 käyttää FEC-tekniikkaa (Forward Error Correction) keskeisenä teknologiana varmistaakseen 32 Gbaudin eli 64 gigabittiin sekunnissa yltävän PAM4-signaloinnin ja alhaisen signaali-kohinasuhteen siirtotiellä. Vaatimukset tekevät testattavien laitteiden arvioinnista selvästi aiempaa monimutkaisempaa.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/25/hacker-diary-embedded-world-2022/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Michael Waters / MIT Technology Review:
Data centers, typically located in suburbs and rural zones, are increasingly being built in urban areas to further reduce internet lag for locals — Companies are pushing more server farms into the hearts of population centers. — In 1930, the telegraph giant Western Union put …
Energy-hungry data centers are quietly moving into cities
https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/06/22/1053889/city-server-farms-energy/
Companies are pushing more server farms into the hearts of population centers.
une 22, 2022
The Western Union building
The Western Union Building, 60 Hudson Street, c. 1931.Library of Congress
In 1930, the telegraph giant Western Union put the finishing touches on its new crown jewel: a 24-story art deco building located at 60 Hudson Street in lower Manhattan. Soon after, over a million telegraphs each day shuttled in and out, carried by a network of cables, pneumatic tubes, and 30 employees in roller skates who sped across the building’s linoleum floors.
Today, much of it is home to vast halls of computer servers. It is a physical manifestation of the cloud: when you stream a TV show, upload a file to Dropbox, or visit a website, chances are you will be relying on the processing power of a data center just like it. Hundreds of companies rent out space in 60 Hudson Street, and it is one of a growing number of buildings, sometimes called “colocation centers” in industry parlance, that host data centers in or near major population centers.
To the uninitiated, these urban physical internet nodes probably don’t look like much at all. And that’s by design. Equinix, the largest owner of colocation data centers with 10.9% of the world market, operates data centers that generally aren’t supposed to draw attention to themselves.
The demand for such facilities, especially in urban centers, is growing quickly: last year, spending on colocation data centers jumped 11.7%. The biggest cloud companies are not far behind. Amazon Web Services has been pushing shrunk-down data centers, which it calls Local Zones, close to major population areas; so far, it has placed them in 32 cities across the US. The trend has even piqued the interest of Walmart, which may soon start renting out sections of its superstores to host data centers for third-party companies.
One explanation for the flurry of demand, Poole says, is that consumers themselves have changed. As more of our lives have gone online, “people’s tolerance for latency has continued to go down,” he says. The main drivers are those applications where a delay in the milliseconds can prove critical: you might not notice a quarter-second lag on Netflix, but you certainly will if you are using an online sports betting app, trading stocks, or participating in a multiplayer game like Fortnite.
Companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, for instance, are betting on cloud gaming, which involves streaming games over the internet without a console or a phone to provide processing power. But many popular games, such as first-person shooters, “require a lot of quick reaction times and therefore really fast connectivity,” says Jabez Tan, the head of research at the firm Structure Research. And games like that will not function on a streaming service without the help of large numbers of data centers.
Or take the metaverse—the favorite, if sparingly sketched-out, new talking point of Nvidia, Meta (previously Facebook), and other tech giants. If a virtual-reality world is ever going to achieve mass appeal, it’s going to need to mirror the immediacy of our own. That means intricately detailed graphics, nimble motion, and audio reactions with hardly a millisecond of buffering. All told, writes Raja Koduri, a senior VP at Intel, we need “several orders of magnitude more powerful computing capability” to make it possible.
It’s this demand for computing power, Tan says, that has spurred the “decentralization” of data center networks: tech companies are looking around at their existing infrastructure and saying, “Hey, we’re not able to give to people in Jakarta, or people in Manila, the same performance levels that people in Singapore [are] enjoying.”
“It’s almost like an accordion,”
The way these new data centers blend into the urban and suburban landscape of office buildings or custom warehouses or industrial parks is a double-edged sword. The approach might make sense from a security standpoint. It also spares people from looking at the eyesore of vast halls crammed with computer servers.
The downside of this invisibility, though, is that we aren’t often forced to think about what all our internet use is costing us. Data centers account for 1.8% of all electricity use in the US and 0.5% of the country’s greenhouse-gas emissions, according to a report last year—far from a negligible amount. Some strategies could help, such as reusing the heat that they produce in copious quantities. But getting to that point would require stepping back from the rush to build and truly intertwining data centers—with all the heat they generate, the energy they consume—into our existing urban ecosystems.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://cdn.baseplatform.io/files/base/ebm/electronicdesign/document/2022/04/When_will_the_global_chip_shortage_end_A4_ES.625ee404718ae.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple exec gets nasty, says Samsung ‘ripped off our technology’
“They took the innovations that we had created and created a poor copy of it, and just put a bigger screen around it.”
https://www.androidauthority.com/apple-samsung-iphone-documentary-3181354/
Tomi Engdahl says:
TSMC to Customers: It’s Time to Stop Using Older Nodes and Move to 28nm https://trib.al/8yWWgLT
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sam Kim / Bloomberg:
South Korea’s chip stockpile has jumped 53.4% YoY in May, the most in more than four years, suggesting a slowdown in demand for memory chips
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-30/south-korea-s-chip-stockpile-jumps-amid-tech-slowdown-concerns
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sam Kim / Bloomberg:
South Korea’s chip stockpile has jumped 53.4% YoY in May, the most in more than four years, suggesting a slowdown in demand for memory chips
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-30/south-korea-s-chip-stockpile-jumps-amid-tech-slowdown-concerns
Tomi Engdahl says:
Joyce Lee / Reuters:
Samsung begins mass production of 3nm chips touting a 45% reduction in power usage, a 16% smaller surface area, and 23% better performance compared to 5nm chips
Samsung Elec starts 3-nanometre chip production to lure new foundry customers
https://www.reuters.com/technology/samsung-elec-starts-3-nanometre-chip-production-lure-new-foundry-customers-2022-06-30/
Samsung says first to produce 3-nano chips
Co says chips cut power usage, improve performance
Aiming to catch foundry frontrunner TSMC
Compared with conventional 5-nanometre chips, the newly developed first-gen 3-nanometre process can reduce power consumption by up to 45%, improve performance by 23%, and reduce area by 16%, Samsung said in a statement.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) is the world’s most advanced foundry chipmaker and controls about 54% of the global market for contract production of chips, used by firms such as Apple (AAPL.O) and Qualcomm (QCOM.O) which don’t have their own semiconductor facilities.
Samsung, a distant second with a 16.3% market share, according to data provider TrendForce, announced a 171 trillion won ($132 billion) investment plan last year to overtake TSMC as the world’s top logic chipmaker by 2030.
Samsung Co-CEO Kyung Kye-hyun said earlier this year its foundry business would look for new clients in China, where it expects high market growth, as companies from automakers to appliance goods manufacturers rush to secure capacity to address persistent global chip shortages.
While Samsung is the first to production with 3-nanometre chip production, TSMC is planning 2-nanometre volume production in 2025.
Samsung is the market leader in memory chips, but it had been outspent by frontrunner TSMC in the more diverse foundry business, making it difficult to compete, analysts said.
“Non-memory is different, there’s too much variety,” said Kim Yang-jae, analyst at Daol Investment & Securities.
“There are only two kinds of memory chips – DRAM and NAND Flash. You can concentrate on one thing, raise efficiency and make a lot of it, but you can’t do that with a thousand different non-memory chips.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Säteenjäljitys eli ray tracing on tekniikka, joka imitoi valon käyttäytymistä realistisesti näytöllä. Tämä on tuttua pelikoneiden grafiikkakorteilta, mutta kännyköissä sitä on tähän asti yritetty tehdä ohjelmallisesti. Nyt Arm tuo ensimmäisen kännyköiden GPU-piirin, jolla säteenjäljitys tehdään laitetasolla.
Arm on esitellyt uuden grafiikkaprosessorien lippulaivansa. Immortalis G-715 pohjaa pitkälti Mali-prosessorien perintöön, mutta ensimmäistä kertaa mobiililaitteissa se tuo laitetason säteenjäljityksen grafiikan renderöintiin.
https://etn.fi/index.php/13-news/13755-kaennykkaenaeyttoe-alkaa-seurata-valoa
Tomi Engdahl says:
Russia crashes West’s chip infrastructure by turning off Helium and Neon supplies
https://tfiglobalnews.com/2022/06/03/russia-crashes-wests-chip-infrastructure-by-turning-off-helium-and-neon-supplies/
With the West and Russia against each other, the Russia-Ukraine conflict is resulting in a new trade war every day. First, the Western world chose to impose an oil and gas embargo on Russia. Then, the West decided to stop supplying Russia with semi-conductors. Semi-conductors/chips are employed in the production of everything.
Neon gas is majorly used in the semiconductor production
Nonetheless, the Noble gas has a significantly more essential purpose in semiconductor manufacturing. The usage of noble gases, particularly neon, is common in the chip manufacturing process. Crucially, it’s been stated that semiconductor manufacturing consumes over 75% of the global neon supply.
Neon gas is a byproduct of steelmaking that is refined to a purity of 99.99 percent before being utilised to make semiconductors. It is employed in the lithography process, which involves the transfer of a semiconductor circuit design to a substrate, such as a silicon wafer. During the manufacturing process, it does not come into contact with the silicon.
Neon contributes to the production of deep ultraviolet (DUV) light, which is utilised in the photolithographic process for patterning semiconductors. In excimer lasers, neon is essential. Excimer lasers generate light using gases such as krypton fluoride (KrF) and argon fluoride (ArF), which must be replaced on a regular basis. A charge of excimer laser gas, on the other hand, is around 98 percent neon, making this carrier gas critical to the laser’s operation.
And world markets are reliant on Russian supplies, which account for up to 30% of global neon usage.
The West is worried about lack of Neon gas
As the west imposes an embargo on the shipment of these chips to Russia, Russia has responded with a measure. Russia has stated that in exchange for an embargo on these semiconductor imports, it will halt the export of these noble gases. When deciding on the export supply of these gases, the Ministry of Industry and Trade has affirmed that it will take into account the agreements achieved.
In any case, Russia’s strike on Ukraine, which is home to the world’s two largest neon-producing plants will suspend huge output.
According to Reuters calculations based on numbers from the firms and market research firm Techcet, two Ukrainian companies, Ingas and Cryoin, produce 45 percent to 54 percent of the world’s semiconductor-grade neon, which is vital for the lasers needed to create chips.
The halt casts a veil over global chip production, which was already in limited supply following the coronavirus pandemic.
“If stockpiles are depleted by April and chipmakers don’t have orders locked up in other regions of the world, it likely means further constraints for the broader supply chain and inability to manufacture the end-product for many key customers,” said Angelo Zino, an analyst at CFRA.
In fact, the White House cautioned chipmakers to diversify their supply chains in April, in case Russia retaliated against tech export limits by barring U.S. access to crucial materials for chip manufacturing. These anxieties were fueled by a Techcet research that emphasised semiconductor makers’ reliance on Russian and Ukrainian-made materials like neon and palladium.
Tomi Engdahl says:
China has a renewed plan to make a homegrown OS that could replace the need for Windows
The country wants the open source community to pitch in
https://www.techspot.com/news/95159-china-has-renewed-plan-make-homegrown-os-could.html
context: China’s quest for a homegrown desktop operating system isn’t new. After trying for many years, the country has not yet been able to make any significant progress in that direction. Public institutions and citizens remain highly dependent on Microsoft’s Windows operating system to this day, but that could change in the coming years.
According to a South China Morning Post report, the Chinese government is spearheading the development of a desktop operating system that could replace the need for American-made ones like Windows and macOS.
Tech war: China doubles down on domestic operating systems to cut reliance on Windows, MacOS from the US
https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3183681/tech-war-china-doubles-down-domestic-operating-systems-cut-reliance
Kylinsoft joined forces with more than 10 Chinese entities to create an open-source code community named openKylin
China’s quest for a domestic operating system has been going on for decades, but Microsoft Windows remains dominant
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-adds-wmma-wave-matrix-multiply-accumulate-support-to-gfx11-rdna3-architecture-amds-tensor-core
Tomi Engdahl says:
NVIDIA reportedly wants to cut TSMC orders for next-gen RTX 40 GPUs 5nm wafers amid lower demand
https://videocardz.com/newz/nvidia-reportedly-wants-to-cut-tsmc-orders-for-next-gen-rtx-40-gpus-5nm-wafers-amid-lower-demand
TSMC customers want to lower their silicon orders
The consumer electronics market is slowing down rapidly. The interest in new TVs, mobile phones and PCS and has declined as quickly as pandemic has ‘ended’ and inflation struck global markets.
Both AMD and NVIDIA are revising their TSMC orders, reports DigiTimes. The website citing their industry sources claims that Apple, AMD and NVIDIA all wish to change their orders. AMD reportedly wants to lower its 7/6nm wafer orders while NVIDIA is now facing a problem of over saturated GPU market and possibly lower demand for next-gen GPUs.
NVIDIA now has a large stock of GeForce RTX 30 graphics cards for sale, yet the company is now willing to lower the price just yet. This is despite the second-hand market now being inflated by mining cards which are no longer profitable to use and keep. There are simply too many cards now, which paints a grim outlook for RTX 40 demand.
NVIDIA is one of the companies that made prepayments to TSMC for their 5nm wafers. Unfortunately for NVIDIA, TSMC is not willing to make concessions. At best NVIDIA can count on wafer shipment delay for up to two quarters, but it’s NVIDIA’s problem to find customers for TSMC vacated production capacity, which may be very hard given how demand has dropped for the whole sector.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kevin McLaughlin / The Information:
Sources: 24+ Azure data centers around the world are operating at limited server capacity; source: capacity for at least six could stay limited until early 2023
Microsoft Cloud Computing System Suffering From Global Shortage
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/microsoft-cloud-computing-system-suffering-from-global-shortage
Due to a confluence of crises, the second-largest cloud provider has been operating in the yellow zone, meaning its data centers have a less-than-normal level of servers available.
In March 2020, Microsoft’s Azure cloud buckled under the strain of companies around the world shifting to remote work, causing service outages and forcing some customers to wait to launch and update applications. Microsoft put a positive spin on the situation, characterizing it as a temporary issue that stemmed from the surging usage of its Teams collaboration software and the rapid growth in adoption it was seeing for Azure services broadly.
But over two years later, more than two dozen Azure data centers in countries around the world are operating with limited server capacity available to customers, according to two current Microsoft managers contending with the issue and an engineer who works for a major customer. And in more than half a dozen Azure data centers—including a key one in central Washington state and others in Europe and Asia—server capacity is expected to remain
Tomi Engdahl says:
Richard Lai / Engadget:
Xiaomi’s new 12S Ultra smartphone features a 6.73-inch OLED screen and three rear cameras, including a 50MP main camera with a 1-inch sensor, starting at ~$900
Xiaomi 12S Ultra has a Leica camera with a massive 1-inch sensor
With this new Leica partnership, Xiaomi has picked up where Huawei left off.
https://www.engadget.com/xiaomi-12s-ultra-leica-one-inch-sensor-130451208.html
Merely six months after its previous flagship launch, today Xiaomi announced a trio of familiar-looking smartphones to mark the beginning of its partnership with Leica. The new 12S Series features MIUI 13 based on Android 12, and it runs on Qualcomm’s allegedly more efficient Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 flagship processor, with the headlining 12S Ultra packing a massive 1-inch, 50.3-megapixel Sony IMX989 main sensor. This translates to a generous pixel size of 1.6um, which then doubles to 3.2um via pixel binning for a supposedly boosted color accuracy and low light performance. And unlike the Sony Xperia Pro-I, the Xiaomi 12S Ultra apparently uses the entire portion of its 1-inch sensor.
According to CEO Lei Jun, Xiaomi took part in the Sony IMX989′s development, and the $15 million cost was also split evenly between the two companies. Interestingly, the sensor won’t be exclusive to Xiaomi; Lei added that it’ll be made available to his local competitors after the launch of the 12S Ultra, in order to “promote the advancement of mobile imaging together.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Asa Fitch / Wall Street Journal:
After a pandemic frenzy to buy laptops and other gadgets, Intel, Nvidia, Micron, and others suggest crypto mining, PC gaming, and smartphone demand is weakening
Chip Boom Loses Steam on Slowing PC Sales, Crypto Rout
Intel, Nvidia are among semiconductor makers warning of rockier times ahead after two years of surging demand
https://www.wsj.com/articles/chip-boom-loses-steam-on-slowing-pc-sales-crypto-rout-11656932580?mod=djemalertNEWS
Tomi Engdahl says:
Suomesta Naton tarkkailijajäsen – Stoltenberg: Historiallinen hetki https://www.is.fi/politiikka/art-2000008925527.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-allegedly-preparing-new-zen3d-and-low-end-am4-processors
Tomi Engdahl says:
Maybe hold off on that Windows on Arm laptop until 2023
Apple M2 performance in the Windows ecosystem? Yes, please.
https://www.androidauthority.com/windows-on-arm-2023-predictions-3181337/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/01/most-startups-were-overvalued-before-2021-and-now-its-causing-problems/
Tomi Engdahl says:
China rallies support for Kylin Linux in war on Windows
openKylin project is latest chapter in Beijing’s love-hate relationship with Redmond
https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/03/china_openkylin/
Tomi Engdahl says:
AMD NEEDS TO COMPLETE THE DATACENTER SET WITH SWITCHING
https://www.nextplatform.com/2022/06/24/amd-needs-to-complete-the-datacenter-set-with-switching/
In the past several decades, data processing and storage systems could be architected from best of breed components, and the market could – and did – sustain multiple suppliers of competing technologies in each of the categories of compute, networking, and storage.
But the post-Moore’s Law era, the IT sphere is getting increasing vertical in its thinking. Co-design across a vertically integrated stack of compute, storage, networking, and systems software is therefore one of the main ways to keep delivering the kinds of system-level reductions in total cost of ownership that we used to just get from transistor shrinks and some modest packaging tricks for semiconductors.
That is why Intel, Nvidia, and AMD have all been building their arsenals of compute and networking and doing very specific things with both to help improve the way they act with storage. (Intel has divested itself of its flash storage business and we shall see what happens with Optane persistent memory.)
Tomi Engdahl says:
Will optics ever replace copper interconnects? We asked this silicon photonics startup
Star Trek’s glowing circuit boards may not be so crazy
https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/18/optical_interconnect_future/
Science fiction is littered with fantastic visions of computing. One of the more pervasive is the idea that one day computers will run on light. After all, what’s faster than the speed of light?
But it turns out Star Trek’s glowing circuit boards might be closer to reality than you think
“In a lot of cases, long distances are now defined as anything more than a few meters,” Wade said. “As the PCIe bandwidths are going higher and higher, you can no longer escape the server board without putting a retimer on the board” to boost the signal.
“Even if you can get the bandwidth from point A to point B, the question is with how much power and with how much latency,” he adds.
This is exactly the problem that Ayar Labs is trying to solve. The silicon photonics startup has developed a chiplet that takes electrical signals from chips and converts them into a high-bandwidth optical signal.
And because the technology uses chiplet architecture, it’s intended to be packaged alongside compute tiles from other chipmakers using open standards like the Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCI-express), which is currently in development.
While Wade firmly believes that optical communication at the system level is inevitable, he notes there are several applications for optical interconnects in the near term. These include high-performance computing and composable infrastructure.
“Our claim is that the electrical I/O problem is going to become so severe that computing applications are going to start to get throttled by their ability to shift bandwidth around,” he said. “For us, that’s AI and machine learning scale out.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://tldr.tech/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/ranked-the-best-selling-video-game-consoles-of-all-time/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://sloanreview.mit.edu/offer-cisco-the-new-world-of-work-is-transforming-the-old-social-contracts/
Tomi Engdahl says:
FedEx to close data centers, retire all mainframes by 2024, saving $400m https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/fedex-to-close-data-centers-retire-all-mainframes-by-2024-saving-400m/
FedEx is to close its data centers and retire all of its remaining mainframes within the next two years. Speaking during the FedEx investor day, FedEx CIO Rob Carter said the company is aiming for a zero data center, zero mainframe’ environment based in the cloud, which will result in $400 million in savings annually.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Companies Rumored To Harvest Washing Machines For ICs
https://hackaday.com/2022/07/05/companies-rumored-to-harvest-washing-machines-for-ics/
Wired and SCMP are reporting on interesting trivia from the realm of chip shortages. Apparently, some large conglomerate out there is buying new washing machines and scavenging the chips they can’t obtain otherwise. My imagination pictures skilled engineers in a production room, heavy-duty electric screwdrivers and desoldering toolkits on the floor next to them, and a half-torn-down washing machine about to reveal its control board with an STM32 right in the middle. This might not be the most skilled job, but it’s a change of pace, and hey, as long as the rate stays the same?
Whichever company is doing this, they’re in a conundrum for sure. One of the articles offers an example of a $350,000 spectrometer manufacturing being stalled by lack of a $0.50 part – while this feels exaggerated, it’s within the realm of possibility. For car manufacturers, the difference isn’t as dire, but still severe enough, and not meeting the production targets has ramifications other than the financial ones. It might indeed make sense to buy a $150 washing machine in order to finally be able to move a $30,000 car off the assembly line.
Shipping Anyway – Barely
Companies have devised a slew of tricks to keep getting product out of the door. From good old code optimizations, to shipping cars with features partially excluded, and of course, buying severely marked up chips even if their origin is shady. At least, if your car doesn’t come with some rudimentary feature, there might’ve been a good reason for it – beats the Features As A Service thing. Nevertheless, even entities like Volkswagen, Tesla and Toyota are sustaining casualties, not meeting their targets, with all that entails financially and PR-wise.
There’s always high hopes about solving IC shortage problems. Chips appear and disappear, toolkits get made, cool new substitute parts get found. However, if you’re managing a company’s production process, at some point you’ll have to break out of the limbo between “this might be over tomorrow” and “we aren’t doing enough yet”. You either reach for desperate measures, or you might find yourself out of business.
The Opposite Of Recycling
This situation reminds me of last year’s Remoticon presentation, by [Maurits Fennits] from [Unbinare] – creating a toolkit for reverse-engineering in order to be able to reuse parts, except without the benefit of being able to obtain proprietary information through business relationships. Unbinare’s toolkit is impressive and I hope that at least some of the tools are being put to good use when it comes to chip shortage problem solutions.
On the other hand, tearing apart brand new equipment for a single chip creates more e-waste, even when it makes financial sense. We can’t realistically expect that the company in question is going to restore these washing machines back to working condition and release them back into the market; the whole disassembly and desoldering operation is probably quite destructive, too.
Surely, the washing machine thing can’t be common occurrence, and there’s no indication that it’s anything but an isolated incident.
Companies Are Hacking Their Way Around the Chip Shortage
The supply chain issues have no end in sight, so manufacturers are being forced to improvise.
https://www.wired.com/story/chip-shortage-hacks/
As the global chip shortage stretches toward the two-year mark, manufacturers are pulling some unusual tricks to keep production lines moving. Carmakers are using semiconductors taken from washing machines, rewriting code to use less silicon, and even shipping their products without some chips while promising to add them in later. With the shortage of semiconductors now a new normal, everyone is being forced to adapt.
“There’s desperation in the market,” says Bill Wiseman, a senior partner at the consulting firm McKinsey. “If you’re building a $350,000 mass spectrometer, and you can’t ship it because you don’t have a 50-cent chip, you’re pretty much willing to pay anything.”
Wiseman says the team will look beyond regular supply chains and has found much-needed chips in countries including Morocco, the Netherlands, and Japan. They have also been able to identify chips that may be slightly different from the ones originally called for. Manufacturers and brokers are, of course, able to charge a premium, and companies have little choice but to pay. “The chips actually are out there,” Wiseman says. “It’s just a question of finding and getting them.”
In some cases, this means taking desperate measures. Last month, Peter Wennink, CEO of the Dutch company ASML, which makes the complex machines needed to mint cutting-edge computer chips, revealed another eye-opening example. Wennink says one large industrial conglomerate had resorted to buying washing machines just to scavenge the chips inside them for its products.
The chip shortage was caused by several factors, including a rush to buy electronics needed to work from home in the pandemic, a hoarding of chips sparked by trade tensions between the US and China, and disruption to flow of components through a complex semiconductor supply chain distributed around the globe.
The crisis has highlighted how crucial semiconductors are to the economy and has shown how brittle many supply chains are. Industries that have been badly affected include consumer electronics, LED and other lighting, energy, and automotive. At the beginning of the pandemic, car makers halted production and canceled orders for chips, before being blindsided by an uptick in demand. Having fallen to the back of the queue for chip orders, auto firms have been struggling to catch up ever since.
Carmakers have taken to stripping features from vehicles rather than shut down production lines. Last September, Cadillac said it would remove the hands-free driving feature from some vehicles. In November, Tesla started selling cars without USB ports. And this May, Ford said it would ship some models without chips for noncritical features like heating controls and would have dealers add them at a later date.
Mike Juran, CEO of Altia, a company that makes software for building interfaces for cars and appliances, says many companies are rewriting their code so that it works with different chips
“They’re swapping out chips with what’s available,” he says. “We get them to go back to old chips that were, like, sitting in warehouses, that weren’t cutting edge, but we can get the same GUI on there.”
The chip crunch is dragging on partly because new issues, including Covid outbreaks in China and the war in Ukraine, are contributing to the supply chain chaos.
The crisis is also creating new opportunities for some companies.
Dan Hutcheson, an analyst at TechInsights, who follows the chip industry, says companies have taken desperate measures to deal with previous shortages, including harvesting chips from other products. He also warns that the shortage could quickly turn into a glut, as the economy cools and demand for new products slows. But he also wonders if the current shortage might have another explanation. “There has to be hoarding out there,” Hutcheson says. “I think chips are the new toilet paper.”
Some chip-starved manufacturers are scavenging silicon from washing machines, as global shortage shows no sign of easing
https://www.scmp.com/business/article/3175018/some-chip-starved-manufacturers-are-scavenging-silicon-washing-machines
Tesla said production remains hampered by shortages and elevated prices for key parts, while Volkswagen warned to expect negative effects from chip scarcity
Toyota Motor trimmed its output target by about 100,000 units for this year on insufficient semiconductor supply
A major industrial conglomerate has resorted to buying washing machines and tearing out the semiconductors inside for use in its own chip modules, according to the CEO of a company central to the chipmaking supply chain.
ASML Holding’s Chief Executive Officer Peter Wennink remarked on the situation, without naming the conglomerate, during his company’s earnings call Wednesday. The beleaguered firm relayed its struggle to him only the prior week, he said, signalling that chip shortages are going to persist for the foreseeable future, at least for some sectors.
“The demand we are currently seeing comes from so many places in the industry,” Wennink said, pointing to the wider adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) applications. “It’s so widespread. We have significantly underestimated the width of the demand. That, I don’t think, is going to go away.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Russia crashes West’s chip infrastructure by turning off Helium and Neon supplies
https://tfiglobalnews.com/2022/06/03/russia-crashes-wests-chip-infrastructure-by-turning-off-helium-and-neon-supplies/
With the West and Russia against each other, the Russia-Ukraine conflict is resulting in a new trade war every day. First, the Western world chose to impose an oil and gas embargo on Russia. Then, the West decided to stop supplying Russia with semi-conductors. Semi-conductors/chips are employed in the production of everything. They are found in all electrical gadgets, from defence systems to mobile phones. Everything requires extremely improved semiconductor devices, from the internet of things (IoT) to wireless communications (5G) to Artificial Intelligence (AI). In any case, Russia has now imposed restrictions on gas exports in retaliation (Helium, Neon, etc).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel has blamed the act’s delay for its decision to indefinitely postpone breaking ground on a $20 billion chip fabrication facility, or fab, in Ohio.
https://s.nikkei.com/3P2Wu4X
Chip giants threaten to scale back U.S. expansion without subsidies
Intel, TSMC and others issue warnings as CHIPS Act stalls in Congress
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Tech/Semiconductors/Chip-giants-threaten-to-scale-back-U.S.-expansion-without-subsidies
American and Asian chipmakers are warning that they will have to delay or scale back investment in the U.S. due to Washington’s continued failure to fund the $52 billion CHIPS Act aimed at boosting the domestic semiconductor industry.
The act, which promises tax breaks and other incentives for chip companies investing in America, is seen as vital for U.S. economic and national security interests, given the global chip shortage and rising competition with China.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Knowledge is Power in the Ongoing Chip Shortage
July 6, 2022
In this Q&A, Smith’s Todd Snow discusses the current state of the semiconductor supply chain, and how companies can continue to build resiliency in the face of market volatility.
William G. Wong
https://www.electronicdesign.com/industrial-automation/article/21245973/source-today-knowledge-is-power-in-the-ongoing-chip-shortage?utm_source=EG+ED+Analog+%26+Power+Source&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=CPS220628019&o_eid=7211D2691390C9R&rdx.ident%5Bpull%5D=omeda%7C7211D2691390C9R&oly_enc_id=7211D2691390C9R
What you’ll learn:
The importance of creating redundancies in your supply chain.
Trends in semiconductor lead times and pricing.
How to protect your company against the growing risk of counterfeit chips.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fuzzing: Crossing The Gap From Anomaly to Action
https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/13983/544472
2022 Open Source Insights and Trends
https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/13983/545971
Tomi Engdahl says:
The commercialization of chiplets is expected to increase the number and breadth of attack surfaces in electronic systems, making it harder to keep track of all the hardened IP jammed into a package and to verify its authenticity and robustness against hackers. https://semiengineering.com/security-risks-widen-with-commercial-chiplets/
#chiplets
Tomi Engdahl says:
Many analysts are predicting a downturn for the semiconductor industry, but some are still upbeat on certain firms. Here are their top picks.
Chip stocks are in trouble. But analysts are giving some serious upside — naming one with over 70%
PUBLISHED WED, JUL 6 20228:35 PM EDT
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/07/analysts-name-picks-on-chip-stocks-semiconductors.html?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_medium=Social&utm_content=Intl&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1657155062
Tomi Engdahl says:
EU tells big companies to make it easier to get rid of pre-installed software or pay up
By Alan Dexter published 2 days ago
https://www.pcgamer.com/eu-tells-big-companies-to-make-it-easier-to-get-rid-of-pre-installed-software-or-pay-up/
The EU will keep a watchful eye on the “Wild West” of the digital world.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Europe faces Facebook blackout
Ireland’s data authority informs its EU counterparts that it will block the platform from sending user data to the US.
https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-faces-facebook-blackout-instagram-meta-data-protection/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft’s Game Pass streaming looks worse on Linux—unless you use Edge
Browser tests show a drop in xCloud’s visual quality when using Linux versus Windows.
https://www.pcworld.com/article/802651/linux-gamers-arent-happy-with-game-pass-streaming-quality.html
The rise of game streaming is a godsend for PC gamers who prefer Linux to Windows, since the systems generally work just fine in any modern browser and don’t require custom development for the operating system. But gamers on Linux who enthusiastically embraced Xbox Game Pass and its streaming component aren’t satisfied with the image quality they’re getting. It’s now been verified that streaming Game Pass games to Linux results in poorer quality than Windows.
The difference isn’t extreme, but it’s noticeable enough that it caught the attention of Reddit users on the XCloud sub.
Exactly what’s causing the dip in quality isn’t clear. It’s been speculated that Microsoft is assuming a Linux user agent string means someone’s using an Android device to stream Game Pass games, lowering the image quality because the change wouldn’t be noticeable on a smaller phone or tablet screen. Some are guessing that Microsoft is reserving the best quality for its Edge browser, where enabling the exclusive Clarity Boost feature cleans up the image even when reporting a Linux user agent.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel’s latest CPUs can break your browser
Some 12th-gen Alder Lake processors are borking Chrome and Edge browsers.
https://www.pcworld.com/article/802722/intels-latest-cpus-can-break-your-browser.html
Chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Edge, Opera, Vivaldi, et cetera) are seeing frustrating hang-ups and freezes when loading multiple tabs on machines with both 12th-gen Intel Core CPUs and the lower-power integrated graphics chip, UHD Graphics 770. That includes 18 desktop and laptop CPU models from late 2021 and early 2022, across i5, i7, and i9 lines. Some of these are very popular models, including members of the powerful i7-12700 and i9-12900 series. Intel notes that the problem is especially bad when using an old-fashioned hard drive or using many tabs at once. The support page was spotted by a Twitter user and TechRadar.
Tomi Engdahl says:
You shouldn’t buy a new GPU right now, and not even because of the crypto risks
By Christian Guyton published 6 days ago
Nvidia, AMD, and now Intel are gearing up for a major showdown
https://www.techradar.com/features/you-shouldnt-buy-a-new-gpu-right-now-and-not-even-because-of-the-crypto-risks
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/11/oracle_cuts/
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Solana, Polygon and HTC’s New Crypto Phones Compare
Blockchain phones are back. Here’s how crypto and tech firms are approaching their latest mobile Web3 projects.
https://decrypt.co/104525/solana-polygon-htc-crypto-phones-compare
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/12/microsoft-lays-off-a-portion-of-its-workforce-as-part-of-a-realignment/?tpcc=tcplusfacebook&guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9sbS5mYWNlYm9vay5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAKRqyakMjvCy-jyHSbvKYFOrtPu1zkrPaETO71feEBw6S5B0c-ky_f9EqflkXJQYOyezPjCu5ydlMy36JAeCjW1ytUwzvvjplRo2nI8230gERCGHN0EwXCVwwalQ5xKUkUmE3-1IFOuWpPZJjwzRiZpr_kuBonTNg-S1fJF8sjnt