Carrot, stick and waiver
The US has a number of ways to encourage allies to support its semis restrictions on China. These range the “stick” of enforcement to the “carrot” of waivers and targeted expansion of the restrictions.
Category Archives: Silicon
Has Nvidia won the market for AI Training?
It seems very likely that most AI Training will be run on Nvidia GPUs. The software environments for training are too numerous and changing rapidly, which favors the soft, warm familiarity of CUDA over speculative gains offered by new entrants.
Chips as a Service?
Lots of people think chip companies should build “services” businesses to capture more value. The list of companies that have accomplished this is very close to zero.
Fighting the Last War
The latest US semis restrictions seem to be a dusted off version of 1970’s Cold War measures, but the situation is so different we have a hard time seeing them proving effective and highly likely to spur strong counter reactions in China.
Lessons in Custom from Analog Semis
Analog companies have many tricks they use to build almost custom semis, and it seems likely that the digital chip makers will start to emulate some of these practices more often.
Will Private Equity Come for Semis?
Private Equity funds have largely avoided technology, but a bit more pressure on semis stocks could change that.
IoT 2.0
As we keep saying, IoT is not one thing. So maybe we should find a better way to segment the market. We think companies can analyst the opportunities available based on the complexity and engineering required to deliver their product to market.
SQL Processing Unit?
The advances in size and accessibility of modern databases is a wonder of our age. But to continue they will need similar innovation in the silicon on which databases run.
Corporate Governance with Chinese Characteristics
China’s corruption investigation into leading semis professionals can be read as a signal to the industry that Beijing wants to refocus investment into others parts of semis, and this seems to have caused on overall slowdown in semis funding deals.
Who Will Be Intel’s First Foundry Customer?
Intel’s Foundry ambitions will need to overcome considerable customer growing pains. The RISC V community may be a good place for Intel to start, but they still have a long way to go.