2023 Latest Semiconductor News Released from April 9th to 15th

On April 11, at the 2023 Alibaba Cloud Summit, Ali finally officially released its ChatGPT-like large model - Tongyi Qianwen. Compared with Wenxin Yiyan released by Baidu in March, Tongyi Qianwen demonstrated more capabilities in the upcoming application at the conference. Among them, the most anticipated thing is that last month, Microsoft launched Microsoft 365 Copilot, also called the ChatGPT version of Office, which applies AI large-scale models to the office. In China now Tongyi Qianwen can also do it.

TCL developed a 65" 8K inkjet printed OLED TV display

Recently, TCL showed the world's first 65" 8K inkjet printed OLED display at Intenation Conference on Display Technology (ICDT2023). According to TCL, this is the OLED product with the largest size, highest resolution and refresh rate developed based on inkjet printing technology in the world so far.

At present, the OLED industry chain is paying close attention to printed OLED technology. In 2023, printed OLED may become the key direction for manufacturers to display technology.

According to reports, TSMC will work with Bosch and two other European companies related to the automotive industry to jointly finance the former's wafer fab in Germany, which will reportedly target 28-nm special process technology. Although legacy nodes will undoubtedly address the chip supply gap that is constraining the German auto industry.

TSMC has previously said its overseas facilities could account for 20% or more of its 28nm and beyond capacity in five years or later, depending on chip demand and government support. In addition, discussions are still ongoing, focusing on how Bosch and other partners can take risks in terms of manpower, unions and production efficiency.

For three years, Tachyum has been touting its Prodigy processor, promising it will be better than CPUs and GPUs from companies like AMD, Intel, and Nvidia. However, although the chip was originally expected to be in full volume production in 2021, it has not yet entered production. Now Tachyum is looking ahead and touting its Prodigy 2-based supercomputer design, which promises 20 ExaFLOPS of performance by 2025-2026.

Tachyum's supercomputer is designed to deliver 20 FP64 vector ExaFLOPS and 10 AI (INT8 or FP8) ZetaFLOPS performance in 2025 within a power target of 60MW, in a 6,000-square-foot footprint. And the machine will use 64 Prodigy 2-based cabinets and 16 storage shelves.

The company also said it could build a supercomputer delivering 24.9 FP64 Vector ExaFLOPS and 13.27 AI ZettaFLOPS consuming 73.8MW. To put that number into perspective, the upcoming El Capitan supercomputer powered by AMD Instinct MI300 data center APUs will deliver around 2 FP64 ExaFLOPS.

Data released by the General Administration of Customs on Thursday showed that from January to March, China imported 108.2 billion ICs, down 22.9 percent year-on-year; the total value of chip imports fell 26.7 percent to $78.5 billion from $107.1 billion last year. Imports fell sharply, reflecting a drop in chip prices this year amid a supply glut and a slowing global economy.

China's IC exports fell 13.5% year-on-year to 60.9 billion units in the first quarter of 2023, compared with a 4.6% decline a year ago. The value of exports fell 17.6%. The latest trade figures also reflect how geopolitical tensions and U.S. sanctions on China are affecting semiconductor deals between China and the rest of the world.

AMD officially announced Monday it has completed its acquisition of Xilinx and made CEO Lisa Su the new chair of the board and CEO of the combined entity. AMD believed that high-performance computing will be at the core of almost all major trends that will affect the future world in the next ten years.

"While CPUs and GPUs will remain the key computing components of these devices, in a world where algorithms are advancing and new standards are emerging, it is critical to accelerate these emerging and changing workloads, and we anticipate that the demand for adaptive computing capabilities will continue to grow” AMD further pointed out.

"Xilinx's leading FPGAs, adaptive SoCs, artificial intelligence engines and software expertise will empower AMD to bring a powerful portfolio of high-performance and adaptive computing solutions and help us in cloud computing, edge computing and smart devices, to get a larger market share and opportunities,” added by Lisa Su.

According to a Reuters report on April 12, Intel announced that its chip foundry division will cooperate with Arm, to ensure that mobile phone chips and other products using Arm technologies can be produced at Intel's fab.

A few days ago, it was reported that SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son will sign an agreement with Nasdaq this week to list Arm and launch an IPO as early as this fall. The Japanese investment group and the New York Stock Exchange reached a preliminary agreement on Monday for Arm's proposed listing.

Recently, Samsung Electronics and AMD jointly announced that they will expand their GPU cooperation, and introduce the multi-generation high-performance, ultra-low power consumption AMD Radeon™ graphics solution into the Samsung Exynos chips, reducing the dependence on ARM and Qualcomm, and providing graphics quality similar to game consoles for smartphones, improving the differentiated market competitiveness of Samsung's high-end smartphones.

From an industry perspective, the improvement of Samsung's high-end smartphone market competitiveness will drive the development of Samsung's chip design, wafer foundry and other system semiconductor ecosystems, and help Samsung seize greater market opportunities such as AI, Metaverse, and smart cars.