chips

First the PS5 rises in price by 100 euros and now the lack of chips forces Sony to stop selling SD and CFexpress cards in Japan

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Buying a computer, a mobile phone or a console is much more expensive today than it was a couple of years ago and the voracious appetite of data centers is to blame for this component crisis: RAM has become more expensivemore of the same for NAND storage (and therefore, of SSDs) and already threatens even to the batteries. And consumer electronics manufacturers are making moves to avoid swallowing the price rise resulting from this imbalance between supply and demand. If we talk about gaming, a couple of days ago Sony threw a bucket of cold water on those who expected its latest console to drop in price over time because it has been the opposite: The PS5 will go up 100 euros in April. But it is not Sony’s only drastic measure: in Japan have announced that stop selling storage cards. When you see your neighbor’s beard cut… NAND memory chip shortage is wreaking havoc If you have tried to buy a memory card in recent months, you will have already realized that prices have gone up a lot for that common little device that we use for photography, gaming or the Raspberry Pi (which also its price has skyrocketed due to the component crisis). Well, Sony has gone one step further and has indefinitely suspended the acceptance of orders for almost all of its line of CFexpress Type A, Type B and SD cardswhether for authorized distributors or those who buy from the Sony Store. The brief Sony Japan statement is blunt: “Due to the global shortage of semiconductors (memory) and other factors, it is expected that supply will not be meet the demand for CFexpress and SD memory cards in the near future. Therefore, we have decided to temporarily suspend the receipt of orders from our authorized dealers and customers in the Sony store from March 27, 2026. As for the resumption of accepting orders, we will study it based on the supply situation and will announce it separately on the product information page.” It is no longer just the temporary suspension, it is that there is no return date and the reality is that the medium-term future looks bleak: it does not seem that this shortage of components will be resolved in the coming months. In fact, the conflict between the United States, Israel and Iran It is bringing other consequences beyond the rise in fuel prices: helium shortageessential in cooling operations in chip manufacturing It is true that this statement is restricted only to Japanbut the shortage is not exclusive to the Asian country: a quick search for SD in the Sony Store in Spain It returns just four models, one moderately affordable 64GB and then three others of 128GB, 256GB and 512GB that cost around 300 euros. One of the most affected models are the TOUGH cards used in professional photography and the entry-level SD cards. What you can buy today on the Sony website About a month ago the CEO of Phison, one of the major suppliers of controllers for SSDs and memory cards, he already warned: If the situation does not improve, this shortage may end the closure of consumer electronics companies completely in 2026. In Xataka | Not content with bursting demand and prices for RAM, AI is already targeting another victim: batteries In Xataka | The current generation of consoles was supposed to be “weak” and the games were expensive. Well: nothing has stopped the PS5 Cover | Xataka

Taiwan produces 90% of the world’s advanced chips. Its natural gas reserves last exactly 12 days

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In global energy markets, alarm bells do not always ring loudly; Sometimes all you have to do is watch where the boats are sailing. While the West observes the already known Third Gulf War With a mixture of horror and remoteness, Asia is suffering the direct impact. The colossal Ras Laffan facility in Qatar—which processes about a fifth of global liquefied natural gas (LNG)— has suffered damage by 17% of its infrastructure after the Iranian attacks. 12 days. At the exact center of the geopolitical target is Taiwan. The island has a practical monopoly on the world’s most advanced chips, but its “silicon shield” hangs by an extremely fragile logistical thread: an energy supply chain whose legal security threshold requires a minimum of just 11 to 12 days of natural gas reserves. The fatal panorama in Asia. Asia is on the front line of this fuel crisis as it buys more than 80% of the crude oil that transits through the blocked Strait of Hormuz. The nations of the region have had to quickly dust off the survival manuals of the COVID-19 era. Philippines has become the first country in declaring a state of “national energy emergency”, warning of an imminent danger and turning to coal to reduce costs. In South Korea, the government has asked its citizens Take shorter showers, use public transportation, and avoid charging your phones at night. Sri Lanka declared on Wednesdays as a holiday to save fuel, and in Thailand, officials have received the order to take off their suits, use the stairs and telework. china from chill. However, the contrast with China it’s abysmal. While its neighbors panic, the Asian giant observes the chaos coldly. Five years ago, Xi Jinping ordered to secure the country’s “energy rice bowl.” Today, thanks to a massive accumulation of sanctioned crude oil (bought cheaply from Russia or Iran), the shielding of renewables and a vehicle park where electric cars are the majority, China has built an invisible Great Wall that isolates it from fossil volatility. A trade war against the clock. This hydrocarbon drought not only turns off the lights, but paralyzes the industry. According to Commonwealth Magazinethe petrochemical and plastics sector has been the first major victim. The giant Formosa Petrochemical has had to issue force majeure notices after running out of raw materials, and prices of key materials such as ABS (used in car parts) have soared by up to 50%. At a logistical level, a trade war has broken out ruthless battle between Europe and Asia to seize the few available LNG shipments. Spot prices in Asia have doubled, and ships originally sailing to Spain or France are diverting their course to the Pacific in the face of more lucrative offers. In this Darwinian scenario, South Asia is acting as the global “shock absorber”: price-sensitive countries, such as Pakistan or Bangladesh, cannot compete and are forced to destroy demand or paralyze industries, leaving gas available for the giants that can afford it. To mitigate the blow on their own streets, governments like Japan They plan to inject billions in subsidies, while Taiwan has committed to absorb 60% of the increase in crude oil prices. Taiwan’s “Achilles heel” and the check on chips. If there is a critical point in this crisis, It is the island of Taiwan. In 2025, Taiwan relied on imports to meet 95% of its energy needs, including more than 99% of its oil and natural gas demand. Before the war, it received more than 38% of its annual natural gas supply and approximately 70% of its crude oil from the Middle East. The structural problem is time. While nations like South Korea have the capacity to store gas for 52 days and Japan for three weeks, Taiwan is walking on the wire. As pointed out Bloombergis an almost non-existent room for maneuver for an island where electricity generation based on natural gas has expanded to almost 48%. An immediate buffer. To avoid collapse in the short term, the Taiwanese Ministry of Economy has acted quickly with a checkbook. Minister Kung Ming-hsin has confirmed that supply planning is already covered for March, April and May, and they have even secured half of their replacement agreements for the month of June. Away from the imminent blackout, the island’s reserves have managed to remain above the safety threshold of 12 days since the fighting broke out. However, this short-term patch does not turn off the alarms. The real danger lurks in the summer, when high temperatures historically trigger electricity demand. A prolonged blackout: global chaos. The semiconductor sector contributes around 20% of Taiwan’s GDP. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which produces about 90% of the chips most advanced in the world (vital for AI and military technology), alone consumes approximately 9% of all electricity on the island. But gas is not the only missing input; Added to this is the disruption in the supply of secretive but vital raw materials such as bromine and helium (a third of which is processed in Qatar). The experts They warn that if the interruption of helium exceeds 14 days, the chip production lines will go into technical stoppage. With summer just around the corner and electricity demand about to skyrocket, the island operates at its limit. The pressure is so immense that the historically reluctant Taiwanese government is already openly debating the reactivation of nuclear energy, recognizing that the explosive growth in electricity demand linked to the development of Artificial Intelligence is changing all the rules of the energy game. The geopolitical board: opportunism and contradictions. Beijing has not been slow to intervene. Taking advantage of the panic, the Chinese government has thrown a poisoned lifeline. According to Chen Binhua, spokesperson for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, collected in South China Morning Postthe Asian giant offered the island a stable, abundant and cheap energy supply in exchange for accepting “peaceful reunification.” Taipei’s response was blunt: Vice Minister of Economy, Ho Chin-tsang, rejected the offer, calling it “cognitive … Read more

China needs to manufacture cutting-edge chips to challenge the US for global supremacy. To achieve this it has two “Manhattan projects”

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China is putting everything on the table. You have no choice. Either it develops its own cutting-edge semiconductor manufacturing technology or it will lose its fight for world supremacy with the US. Without 100% Chinese advanced chips its military capacity, the development of its models of artificial intelligence (AI) and the competitiveness of its technology companies will suffer in the medium term. Huawei and SMIC are making advanced integrated circuits, but they use machines from the Dutch company ASML and a technology known as multiple patterning that compromises its competitiveness. This scenario has caused the Chinese Government support with very juicy subsidies to companies that have the capacity to develop cutting-edge photolithography equipment, such as YesCarrierShanghai Yuliangsheng, Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment (SMEE), Huawei or SMIC. However, its most compelling commitment has taken the form of two extraordinarily ambitious projects that seek to put the capacity to produce cutting-edge semiconductors in China’s hands before the end of the current decade. Shenzhen Hybrid SVU Machine Exactly one year ago, in March 2025, it was leaked that Huawei was testing the first extreme ultraviolet (EUV) photolithography equipment designed and manufactured entirely in China. Over the last twelve months information about this machine has been arriving very slowly, but currently we know enough to take this project very seriously. Its purpose is to place in the hands of Chinese integrated circuit manufacturers the possibility of producing highly integrated chips without using ASML equipment. However, unlike the EUV machines of this company from the Netherlands, the prototype of the project led by Huawei It uses an LDP (laser induced discharge) type ultraviolet light source, and not an LPP (laser generated plasma) class. On paper the LDP source is capable of generating UVE light with a wavelength of 13.5 nmso this Chinese prototype should be able to compete head-to-head with ASML’s UVE photolithography machines. The LDP radiation source is less powerful and simpler to implement than an LPP source, although it has been leaked that the Harbin Institute of Technology, which is located in northeastern China, is testing a 100 watt LPP source. The Changchun Institute of Optics, Mechanics and Physics appears to be able to manufacture the mirrors required for an EUV machine using atomic polishing techniques The most interesting thing about this project is that, if we stick to what we know, it seems to have shaped a hybrid photolithography machine which combines solutions developed by China by reverse engineering ASML’s deep ultraviolet photolithography (UVP) equipment in its possession and innovations devised by Chinese research centers. The Changchun Institute of Optics, Mechanics and Physics appears to be able to manufacture the mirrors required for an EUV machine using atomic polishing techniques with performance close to that of the mirrors produced by ZEISS for ASML. On the other hand, Tsinghua University has recently presented advances in polyteluoxane photoresists designed specifically for interact with the wavelength of 13.5 nm. Furthermore, Xuzhou B&C Chemical, which is one of the leading photoresist materials manufacturers in China, anticipates that in at most five years will have the capacity to produce large-scale advanced KrF photoresists (Krypton Fluoride) and ArF (Argon Fluoride). Be that as it may, the leaks maintain that the first test integrated circuits will be produced by this machine in 2028so that large-scale manufacturing will begin no later than 2030. Tsinghua University’s SSMB-UVE project continues to advance Each of ASML’s UVE machines incorporates its own ultraviolet light source, but Tsinghua University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences seek to generate this radiation, which is so important for produce advanced chips using a synchrotronwhich is nothing more than a circular particle accelerator that is used to analyze the properties of matter at the atomic level, such as various types of materials, or even proteins. It’s called HEPS (High Energy Photon Source o High Energy Photon Source). China’s plan is to place several semiconductor manufacturing plants around the particle accelerator to which the synchrotron will deliver the SVU light. SSMB-UVEwhich is the name of this project, comes from the English name Steady-State Micro-Bunching-UVEwhich we can translate as Microclustering in steady state for the generation of UVE radiation. A priori we may think that a particle accelerator has nothing to do with the manufacturing of integrated circuits, but we would be overlooking something very important: the HEPS synchrotron has the capacity to produce high power UVE light. In fact, it is a source designed to generate a large amount of radiation. China’s plan is to place several semiconductor manufacturing plants around the particle accelerator to which the synchrotron will deliver EUV light in the same way a power plant delivers electricity to its customers. The leaks ensure that this project has already completed the verification phases of the particle beams, although in principle nothing seems to indicate that this synchrotron will be able to be used to produce large-scale integrated circuits in the short term. Presumably the Shenzhen hybrid EUV machine will be ready before the SSMB-UVE project, but the path of the latter, if it finally comes to fruition, it will be much longer because it aspires to put a next-generation UVE radiation source in China’s hands. Image | Generated by Xataka with Gemini In Xataka | TSMC acknowledges that it has considered taking its factories out of Taiwan. It’s impossible for a good reason. In Xataka | The looming bottleneck in AI is neither RAM nor gas: it’s that TSMC’s N3 node is absolutely saturated

The most unexpected blow of the Iran war is not the price of oil. It’s the one with the chips

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The Strait of Hormuz does not manufacture semiconductors or host data centers. However, its closure effective March 4 threatens to destabilize the heart of the global technology economy. Taiwan, which through TSMC manufactures around 90% of the world’s most advanced semiconductors, runs on imported energy, and a large part of it flowed through that strait. The connection between a conflict in the Middle East and the price of a GPU It is not metaphorical. It is totally physical. Why is it important. What Trump has described as a “minor excursion” began on February 28 as a military intervention against the Iranian leadership and has led to the almost total closure of the passage that connects the Persian Gulf with the Indian Ocean. 20% of the world’s natural gas and 25% of the global oil usually pass through there. Now, practically nothing happens. Between the lines. The problem for the chip industry is not oil, but two much less visible resources: The LNG. The Middle East supplies 37% of the fuel that powers the Taiwanese electrical grid, and that electricity is what TSMC’s factories consume with an energy hunger that demands continuous supply. And helium, which is even more delicate: it is essential in the process of photolithography and has no viable substitute. Taiwan only has LNG reserves for 11 days without external imports. South Korea has 52; Japan, three weeks. The contrast. South Korea and Japan have been building energy security buffers for years precisely because they know how much they depend on abroad. Taiwan, on the other hand, has historically prioritized cost over resilience: its LNG storage capacity is much lower than that of its neighbors, and that is now taking its toll. It’s not just a matter of reserve days. The thing is that Samsung and SK Hynix operate in a country with more robust emergency infrastructure, while TSMC, the company on which practically the entire global technological ecosystem depends, turns out to be the most exposed of all. Yes, but. Companies are not sitting idly by: TSMC has secured LNG supplies until mid-May. As for helium, Australia and the United States have the capacity to partially compensate for Qatar’s decline. Morgan Stanley estimates that several additional shipments are already heading to the islandalthough Taiwan has probably paid a notable premium for them. That premium will most likely translate into a price increase. The big question. The real risk is not the immediate cut, but how long this lasts. Consumers expecting GPUs for gaming They will be the last in line. In Xataka | Chinese airlines are the only ones still flying over Russia. And that is why they are the winners of the Iran crisis Featured image | Xataka

Chips connected by laser instead of cable. It seems like science fiction, but it aims to revolutionize data centers

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If you have ever mounted a PCSurely one of the points on which you have had to pay the most attention is the connections. Because understanding the power of the processor, the GPU or the speed of the RAM is “easy”, but the motherboard is what allows us to interconnect all these components with ‘highways’ in which the data speed can be maximum. In the data centers and serversthis is the same: the better the connections between chips and equipment, the lower latency, higher bandwidth and better performance. These connections are made physically, but there is a French startup that wants to change the rules of the game with NVIDIA. As? Connecting the chips by laser. Chips connected by laser and NVIDIA taking out the wallet Improving interconnection speed is no small feat or a whim. NVIDIA has begun manufacturing its next generation platform, the one named Vera Rubin. It is a system that can be combined with others to multiply benefits. That union, as we say, is physical, but there comes a point at which physics is no longer enough. When that arrives, NVIDIA wants to be ready and, a few days ago, Reuters reported on a $4 billion investment by NVIDIA in two companies that are aggressively researching new technologies to help increase that interconnection speed: Lumentum and Coherent. This is a rack and the nightmare of those of us who hate cables. Specifically, that of the Wikimedia Foundation. Well, imagine that a large part of those cables go outside because the systems are connected by electricity Another of the companies in which they have invested is Scintil Photonics. It is a French startup that this in the testing phase of a technology that, if the industry adopts it, will mark a before and after in this connection on a team scale. The LEAF Light Evaluation Kit is, as detailed, the first dense wavelength division multiplexing single chip to go from theory to practice. It’s like another language, I know, but it’s basically what we were talking about: an optical chip interconnection system instead of copper. And that is the main advantage. With copper reaching physical limits of speed and density, optics are emerging as a solution when connecting clusters of thousands of processors. Each chip has an optical system that is responsible for emitting and receiving light, and in that light goes the data that is currently traveling through cables. The one from the French company it is not the first chip based on photonic communication, but they claim that their technology reduces the energy necessary for them to work by 50%, as well as latency. Results? Well we’ll see. The startup’s CEO, Matt Crowley, has commented that he has “six or seven companies interested in implementing the technology by 2028,” but that due to confidentiality agreements, he cannot name names. The Scintil Photonics prototype The complication in this will be that they get supply of the photonics systems, since the data center racks are built with the idea that they are scalables. That is, it is no longer just power, but how many tens of thousands of units you can interconnect, and a bottleneck in the manufacturing of any of the parties involved in optics would be equivalent to a lack of supply for their customers. At the moment, some prototypes have already been served to select companies for testing, but certainly, using light pulses instead of electrical signals is something that is very interesting in superclusters focused on huge data centers that can scale without the limitations of the physical connection. Images | Victorgrigas, M.I.T., GlobeNewswire In Xataka | Huawei no longer competes: it is building its own parallel reality

Without helium there are no chips or RAM. And the largest producers are in the eye of the Iran war

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Think of the world as if it were a puppet. It is supported by threads that move, but when one of those threads breaks, the whole wobbles. If several strings break at once, the puppet falls apart. In the technological world, 2026 has started on the wrong foot. The main RAM memory companies They have turned to producing memory for AI, leaving the consumer market. This has caused an unprecedented increase of prices that affects consumers, but also companies. Right now, it’s impossible to guess when it will return to normal because each party involved thinks one thing. And, for a few days now, we have another of those threads that I talked about at the beginning: the iran war. The consequence We are already seeing it immediately: the Strait of Hormuz boilingthe barrel of crude oilreaching stratospheric prices and a gasoline –dieselabove all- through the clouds. But since everything that goes wrong can get worse, now there is another crisis knocking at the door: that of helium. And it is the perfect union between RAM crisis and the war in Iran because without helium… well, without helium there are many things that do not work. Neither does artificial intelligence. RAM crisis + Iran war = no helium For many, helium is that gas that gives us such a funny voice and allows us to inflate balloons that float. For the semiconductor industry, helium is a critical and irreplaceable element in the manufacturing process. Being a noble gas, it does not chemically interfere with the materials of the silicon crystal growth process. inside the huge machines that companies use to create the wafers that are later used to make chips. They prevent materials from reacting with oxygen or other contaminants, so the results are purer. They are like a shield, but helium is also essential to dissipate the heat of the extreme lithography machinesto eliminate waste after each manufacturing cycle and even to identify any leaks in one of these machines. Its particles are among the smallest that exist and are what reveal even the smallest leaks in manufacturing chambers that must be under vacuum. Come on, it is not an element that can be easily replaced. There are two companies that right now have such a deep dependency that any variation in supply would be fatal. What companies? Exactly: Samsung and SK Hynix, the same ones that have dedicated themselves to AI and the same ones that do not plan to lift a finger to alleviate the crisis of RAM memory prices (and therefore of SSDs and any device that has a NAND chip). Both are involved in the manufacturing process of the sophisticated HBM4 memoryand both need helium. The problem is that helium is a byproduct in natural gas production, and some of the world’s largest refineries are in the Middle East. With the war in Iran, it is clear that the civilian targets are data centers and energy producers. If these infrastructures are attacked, the rest of the West is paralyzed, and they have begun to launch kamikaze drones against them. There is the oil company Ras Tanurabut also that of Ras Laffan, from QatarEnergy. It is one of the whales in the production of natural gas and, therefore, in the production of helium. And if the refineries close and the ships do not arrive, the smelters’ reserves begin to run out. There are already voices that they point to problems in the medium term if the situation persists. SK Hynix claims that they have a “diversified supply chain and sufficient helium inventory”something similar to what has commented another of the large chip manufacturers: TSMC. The problem is that these guarantees are short-term. If the situation continues with a prolonged closure of Hormuz, more than 25% of the world’s helium supply will be affected. This will cause the companies that ‘use’ gas the most to begin to see that their reserves are depleted at a faster rate than they are replenished. the market, always so unstablehas already reacted and actions Both Samsung and SK Hynix have fallen in recent hours due to supply concerns. Because we are no longer talking about a price of RAM and runaway gasolinewe are talking about helium being necessary for the manufacturing of any advanced chip, but also in quantum computing or for the numerous space launches. And as Hormuz continues, there will be many entities fighting for an essential, irreplaceable and very valuable good. Faced with SK Hynix’s moderate optimism, more pessimistic voices are already seeing echoes of the component crisis of 2020. Images | VALGO, ASML In Xataka | ‘Focus: The ASML Way’: the book that reveals the secrets of the most powerful European company in the chip industry

Meta has been buying chips from NVIDIA and AMD for years. Now it also makes its own so as not to fall short

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Meta has not thrown in the towel with its MTIA (Meta Training and Inference Accelerators) chips. And although they didn’t have it all on their sidestopping depending on NVIDIA is a very juicy candy to jump to conclusions. For that very reason, They have presented a roadmap of four new chips with which the company intends to accelerate both its content recommendation systems and its generative AI capabilities. The first chip is now operational; The other three will arrive before the end of 2027. Below are all the details. Dependence. For years, Meta has relied almost entirely on NVIDIA and AMD to power its data centers. The development of our own silicon is complicated, but if it is achieved, it can be a very successful financial and strategic bet in these times. According to statements According to its vice president of engineering, Yee Jiun Song, designing its own chips allows the company to “eliminate what we don’t need,” which directly translates into cost reduction. Added to this is greater independence from possible price variations or supply restrictions. Which is exactly what you have announced. The four new chips are the MTIA 300, 400, 450 and 500. Each one has a different use: The MTIA 300 is already in production and is intended to train the algorithms that decide what content Facebook and Instagram users see. The MTIA 400 (known internally as Iris) has completed laboratory testing and is en route to data centers. Meta claims that it offers performance “competitive with leading commercial products,” according to its official statement. The MTIA 450 (Arke) will double the high-bandwidth memory compared to the 400 and is scheduled for early 2027. The MTIA 500 (Astrid), the most advanced, will arrive in mid-2027 and will incorporate, according to the company, improvements in low-precision data processing. The chips are manufactured by TSMC, the world’s largest semiconductor producer, and have been developed in collaboration with Broadcom on the RISC-V open architecture. The rhythm is the most striking thing. What’s unusual is not just that Meta makes its own chips, but the speed at which it plans to do so. The usual cycle in the industry is one or two years between generations. Meta aims to release new versions every six months. “The pace of AI evolution is so fast that we always want to have the most advanced chip available when we need it,” counted Song. This accelerated cadence is possible, according to the company, thanks to a modular design that allows components to be reused between generations. ANDthis does not replace NVIDIA. It is important not to lose sight of the context. Meta remains one of the largest buyers of GPUs on the market. just a few weeks ago signed multi-million dollar agreements with NVIDIA and AMD to supply chips for the next few years, and has also reached an agreement to rent computing capacity on Google chips, as share Wired. MTIA chips are designed for specific and internal tasks (inference and recommendation systems), not for training large language models, so this strategy is complementary to your chip plans with NVIDIA or AMD. Nor should we forget that Meta recently had to abandon its most ambitious training chip, known internally as Olympus, after the project became complicated in the design phase, according to counted The Information. Susan Li, CFO of Meta, confirmed at a Morgan Stanley event that the company still has the goal of developing processors capable of training models, but without giving more details. And now what. The real test of this bet will come when the chips are deployed at scale. The challenge at the moment is to guarantee HBM memory supply before a RAM crisis that is affecting the entire technology sector. Song himself recognized to CNBC that the company “is absolutely concerned” about it, although it stated that they have assured supply for their current plans. In the long term, we will see if Meta can achieve something similar to what Google did with its TPUs. Cover image | Mariia Shalabaieva and Goal In Xataka | OpenClaw has caused a real media earthquake in China. The Government has prevented its officials from using it

Spain is betting its future in the semiconductor industry on a single card: gallium chips

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SPARC Foundry is one of the best assets that Spain can cling to to get on a train, that of semiconductors, currently guided with a firm hand by USA, South Korea, Taiwan, China and Japan. This Galician company, however, does not pursue producing silicon chips. In this area, competing with the five powers I just mentioned is essentially impossible. SPARC’s plan involves building a manufacturing factory in the Valadares Technology Park, in Vigo. next generation photonic semiconductors. The interesting thing is that these chips will not be silicon; They will be manufactured using gallium arsenide (GaAs), indium phosphide (InP) or gallium nitride (GaN), and will most likely have a leading role in the telecommunications, defense, automotive, consumer electronics, quantum computing or the aerospace industry. Be that as it may, SPARC will not tackle the GIGaNTE project alone. Indra leads it with a 37% stake in SPARC Foundrywhich places the latter group as the majority partner of the company specialized in the production of chips. According to SPARC and Indra, the Vigo semiconductor plant will be operational during the first half of 2027 and will have the capacity to manufacture up to 20,000 wafers per year when it is able to work at full capacity. An interesting note: GIGaNTE, the name of this project, has been designed around the chemical formula of gallium nitride (GaN). Gallium aspires to be the protagonist of the next generation of chips Photonic integrated circuits use photons to process and transmit information. Photons are the elementary particles responsible for forms of electromagnetic radiation, including the manifestation of visible light. They have no mass and are capable of traveling in a vacuum at a constant speed: the speed of light. However, something worth not overlooking is that although we are referring to them as particles, they also manifest as waves, hence the existence of the quantum phenomenon known as ‘wave-particle duality’ to identify the wave nature of light. Although, as we have seen, SPARC will produce photonic chips, the core of its business will revolve around gallium arsenide and gallium nitride. Unlike silicon, They are not elementary semiconductors. And they are not because the latter are characterized by being made up of a single chemical element, while gallium arsenide (GaAs) is composed of gallium (Ga) and arsenic (As), and gallium nitride (GaN) is composed of gallium (Ga) and nitrogen (N). SPARC is going to produce photonic chips and the core of its business will revolve around gallium arsenide and gallium nitride The term semiconductor is appearing many times in this article, so it is a good idea that we review what it is about before moving forward. A semiconductor is an element or compound that, under certain conditions of pressure, temperature, or when exposed to radiation or an electromagnetic field, behaves like a conductor, and, therefore, offers little resistance to the movement of electrical charges. And when it is found in other different conditions it behaves like an insulator. In this last state it offers great resistance to the displacement of electrical charges. In elements with electrical conduction capacity, some of the electrons in their atoms, known as free electrons, can pass from one atom to another when we apply a potential difference at the ends of the conductor. Precisely, this electron displacement capacity is what we know as electric currentand we all know intuitively that metals are good conductors of electricity. Curiously, they are because they have many free electrons that can move from one atom to another and, thus, they manage to transport the electrical charge. Gallium nitride and gallium arsenide are semiconductors, and this implies that under certain circumstances they are capable of transporting electrical charge. When the appropriate conditions exist, the mobility of its electrons is much greater than in semiconductors such as silicon or germanium. And this means that its capacity to transport electrical charge is also superior. Another very interesting property of these compounds is their high saturation rate. It is not necessary for us to delve into this parameter to the point of excessively complicating the article, but it is interesting that we know that it reflects the maximum speed at which electrons can move. through the crystal structure of these compounds. This maximum speed is limited by the dispersion suffered by the electrons during their movement. Gallium arsenide transistors can work at frequencies above 250 GHz This property has very important repercussions. One of them is that gallium arsenide transistors can work at frequencies above 250 GHz, which is a quite impressive figure. In addition, they are relatively immune to overheating and produce less noise in electronic circuits than silicon devices, especially when it is necessary to work at high frequencies. On the other hand, gallium nitride can work at very high voltages and reach extreme temperatures without its performance or stability being compromised. Besides, allows manufacturing compact and efficient transformers Because it dissipates little energy in the form of heat, it will most likely play a fundamental role in the charging infrastructure of electric cars and base stations for 5G communications. Image | Generated by Xataka with Gemini More information | SPARC Foundry In Xataka | Spain steps on the accelerator in its particular chip race. And it does so with a total commitment to integrated photonics

TSMC is the ‘kingpin’ of chips and Apple has always been its best friend. That just changed

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TSMC is the foundry of the world. Although there are others like Samsung that have muscleit is the Taiwanese company that has conquered the high-performance chip segment. It has achieved this through capacity, technology and an alliance: that of Apple. For a decade, TSMC was Apple’s great friend, the one that manufactured its chips and the one that revolutionized – with the designs of Apple Silicon– the laptops. Now NVIDIA rules. And he has elbowed his way through. In short. In the midst of the AI ​​era and with a technological current in which it is impossible to separate oneself from NVIDIA, Apple has more than enough reasons to feel jealous. While the mobile segment faces cuts unprecedented due to the crisis of RAM and components, and with Tim Cook himself -CEO of Apple- commenting on the difficulties they will have This 2026, artificial intelligence is going like a rocket. Major memory manufacturers have pivoted to high-bandwidth memory for AI GPUs, and companies like NVIDIA, Phison, amd and even the Chinese ones like SMIC and Huawei They are clapping their ears. They have made the AI ​​Big Techs dependent on their hardware, and no one makes that hardware like TSMC. Result? According to the latest reports, NVIDIA will become its largest customer this year. The importance of ‘Customer A’. It may seem like an unimportant change of chips, but it is actually more relevant than we think. The difference between a ‘Customer A’ and a ‘Customer B’ implies that, faced with production bottlenecks, one of the two is given priority. We already saw this in the 2020 semiconductor crisis when, precisely, half of the industry was drowning (cars, cameras, TVs and mobile phones) while Apple did not have such bad forecasts because it was the darling of a TSMC that was going to focus on iPhone chips to consolidate a lucrative relationship that began with the Apple A8 of the iPhone 6. Jensen Huang himself -CEO of NVIDIA- has commented the quite proud play on a podcast. “Morris –Morris Chang, founder of TSMC and friend of Huang – will be happy to know that NVIDIA is TSMC’s largest customer right now,” said the CEO. It is because little margin: 19% for NVIDIA compared to 17% for Apple, but it is an achievement and a thermometer of how the industry is doing. Last year, NVIDIA’s contribution to TSMC was 12%, which is a considerable jump in a very short time. “I need a lot of wafers”. Obviously, this does not imply that TSMC is going to stop pampering Apple over other companies. Apple has a huge percentage of the mobile segment, but NVIDIA is crucial to keep the AI ​​machinery rolling. Despite the Google attempts with its TPUsthe agreements of OpenAI with Broadcomthose of Goal with NVIDIA and AMD or those of xAI manufacturing its chipsNVIDIA is still the one who splits the cod. Even Chinese companies need NVIDIA GPUs and, of course, NVIDIA is more than willing to take a cut. On a recent visit to Taiwan,. Huang met with local industry heavyweights and noted that “NVIDIA would need a lot of wafers this year,” putting even more pressure to a TSMC that is crucial in the artificial intelligence chain. Synonym of success. Samsung, Huawei and SMIC They are fighting to be alternatives in case TSMC collapses. But TSMC has put us on the couch and has been looking at how to diversify the business for a few years. In Taiwan they maintain the heart and the muscle, but the plant in Europe – in Germany – is underway and they already have an operational foundry in the United States. In fact, there are plans to expand it because they have more and more clients who need a very specific product that works like a Swiss watch. But this has a B side: all the industry’s eggs are in the same basket. If TSMC fails, the house of cards can collapse. There is already some report that indicates that the American plant that manufactures for Apple, Intel, NVIDIA or AMD is overwhelmed due to a huge amount of orders. And there, precisely, lies the importance of being a client A… or a client B. Images | TSMC, NVIDIA In Xataka | SK is one of the chip whales and it is clear about one thing: not all the money in the world will satisfy AI’s hunger for RAM

Apple completely changes the architecture of its chips with a textbook “divide and conquer”

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The week started with a flurry of news from Apple, something we already expected after Tim Cook’s words stating that it was going to be a “great week.” And in addition to the new iPhone 17e and iPad Airtoday it was the MacBook’s turn. In this article we wanted to focus on explaining what is special about the new M5 Pro and M5 Max processors, chips that land at the latest MacBook Pro. The company follows the same pattern as always. First comes the base chip, the M5, which we already saw in the 14-inch MacBook Prohe iPad Pro and Apple Vision Proalong with the new MacBook Air, and then, they take advantage of their most capable equipment to welcome the most powerful variants. But this year there is something different, and that is that the company uses a new manufacturing architecture internal that Apple had not used until now in its Mac chips. We will tell you all the details. Apple’s M4 Pro and M4 Max SoCs, in numbers m5 pro m5 max M5 m4 photolithography 3nm (3rd gen) 3nm (2nd generation) 3nm (2nd generation) 3nm architecture Fusion Fusion A single die A single die CPU cores Up to 18 18 Up to 10 Up to 10 Supercores 6 6 4 4 performance cores 12 12 6 6 GPU cores Up to 20 Up to 40 Up to 10 Up to 10 neural engine 16 16 16 16 maximum unified memory 64 128 32 32 bandwidth 307GB/s 614 GB/s 153GB/s 120GB/s ray tracing Yes (3rd gen.) Yes (3rd gen.) Yes (3rd gen.) Yeah neural accelerator on GPU Yes (per core) Yes (per core) Yes (per core) No connectivity Thunderbolt 5 Thunderbolt 5 Thunderbolt 4 Thunderbolt 4 / USB 4 codecs H.264, HEVC, ProRes, AV1 H.264, HEVC, ProRes, AV1 H.264, HEVC, ProRes, AV1 H.264, HEVC, ProRes, AV1 memory integrity enforcement Yeah Yeah No No The big news: the Fusion architecture Perhaps one of the most striking aspects of these new chips is the call ‘Fusion’ architecture. Apple has designed this SoC (system on a chip) by combining two other chips manufactured in TSMC’s third-generation 3-nanometer node. The signature promise that the chips communicate with each other through very high bandwidth and minimal latency. Why this approach? As chips grow in number of cores and memory needs, Putting everything on a single piece of silicon becomes increasingly complicated and expensive. The solution of dividing it into two interconnected chips allows its capabilities to be scaled without sacrificing efficiency. Each of these chips integrates CPU, GPU, neural engine, unified memory controller, Media Engine (which are the cores dedicated to processing multimedia codecs) and controllers. Thunderbolt 5. It is, in essence, the basis that makes it possible for the M5 Max to reach figures that we previously only saw in desktop chips. A new CPU from top to bottom Both the M5 Pro and M5 Max share the same CPU design: 18 cores organized into two very different types. On the one hand there are the so-called super cores: six high-performance cores which Apple also incorporated into the standard M5. The company assures which are “the world’s fastest CPU cores in single-thread performance”thanks to the fact that they handle greater bandwidth, and have a new cache hierarchy and better branch prediction. On the other hand, the chip incorporates 12 performance cores completely new, different from the efficiency cores we have seen in previous generations. They are optimized specifically for multi-threaded workloads that require sustained power without skyrocketing consumption. The combination of both groups of cores allows, according to Apple, a jump of up to 30% in performance for professional tasks regarding M4 Pro and M4 Maxand up to 2.5 times more multi-threaded performance compared to M1 Pro and M1 Max. It will be interesting to see this performance improvement in action when we test the devices in depth. What the M5 Pro promises Your GPU scales up to 20 cores next generation, each with an integrated neural accelerator. Memory bandwidth goes up to 307GB/sand the chip can manage up to 64 GB of unified memory. Apple promises up to 20% more graphics performance compared to the M4 Pro, and up to 35% improvement in applications that use ray tracing, thanks to its dedicated third-generation engine included in the chip. The shading engine is also updated, incorporating second-generation dynamic caching technology and hardware-accelerated mesh shading. What this technology basically does is simplify complex geometries into more manageable meshes for when it’s time to render. In terms of AI, Apple claims that the M5 Pro offers more than four times the GPU performance for artificial intelligence compared to the M4 Pro, and more than six times compared to the M1 Pro. M5 Max: the ceiling of Apple laptops The M5 Max shares the same 18-core CPU as the M5 Pro, but doubles the graphics and memory resources. Your GPU reaches 40 coresthe unified memory bandwidth reaches 614 GB/s (twice as much as the M5 Pro) and can hold up to 128 GB of unified memory. In graphic performance, Apple assures an improvement of up to 20% compared to the M4 Maxand up to 30% in ray tracing applications. For AI tasks, the chip promises more than four times the peak GPU performance compared to its direct predecessor and more than six times compared to the M1 Max. With these astronomical figures, Apple puts on the table a tremendously capable chip for all types of professionals, from 3D artists to app developers, AI, etc. And in the end, having such an amount of bandwidth on a laptop makes tasks with large volumes of data much easier to digest. We will see in practice how they perform. The rest of the package: Neural Engine, Thunderbolt 5 and security Beyond the CPU and GPU, both chips incorporate a 16-core Neural Engine renewed, which promises a higher bandwidth connection to memory, ideal for functions of Apple Intelligence and other local AI applications. In connectivity, the M5 Pro and … Read more

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