Japan and Bangladesh are ready to start negotiations aimed at finalizing an Economic Partnership Agreement by the end of 2025. That deadline precedes the South Asian nation’s currently scheduled 2026 graduation from the UN’s list of least developed countries and consequent loss of its exemption from developed nations’ tariffs. When the US government looks at […]

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Volkswagen Group China is turning to local procurement to reduce costs as it accelerates a multi-year investment plan aimed at becoming one of China’s leading electric vehicle producers. The automaker’s new “in China for China” strategy encompasses R&D, a substantial expansion of manufacturing capacity and a wider scope for collaboration with local partners. Once known […]

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Samsung Electronics is planning to fully automate its semiconductor factories by 2030, with “smart sensors” set to control the manufacturing process, according to South Korean media reports.

The world’s largest maker of memory chips aims to create an “artificial intelligence fab” that operates without human labor, the reports said. The ground-breaking project is reportedly already underway, the same reports said.

Samsung has signaled since last summer it aims to AI to optimize integrated circuit (IC) design, materials development, production, yield improvement and packaging. Identifying the cause of defects in the production process is reportedly a top priority of the AI plan.

The post Samsung to build all-AI, no-human chip factories appeared first on Asia Times.

Japanese firms

The post Rohm, Quanmatic putting quantum tech in chipmaking appeared first on Asia Times.

Richard Katz sees light at the end of the tunnel for the perpetually low-growth Japanese economy. In his new book, “The Contest for Japan’s Economic Future: Entrepreneurs vs. Corporate Giants“, Katz declares that: “For the first time in a generation, Japan has the potential to rewrite its story. On the surface, the economy seems intractably […]

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China, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan will all have more semiconductor production capacity than the United States at the end of 2024, according to the latest World Fab Forecast released by SEMI, the global semiconductor industry association.

Semiconductor fabrication facility construction data shows that more than 80% of the world’s fab capacity is still located in Asia, with this year’s estimated percentage slightly higher than last year’s.

China’s share of worldwide capacity is forecast to rise from 26% to 27% in 2024, while America’s remains slightly below 10% and Europe’s under 9%. US and EU efforts to rebuild their domestic chip supply chains are unlikely to bear much fruit until 2025 at the earliest.

Total worldwide fab capacity is expected to rise by 6.4% to exceed 30 million wafers per month (WPM) in 2024, marking a new record high. Calculated in terms of 200mm (8-inch) wafer equivalents, global capacity rose 5.5% last year to 29.6 million wafers per month.

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Chinese electric vehicle maker NIO and smart phone maker Xiaomi have ended the year with the announcement of new products challenging NVIDIA and Apple. This marks yet another advance in China’s efforts to develop its own semiconductor technology and eliminate dependence on imports.

On December 23, NIO revealed its first autonomous driving chip, which it claims is superior to the NVIDIA Drive Orin chips it is using now. The Shenji NX9031 SoC (System-on-Chip) will be used in the company’s new ET9 executive sedan, which was also presented at NIO Day 2023. Held in Xi’an, the event attracted more than 10,000 participants and attendees.

The ET9 is a long-wheelbase, four-door luxury EV priced at about 800,000 yuan, or $113,000 at the current exchange rate. Orders for the ET9 can be placed in China now, but deliveries are not scheduled to begin until the first quarter of 2025.

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A storm of criticism and justification has erupted over the Japanese government’s decision to sell Patriot surface-to-air guided missiles made in Japan to the US. Widely seen as an effort to restock an American arsenal depleted by shipments to Ukraine, it has raised doubts over the Biden administration’s proclaimed commitment to the security of Japan […]

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Nippon Steel’s plan to acquire US Steel has triggered an uproar among the US Congress, the United Steelworkers and economic nationalists alarmed by the buyout of an American icon and the US$14.9 billion deal’s potential implications for US employment and the economy. The reaction has been particularly strong in President Joe Biden’s birth state of […]

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“Cyber Warfare: The Enemy inside the Gates. All Hands on Deck. We Are at War.” The first three headings in the table of contents tell the reader where Michael G McLaughlin and William J Holstein stand in the debate over what the US should do in response to challenges posed by China and Russia. Their […]

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Japan’s new Hyper-Kamiokande neutrino detection site is ready for the installation of sensors and other equipment and international partners are signing up to participate. The excavation of the underground chamber where the facility will be sited was completed in October 2023. Observations and experiments are slated to begin in 2027. On December 1, it was […]

The post Japan, Italy in Big Bang particle physics collaboration appeared first on Asia Times.

Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party plans to include 10 years of incentives for the semiconductor and other industries in a tax reform package that is likely to take effect next year. In the meantime, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) has decided to subsidize semiconductor makers Rohm and Toshiba’s collaborative investment in power […]

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Amkor Technology, the only top-ranked outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) service provider headquartered in the United States, has announced plans to build a US$2 billion facility in the state of Arizona.

The plan, announced on November 30, will no doubt please US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who is a strong advocate of building advanced integrated circuit (IC) packaging facilities domestically to reduce US dependence on Asia.

Planned in tandem with Apple, which will be Amkor’s first and largest customer, the new facility will assemble, package and test devices made by Taiwan’s TSMC, the world’s largest and most advanced IC foundry which is building its own factories in Arizona.

The post Amkor takes CHIPS Act reshoring bait in Arizona appeared first on Asia Times.

Nvidia’s AI processor business in China has been all but shuttered by the US Commerce Department, but its DRIVE Orin system-on-a-chip (SoC) for electric autonomous vehicles is still going strong. 

More than a dozen corporate customers in China contribute to Nvidia’s automotive revenues, which are now running at a rate of over US$1 billion per year. 

Several of Nvidia’s Chinese customers showcased their new electric vehicles (EVs) at the 21st Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition held from November 17-26, including Denza, Human Horizons, Ji Yue, NIO, XPeng, Zeekr and BYD. 

The Nvidia DRIVE Orin SoC is a central computer for intelligent vehicles that is capable of 254 trillion operations per second. Scalable from Level 2 advanced driving assistance systems (ADAS) to Level 5 fully autonomous vehicles, DRIVE Orin enables instantaneous and redundant processing of data from exterior and interior cameras, radar, lidar and ultrasonic sensors.

The post Nvidia’s automotive chip sales still riding high in China appeared first on Asia Times.

Amazon, Honeywell, Intel and several other top-tier American companies are slated to participate in the first China International Supply Chain Expo in Beijing this week.

The event is seen by some as an early test of the stabilization of US-China relations announced by presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping two weeks ago in San Francisco.

The expo, held in conjunction with the Global Supply Chain Innovation and Development Forum, has attracted 515 enterprises and institutions, about a quarter of them from countries outside of China. Half of those have joined Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.  

Only 5% are from the US but they include high fliers such as Apple, Cargill, ExxonMobil, FedEx, GE HealthCare, Google, Starbucks, Tesla and Qualcomm.

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Developments at Rapidus and TSMC highlight Japan’s attempt to advance to the leading edge of semiconductor manufacturing. It is a comprehensive effort devoid of the financial, social and political difficulties seen in Germany, the US and China.

Rapidus, Japan’s advanced semiconductor production venture, will work on 1nm integrated circuit design with the University of Tokyo and the CEA-Leti research institute of France, according to Japanese media reports.

This should put it on a process technology development track converging with Intel.

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Alibaba’s share price dropped nearly 10% on November 17 on the news it has canceled the spin-off and initial public offering (IPO) of its cloud computing division, marking the latest market tremor to hit China’s sanctioned tech industry.

Alibaba said the cancellation was driven by the disruption caused by US bans on China’s access to advanced proprietary semiconductors made by Arm, Intel, AMD and Nvidia.

At the same time, US sanctions are accelerating China’s development of advanced chips using the RISC-V open standard design architecture, giving rise to US Congress calls to extend the China tech bans to RISC-V.

The post The next big tech war front: RISC-V appeared first on Asia Times.

China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) and Yangtze Memory Technologies Co Ltd (YMTC) have raised billions of dollars in new capital to finance the continued expansion of their memory chip operations in defiance of US sanctions on the sector. CXMT has reportedly received 39 billion yuan (US$5.4 billion) in funds to complete the construction of a […]

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Taiwan’s Hon Hai Technology Group, widely known as Foxconn, and America’s Nvidia plan to join technological forces “to accelerate the AI industrial revolution.” Foxconn, the world’s largest contract manufacturer, is the primary assembler of the Apple iPhone. California-based Nvidia is the world’s leading designer of the graphics processing units (GPUs) used in artificial intelligence applications. […]

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Canon has announced a new nanoimprint lithography system that it says can transfer circuit patterns equivalent to those created by 5nm EUV photolithography. Furthermore, it claims that with the improvements it anticipates in mask technology, the transfer of 2nm-equivalent circuit patterns should be possible. 

If this can be done economically, it would be a direct challenge to ASML, which has a monopoly on the EUV (extreme ultraviolet) photolithography equipment used by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) to make the most advanced integrated circuits (ICs) designed by Apple, Nvidia and Intel. 

In contrast to photolithography, in which light from a scanner passes through a photomask to transfer circuit pattens to a wafer coated with a photosensitive resist, nanoimprint lithography is a miniature mold and stamping process. In nanoimprint lithography, the mask is a mold.

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