Always Be Curious #174: An act of war, NVIDIA's AI crown, and China's chiplets

This week in ABC: The New York Times goes inside America's silicon blockade against China, Forbes profiles Lisa Su and her ambitions, and Reuters zooms in on China's chiplet strategy.

Over 90% of the world’s data was created in the last two years. 😳 The estimated amount of data in the world currently is somewhere arond 120 zettabytes, or 120,000,000,000,000 (120 trillion) gigabytes. 📈 What’s driving those crazy numbers is a huge boom in connectivity (global internet use, many more devices coming online, mobile networks offering faster speeds and easier accessibility) and the major global tech trends like high performance computing, generative AI, and big data. This all needs raw computing power and massive data storage capabilities. And if 120 zettabytes seems like a lot—we’re not there yet. The amount of generated data will continue to climb over the coming years. In a 2018 report, research firm IDC predicted around 175 zettabytes by 2025. But that didn’t yet take into account the massive AI boom that started last year. So where is this industry headed? 🔮 Thankfully, the chip industry can use a mix of old and new technologies to store all that data, from traditional spinning hard-disk drives, to more advanced solid-state drives, to newer memory technologies like 3D NAND. And the industry is working hard to deliver even better, faster and larger capacity memory types that operate at much lower energy use. 💪

Have a good week, stay safe and sound,

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👨‍💻The round-up in sci-tech💡

🧠 Why AI could save us from the next deadly hurricane (The Daily Beast)

The bots are coming for your local weather report.

🇮🇳 Chandrayaan-3: India's historic Moon mission lifts off successfully (BBC News)

With Chandrayaan-3, India aims to be the first to land near the Moon's little-explored south pole. 

🤫 Silence is a ‘sound’ you hear, study suggests (The New York Times)

In auditory illusion tests, people perceive silence as a form of sound, just as Simon and Garfunkel suggested.

🎭 Actors say Hollywood studios want their AI replicas — for free, forever (The Verge)

No, this is not a Black Mirror episode.

🐦 ‘They’re outsmarting us’: birds build nests from anti-bird spikes (The New York Times)

Strips of sharp metal pins are meant to keep birds away from buildings. Some birds are stealing them to build their nests.

“They’re outsmarting us,” Mr. Hiemstra said. “We’re trying to get rid of birds, the birds are collecting our metal spikes and actually making more birds in these nests. I think it’s just a brilliant comeback.”

🌾 Spatial data makes AI crop yield predictions better (IEEE Spectrum)

Climate change has made the need for accurate predictions more urgent than ever

🔮 Elon Musk unveils his AI company, X.AI (Mashable)

He’s at it again.

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🤓This week in chips⚠

⚔️ ‘An act of war’: Inside America’s silicon blockade against China (The New York Times) 🎁

The Biden administration thinks it can slow China’s economic growth by cutting it off from advanced computer chips. Could the plan backfire?

“The new policy (…) is: not only are we not going to allow China to progress any further technologically, we are going to actively reverse their current state of the art. If you’d told me about these rules five years ago, I would’ve told you that’s an act of war — we’d have to be at war.”

🇨🇳 Chip wars: How ‘chiplets’ are emerging as a core part of China’s tech strategy (Reuters)

The sale of struggling Silicon Valley startup zGlue’s patents in 2021 was unremarkable except for one detail: The technology it owned, designed to cut the time and cost for making chips, showed up 13 months later in the patent portfolio of Chipuller, a startup in China’s southern tech hub Shenzhen.

👑 Lisa Su saved AMD. Now she wants NVIDIA’s AI crown (Forbes)

AMD's CEO orchestrated one of the great turnarounds in Silicon Valley history, driving the dying semiconductor maker's stock price up nearly 30-fold in less than a decade. Now she's preparing for battle in the coming AI revolution—and she expects to keep winning.

🔐 World’s largest chip maker rethinks security, responding to pressures on hiring (The Information)

TSMC, which makes chips for companies like Apple and NVIDIA, is famous for its security rules which include magnetized paper so that printouts can’t be snuck out of a building. But under pressure from employees, including newly hired Americans, TSMC is relaxing its rules—a little.

🇳🇱 SMART Photonics secures €100 mln in additional funding (SMART Photonics)

The Dutch foundry for photonic integrated circuits, has secured an additional round of funding of €100 mln from a group of financial institutions and strategic players in the Dutch semiconductor industry such as ASML, NXP and VDL Groep.

⚠️ ASML to slow hiring this year, citing slump in chip demand (Bloomberg)

We’re slowing our hiring a bit during this short-term downturn in the chip industry.

🇳🇱 'Nieuwe Europese chipwet gaat Nederland heel veel werkgelegenheid opleveren’ / ‘New European chip act will generate many jobs in The Netherlands’ (BNR)

The EU Chips Act has been approved, and it will be grand.

🇳🇱 ASML geeft ons een college over hun toekomstplannen / ASML elaborates on its plans for the future (BNR)

Colleague Maarten Voncken (ASML Research) was interviewed on Dutch radio station BNR about the company, EUV technology and the road ahead.

💿 Could NAND capacity replace HDDs by 2029? (Blocks and Files)

Could global NAND manufacturing capacity be able to make enough flash to cover market needs covered by HDDs?

🇰🇷 SK hynix’s Special DRAM in Apple’s Vision Pro (Business Korea)

“According to industry sources, SK hynix will supply the special DRAM that goes into Apple’s Vision Pro AR device, which was ambitiously revealed last month. The DRAM will be linked with the R1 chip newly developed by Apple for the Vision Pro.”

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📈By the numbers📉

💰 Global semiconductor players prepare to cash in the CHIPS and invest to secure supply (ATREG & Yole)

A report by European research group Yole reflects on the fortunes of the global semiconductor industry and discusses how the major players need to invest in order to secure their supply chain and chip capacity.

📈 Nvidia 'should have at least 90%' of AI chip market with AMD on its heels (MarketWatch)

Nvidia Corp. stands to command "at least 90%" of market share in the AI chip market with Advanced Micro Devices Inc. poised in second place. 

📈 Samsung to rebound in Q3, say analysts (Asia News)

The tech giant’s earnings are expected to improve on back of reduced chip output and the earlier launch of new foldable phones.

NAND market: new hope in late 2023? (Storage Newsletter)

The year 2023 is anticipated to be a significant year for the NAND market, with suppliers facing a substantial market downturn and increasing financial losses. But there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

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❤️For the love of tech❤️

Generative AI opens new era of efficiency across industries (NVIDIA)

Businesses that previously dabbled in AI are now rushing to adopt and deploy the latest applications. Generative AI — the ability of algorithms to create new text, images, sounds, animations, 3D models and even computer code — is moving at warp speed, transforming the way people work and play.

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Always Be Curious is the personal newsletter of Sander Hofman, Senior Creative Content Strategist at ASML. Opinions expressed in this curated newsletter are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.