factory

Huawei is building a semiconductor empire. And in the middle of the crisis, now it is going for its own DRAM factory

by

If Huawei has a message for the United States that tried to ostracize it with the five-year-old vetothat message is “thank you.” It was the same president of the Chinese company who commented a few days ago that, without the pressure from the westChina and Huawei could not have developed their technology at the speed they have. Because Huawei is developing an empire, and the latest reports suggest that they are going for the missing piece: DRAM memory. And they are creating a megafactory so as not to depend on anyone in a market that is far from improving. DRAM factory. It is estimated that SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron have more than 90% of the global DRAM market. With the big three focusing all their production on AI platforms, neither consumers nor companies of consumer products can access components at competitive prices, so they look for alternatives. It is said that Apple would be looking at the Chinese CXMTbut now there are those point that Huawei is creating a DRAM factory with government support. The company Swaysure, from Shenzhen, one of the technological hearts of the country, would be building with Huawei a factory with the capacity to create 12-inch wafers. The planned production would be 140,000 wafers per month and, in charge of all this, would be a former director of TSMC. chip empire. China has one goal: that at least 80% of basic technology that their companies use is supplied by national companies, and Huawei plays a fundamental role there. It is no longer about the huge campuses that they have to promote their own business, but also their presence in all the technological sectors of the country and the importance that they are gaining by becoming one of the pivots of semiconductors in China. With the help of SMIC, they have managed to develop chips with an advanced architecture in record time and, in addition, it is estimated that at least 11 factories throughout the country operate it with the help of allied companies. They create logic chips, have foundry services, and also operate in the DRAM chip segment. With the new company led by Swaysure, they would take another step to achieve greater independence from the big players in the memory and NAND chip sector. In the end, it is about creating an industrial network that allows us to achieve that 80% goal and, above all, be more independent from foreign technology. Images from Planet Labs and Financial Times in which you can see the evolution in the construction of a Huawei and SwaySure plant between 2022 and 2025. parallel reality. To achieve this, Huawei has some of the most impressive technological and R&D campuses on the planet, which has allowed them in a very short time to not only rise from the ashes, but create a parallel reality. In terms of software, HarmonyOS is on more than 1 billion devices, the Huawei Clouyd service is growing outside of China in countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and then there are the chips. They have the Ascend and Kunpeng optimized for both AI and edge computingrecently introduced a supercluster for advanced AI tasks and intend to change the paradigm of the evolution and development of processors with a ‘Tau Law’ under which they will begin to create their new Kirin consumer chips that we can see in devices such as mobile phones and tablets. And that they have the Chinese government support It is a guarantee. Chinese lever. Returning to Huawei’s RAM, this movement is not designed to compete against the big three in the sector, but rather to not depend on them. That is, Huawei should not want to be Samsung in such a short time, but having the capacity to make its DRAM, it could stop depending on Samsung or SK Hynix, for example. Furthermore, these types of movements are part of a more long-term strategy, one in which Huawei has gone from being a large company in China to being one of the lungs of the country’s technological developmentdriving the AI ​​platforms of other companies with its hardware and being the heart of some of the data centers in which China is going to invest 300 billion dollars over the next five years. HE esteemIn fact, Huawei will take over 60% of the Chinese AI chip market in 2026. Now, no matter how much they invest and create new foundries, they still have a hot potato: no one manufactures advanced lithography machines like ASML’s to which Chinese companies have restricted access. They are advancing through alternative techniques and reverse engineeringbut if China wants to be the first technological nation in the short term (an objective that they have marked themselves), at some point they will need those huge, next-generation “printers.” Image | ASML In Xataka | US adds Netherlands to Pax Silica alliance: ASML host nation enters anti-Chinese bloc

a colossal textile factory from a thousand years ago with its own Amancio Ortega

by

There are many myths surrounding the Vikings: they were not a pure superior race how supremacists think neither pillage was their way of life. Yes indeed, They were even more violent of what the collective imagination thinks. But they were not savages or illiterate: their society was more complex and advanced than it may seem. So much so that They had a huge workshop set up textile. The discovery. The Moesgaard Museum, the institution linked to Aarhus University and an authentic reference in Danish Viking archaeology, has presented the preliminary results of an ongoing excavation in Søften, north of Aros, the Viking city that is the origin of modern-day Aarhus. There they have found 82 underground workshop huts (grubehuse) in an area of ​​at least 100,000 square meters. Liv Stidsing Reher-Langberg, director of the excavation, points out that the layout of the site, with differentiated areas of production, crafts and a single home, suggests that it was an activity directed by someone with control over the resources, it was not just any agricultural town. Why is it important. Moesgaard historian Kasper H. Andersen explains that Søften and Lisbjerg are examples of how Aros was integrated into international economic networks thanks to these productive centers in the periphery. That is, it reinforces the theory that there artisanal production was organized in satellite settlements around emporiums, such as Ribe or Hedeby. Context. In addition to this Søften site, there are two other Viking sites near Aros: Lisbjerg, where the Moesgaard museum had previously excavated an aristocratic settlement where they found 30 graves in 2025 and Elstedwhere in 2024 an archeology student found a Viking silver hoard. This set of sites reinforces the image of a densely organized region around Aarhus during the Viking Age, probably between the 7th and 10th centuries AD, although the exact dating of the Søften site is yet to be confirmed by scientific analysis, according to collects mithsonian Magazine. In detail. Of the 82 grubehuse, 48 have been located in this campaign in an area that covers 60,000 square meters and the remaining 34 come from from previous excavations carried out in 2008 and 2013. Among the objects recovered were loom weights and spindles for textile production, silver cuttings, coins and glass beads, goods linked to commerce and the economic activity of the place. Likewise, there was a cobblestone area next to a wet area, which made traffic easier. Yes, but. At the moment we are looking at conclusions from the preliminary study, not an academic publication with peer review. Furthermore, the hypothesis of “centralized control” is an interpretation of the excavation director, Liv Stidsing Reher-Langberg, pending more precise dating and fiber analysis that places the site exactly within the Viking era. In Xataka | We knew that Viking society was violent, but not that violent: a new study sheds light on their level of weaponry In Xataka | Science already knows when the Viking Age began. Thanks to a solar flare Cover | Ashutosh Gupta and Moesgaard Museum

After taking the plunge into games in physical format, Sony’s large disc factory is preparing for another future: optical microlenses

by

On July 1, PlayStation gave the death blow to physical games. Starting in January 2028, there will be no new games in this format for PlayStation consoles, marking the most aggressive initiative against this format that we have seen since Xbox’s moves in 2013 and Nintendo’s Game Key Card with Nintendo Switch 2. Let the physical format die It is an anti-consumer measure whose announcement comes just when Sony itself demonstrated, removing more than 500 films of your digital store, that users we do not own the digital products that we buy We only buy permission from companies to be able to use it for an indefinite period of time that ends when these companies decide that this is how it should be. These days in networks there was a big question: faced with such a drastic measure, Would Sony back down? Well, everything indicates that it is not because in Austria there is the only Sony disc factory, the one from which the majority of games come out in physical format for PlayStation and one in which its employees would already be receiving training to dedicate themselves to other things. And those things are optical microlenses. The great PlayStation game factory is recycled The proof that PlayStation’s decision does not only affect PlayStation’s own games is in the game box. If you look at almost any PS3, PS4, or PS5 game cover, will specify “made in Austria”. This is because in Austria, specifically in Thalgauis located (now the only one after the conversions and closures of American and Japanese plants) main Sony record factory. Sony’s own games come out of it, but also those of the rest of the companies that manufacture for PlayStation. It is estimated that Thalgau produces 600,000 discs every day, half of them for PlayStation, but as things are about to change, employees are already preparing. According to the Austrian media ORF Salzburgthe 300 employees of the plant found out about the decision on the same July 1 in which Sony announced the end of physical games for PlayStation, but contrary to what we might think, there will be no layoffs but a restructuring. They point out that Sony has invested 30 million euros in equipment to convert the factory into an optical microlens factory and employees are already receiving training for this. According to the report, the idea is that Sony will begin mass production of these microlenses next year. Your application? There are several, and in the age of AI, they can be used as equipment to connect racks, but from the department Sony Micro Optics they point out that an application of microoptics can be for the automotive sector. “Micro-optics is the miniaturization of optical systems and elements that serve to focus and direct light in the smallest possible space. For example, a car turn signal that is projected onto the asphalt.” And this is important because, as we say, since last Wednesday there have been voices that suggest that, with a year and a half left until 2028, Sony may rethink things and turn back. The problem with that thinking is that This is not a decision to be made lightly.and this immediate restructuring of their large record factory shows that the Japanese have been thinking about change for some time. No matter how many signature platforms are in place, it seems that the decision is irrevocable. And also a sample of what happens when you have no competition, since Xbox is neither here nor expected in this area of ​​living room consoles after the failure of their last two machines. And more now with the internal situation they have. Image | sony In Xataka | There are more and more physical video games that are paperweights. It is a tremendous problem for video games as art.

China launches the first factory for personalized vaccines with artificial intelligence

by

Cancer treatment is on the verge of a historic revolution driven by the hyperpersonalization of medicine. Until now we were working with the idea of ​​manufacturing general medicines to treat cancer, but the idea of ​​manufacturing a unique and exclusive medicine for the genetics of each patient’s tumor has been around for years in laboratories, but the great bottleneck has always been the manufacturing time and, logically, the immense costs. A new step. China just gave the green light to the world’s first production line for cancer vaccines powered entirely by artificial intelligence. Located in Beijing, this facility is owned by Likang Life Sciences, a firm that has invested approximately $16.1 million in setting up a factory designed to operate at unprecedented speed. Its most advanced product is the LK101 neoantigen vaccine and it delegates the complex task of sequencing tumor DNApromising to synthesize customized doses in just one day. The definitive objective of this technological deployment is for patients to receive their personalized injection a few days after undergoing the biopsy. Why an AI? The key here is in the “neoantigens”, small mutated proteins that are exclusively in tumor cells and in each patient we find specific antigens. Here AI intervenes as an ultra-fast analytical engine by scrutinizing the tumor’s genetic information and predicting which parts of the antigen will be most effective in awakening and directing immune system cells to kill the tumor. Because here the only thing we seek is to activate the natural defenses we have, as we already do with immunotherapy, so that it is able to find tumor cells and destroy them, just as it does, for example, when we have an infection. But this is a process that requires great personalization and, above all, great speed to act as soon as possible on patients. And this is something an AI can do. for a long time Science has been paving this path, as we saw with an article published in 2024 which demonstrated that the integration of AI in the design of mRNA and DNA oncological vaccines is essential to know with maximum accuracy the composition of a tumor and its weak points. And to avoid failures, the algorithms are trained with large databases that we already have, where all the possible variants that a tumor may have are found. Another good news is that pioneering publications in Nature had already demonstrated the feasibility of RNA vaccines to induce specific and memory immune responses in patients with melanoma or even in such lethal and complex tumors. like pancreatic cancer. The nuance. It must be made very clear, first of all, that the promising results obtained in animals do not directly guarantee success in all patients, with clinical efficacy in humans still being very limited. And currently the vast majority of studies focused on this new personalized treatment are in very early stages. On the other hand, although China has built the first large algorithmic factory, its clinical research ecosystem remains very closed, and the data indicates that between 2014 and 2024 89 clinical trials of oncological vaccines were registered in this country. Something that greatly clashes with the 757 tests that have been carried out in the United States in this same period. And more limited. Added to this is that Chinese trials have an almost exclusively domestic vocation, with barely 2.2% global reach compared to 47.6% in the United States. But they also address less oncological diversity, focusing on about 5 types of cancer compared to the more than 20 studied by North American competitors. Images | Testalize In Xataka | Cancer in people under 50 years of age has been growing for decades. A macro study finally points to the big culprit: biological aging

An artisanal cheese factory in California was on the verge of bankruptcy. Today it is a buoyant business thanks to something: AI agents

by

North of San Francisco there is a city called Petaluma where there is a cheese factory with the same name. Petaluma Creamery has more than a century of history and generated $50 million in its golden age, but several factors caused it to be on the verge of disappearing. The story of their salvation is proof that AI does not always come to destroy jobs, it can also save businesses. A legendary cheese factory about to disappear. They count in Fortune that Larry Peter bought Petaluma Creamery in 2004 when the cooperative was about to close. It was he who turned it into a renowned brand that supplied hundreds of supermarkets and restaurants. After more than a decade of success, 2020 was the beginning of the end: the pandemic caused orders to drop, Larry had health problems and they lost Chipotle, one of their most important clients. The computer cousin. It’s not a meme. Larry Peter had a cousin, Daniel Peter, who was not a computer scientist but something even better: 17 years working at Salesforce implementing planning systems for manufacturers. Furthermore, he had just taken a sabbatical so it was the perfect opportunity and he ended up becoming the CTO of the cheese factory (goodbye, sabbatical). What Daniel found was a company that operated in a completely archaic way. All orders were recorded on paper, but invoices were entered in QuickBooks, an accounting software. The problem is that each of the more than 150 items had a code that employees had to know by heart, such as CY for yellow cheddar. As if that were not enough, it was invoiced in pounds, but the orders were always boxes or pieces. Goodbye, gap year. First step: digitize. The first thing the company’s new CTO did was install fiber optic internet and began taking all the data accumulated over decades to the cloud. Once everything was digitalized and the house was tidy, Daniel built an operating system based on Salesforce and the Agentforce AI platform. This is where things got interesting. AI agents to the rescue. With the house now in order, the intelligence layer was added and different tools were created to run the business. The first thing he did was load the jungle of codes for each article and replaced it with one that allowed searching with natural text. In addition, it automatically transforms boxes or pieces of cheese into pounds, making order registration a much faster process. Another of the agents that he implemented is capable of predicting what a customer is going to order based on the purchase history, so orders can be placed faster and if a customer forgets something the system remembers it. There is also an agent who plans delivery routes that can be modified with natural prompts and, finally, an agent is dedicated to controlling the traceability of the milk, recording data such as weight, temperature, time and origin. The human touch. AI agents improved the entire company’s operations, but there is one thing they do not know how to do and that is search for clients. For this, Larry Peter had the help of Kevin Goddard, who worked as a salesperson in the sector for decades. The result of joining their network of contacts with the new tools, managed to make the company go from having only 13 clients to more than 300. Petaluma Creamery is still far from billing 50 million at its peak, but they already plan to reach 10 million next year. The future. AI is reconfiguring the labor market and in many cases that translates into massive layoffsbut this is not always the case and the story of this cheese factory shows the other side of automation and AI. “It is very likely that this place would not exist without her” says Daniel Peter, the CTO cousin. In the end, it seems that he liked life between the factory and the farm and the sabbatical year is going to last a little longer than expected. Image | Petaluma Creamery In Xataka | Enterprises have successfully embraced AI agents. So much so that they are drowning in them

the Atlas robot will go directly to a car factory

by

Hyundai has finally taken full control of Boston Dynamics, as advances the South Korean newspaper Maeil Business Newspaper. The movement is a clear warning to surfers: robots are no longer for recording fun videos on the internet doing parkour or turning into pets, they are now preparing to work for real in car factories. The large companies in the sector are already moving chips to see who dominates this new industrial revolution in a practical way, that is, putting useful robots into their assembly lines as soon as possible to achieve competitive advantage and in this scenario the Korean automobile company has just hit the table. The purchase. As the South Korean media exclusively reports, Hyundai Motor Group has bought 9.65% of the missing shares of Boston Dynamics for 325 million dollars (about 283 million euros). The person who gets rid of these shares is the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group Corp. and does so by taking advantage of an agreement signed in 2021 to activate the sale just before the deadline expired, today, June 20. To fully close the deal, Hyundai would have transferred the RAI institute, a scientific artificial intelligence research center worth $100 million, to SoftBank. Why is it important. The acquisition is critical because it eliminates the usual frictions of shared management in one fell swoop: Hyundai is the sole owner of 100% of the company, so it can make decisions more quickly and without waiting for anyone. In other words, you can gear up to vertically integrate Boston Dynamics systems into your plants without reaching agreements or sharing roadmaps with outside investors. In addition, having complete control will allow Hyundai to much better prepare Boston Dynamics for its big goal: to start listing and selling shares on the Nasdaq. Gaining autonomy and agility is essential in the face of aggressive competition from Tesla or Figure AI and of course, China. The Chinese government is investing a lot of public money to encourage its own robotics companies, such as Unitree, to produce units en masse and at low cost, a strategy that in fact it has already applied recently with electric cars or solar panels. With this coup d’état, Hyundai ensures that it safeguards the valuable technology of the American Boston Dynamics in the hands of an allied country. Context. Boston Dynamics is probably the most famous robotics company in the world and its ownership history has been curious to say the least: it went from being an academic division of MIT to belong to Google in 2013, then he came to Softbank. In 2021, Hyundai was made with the majority of the company. Simultaneously, SoftBank is changing its eggs in the basket: from robotics hardware to AI in several aspects that go to infrastructure with data centers to software. In detail. Hyundai has been “lucky”: according to Maeil Business Newspaper has closed the agreement to get that last package of shares very cheap thanks to the fact that the cost was already signed and frozen five years ago, before robots became fashionable. In fact, the market value of Boston Dynamics has reached almost 30 trillion won (about 19.8 billion euros) last year. Internally, the shareholding would be divided as follows: president Euisun Chung retains his 22.6%, while the subsidiaries distribute the rest of the parent company, namely: Hyundai Motor with 28%, Kia with 17.2%, Hyundai Mobis with 11.3% and Hyundai Glovis with 11.25%. Yes, but. To begin with, this is an exclusive leak: neither Hyundai nor Softbank has officially communicated the transaction. In addition, the automobile company has had to pay a toll: getting rid of the RAI institute, for which Hyundai had invested $424 million in 2022. Hyundai keeps the factories and the body of the robots, but loses control of the brains of the machines. In Xataka | It assembles 1,500,000 cars a year and does so at a rate of one every 10 seconds: the keys to the fastest factory in the world In Xataka | A Chinese firm has just presented a quadruped that defies limits. Boston Dynamics no longer has a clear path Cover | hyundai

Elon Musk not only wants to reach the Moon, he also wants to turn it into a factory for satellites launched with catapults

by

What do they have in common ChinaSpaceX, Auriga Space and Electromagnetic Launch? Well, possibly several things, but one of them is that they have expressed interest in using mass cannons to launch from the Moon. Said to very roughlywant to use electromagnetic catapults loaded with satellites or construction materials to other points in space. Today, existing technologies are not optimized to launch large loads, but with so much power involved it would not be strange if it were finally achieved. The ethical implications would be many even if they only focused on science and communications. However, it could be even worse; Well, according to the analysis recently published by an expert, the arrival of the military applications It would only be a matter of time. From moon rocks to nuclear warheads. The idea of ​​the lunar mass cannon He initially proposed it a scientist named Gerard O’Neill in the 70s. His idea was to use them to extract minerals from the Moon and launch them into space to build space colonies with them. Over time, many space agencies, public and private, have become interested in its use. For this reason, the independent analyst specialized in cislunar security Andre Sonntag just published a report in which he recounts the risks that these catapults would entail. If the necessary technology is optimized to launch large payloads, they could be used to launch probes aimed at destroying satellites, inert projectiles and even ships loaded with nuclear warheads. Furthermore, if launches are made from the Moon they may be more difficult to detect by conventional early warning systems, so many attacks would go unnoticed. An ingenious design. Mass cannons are actually very interesting systems for space launch. They consist on a track in which one electromagnet is placed after another. A metal cart is circulated above and is attracted by said magnets. Each of these electromagnets is activated just when the car passes over it, giving it a new impulse, so that it accelerates more and more. The goal is to reach 2.4 kilometers per second, since this is the speed necessary to escape from the Moon. When this is achieved, the cargo on board the car is launched into space. In short, it is possible to catapult what is inside the car without having to consume propellant. Better on the Moon. This system has historically been proposed for use on the Moon for two reasons. To begin with, unlike what happens with a conventional rocketa very high speed is reached very quickly. If the process were done on Earth, the rocket would reach the atmosphere so quickly that it would catch fire due to friction when crossing it. On the other hand, there is no classical atmosphere on the Moon. On the other hand, since gravity on the Moon is much lower, a lower speed is needed than what would be needed to escape through this system on Earth. The case of Elon Musk. In his report, Sonntag has not mentioned any company or agency. However, it is well known that Elon Musk speak of the use of these mass cannons last February. He has been expressing his interest for a long time establish data centers in space and manufacture AI satellites directly on the Moon. This would avoid the energy, thermal management and launch logistics limitations that Earth poses for its ambitious plan. The vacuum of space would serve as a coolant and solar energy could be used to obtain electricity. The release waiting listIn addition, it would be much clearer than on Earth. In order not to have to carry large amounts of fuel to the Moon, their idea is to launch these satellites directly from our satellite. That is why he has already mentioned electromagnetic catapults on several occasions. There is legislation, but it is difficult to ensure. The United Nations Outer Space Treaty strictly prohibits the construction of military installations on celestial bodies. It also prohibits nuclear launches from space. However, Sonntag points out in his report that it would be quite difficult to verify. Therefore, he is concerned if these types of systems advance, given the interest of tycoons like Elon Musk. The payloads that could be launched with current technologies are minuscule. In fact, launching functional satellites directly with one of these cannons is science fiction. However, technology will advance. By then, we must be prepared, because those who have no scruples on Earth will not have them in space either. Image | SpaceX/xAI In Xataka | We knew there was water on the Moon, but not why some craters were empty. Finally we have the answer

In China they want humanoid robots to do household chores. The problem is that a house is not a factory

by

For years we have seen humanoid robots do somersaults, danceppractice martial arts or move through factories with increasingly striking capabilities. The next step seems almost natural: taking them home to do the laundry, prepare a bed or support elder care. The problem is that this transition is not as direct as it seems. A factory is designed to reduce uncertainty; A home, on the other hand, is full of small exceptions. And for a robot, those exceptions can be exactly the difference between a flashy demo and a useful product. The concept. SCMP account That GigaAI has introduced the SeeLight S1 as the country’s first general-purpose home humanoid robot model, developed in collaboration with the Hubei Humanoid Robot Innovation Center and the Hubei Humanoid Robotics Industry Alliance. In images released by the company, he appears performing very recognizable tasks: cutting vegetables, frying eggs, loading a washing machine, hanging clothes, making a bed or opening curtains. The company also plans to test it for free in homes in Wuhan in the first half of 2027. A house is not an assembly line. That is the fundamental difference. In a factory, the robot can work with known references, pieces always placed in the same way and movements that are repeated thousands of times with very few variations. In a home, on the other hand, nothing guarantees that the shirt is where it was yesterday, that the chair has not moved or that a pet does not cross in front of it just when the robot is trying to complete a task. Much movement, little understanding. Xinhua itself collects an idea that helps cool down the epic of the demonstrations and that does not only affect China, but humanoid robotics in general: humanoids have greatly improved in their “cerebellum”, the part linked to control and coordination, but they still have major problems in their “brain”. In other words, they can execute complex movements, but it is difficult for them to understand what a scene means and what function each object has within it. Home is also a data problem. Now, for these systems to work better in real homes, they need to learn from real homes, but the home is precisely one of the places where it is least easy to collect data. We are not just talking about room maps, but about objects, forces, angles, routines and physical decisions that are difficult to simulate. Advances and challenges. According to NSFCthe country expected to exceed 10,000 humanoid units sold in 2025, with a year-on-year growth of 125%, and there were already pilots in industrial manufacturing, delivery, catering and services. The important nuance is that none of this automatically turns this industrial career into a successful deployment within homes: the sector itself locates the path prudently, first industry, then logistics and commercial uses, and only later the home. A future easy to imagine, difficult to materialize. The difficult part is demonstrating that this can be done usefully, safely, and at reasonable cost outside of a prepared demonstration. There is the real border. China and other countries around the world can accelerate prototypes, pilots and production, but a home does not forgive clumsiness in the same way as a controlled stage. To get home, the robot will not have to understand human life better. Images | GigaAI In Xataka | In China there are already “schools” for robots. Its objective is the same as schools for humans: to teach them to work

space as a new factory

by

Two pharmaceutical companies have teamed up to launch an ambitious plan to synthesize drugs in space. It’s not an expensive hobby. It is more than proven that some medications They have added advantages if they crystallize under microgravity conditions. Until now, the few companies that had done so had worked alone or with the sole support of agencies such as NASA, but the fact that two of them are associated without the need for the space agency to intervene marks what could be the beginning of an era. Better to join forces. The two companies in question are Varda Space Industries and United Therapeutics Corporation. The first, founded by former SpaceX employees, has been synthesizing medicines in space since 2023. The second has never traveled beyond Earth, but it is a biotechnology company with enough potential for the union to be much stronger. The initial objective will be the crystallization in microgravity of drugs for rare lung diseases. However, in the future drugs could be produced for many other pathologies. It all started in 2019. In 2019, the companies Merck Sharp & Dome Corp. (MSD), in collaboration with the National Laboratory of the International Space Station (ISS), carried out experiments crystallization with the drug pembrolizumab (Keytruda). It is an anti-cancer drug that, as is common in chemotherapy, is administered by intravenous infusion, in a process that can last hours. By crystallizing it in space, a more stable form was obtained that allowed its administration in a single injection, making the treatment much more comfortable for patients. a matter of time. It has been seen that, when crystallized under microgravity conditions, many molecules assemble more slowly and constantly. The results are much more stable molecules that, once used as a drug, have a wide variety of advantages. For example, they dissolve better, do not require as much cold for storage, cause fewer side effects, and have a longer shelf life. Varda’s experience. The Varda company began its space pharmacology project in 2023. That year it launched the first of a series of unmanned capsules with chemical reactors into space. In these reactors, molecules crystallize and, after a few weeks or months of work, are returned to Earth. That first capsule was the W-1. W-6 is currently carrying out its mission and is expected to launch at least three more this year. Furthermore, after the merger with another pharmaceutical company, Varda is confident of being able to scale to 7 launches in 2027. Also for research. Molecules that crystallize in space give rise to larger crystals. This also makes your research easier. Therefore, with this type of project the aim is not only to obtain drugs. It is also expected to obtain candidate molecules to become medicines, to be analyzed more thoroughly by scientists on Earth. This is just the beginning. In the future, space travel will be much more widespread. The reuse of rockets will allow many more launches in less time, space tourism will become increasingly common and many public and private investigations can be carried out in orbit. If sufficient investment is achieved, the infrastructure to obtain drugs in space will become increasingly simpler. And, of course, the benefits for patients will also increase. Image | Varda/Magnific In Xataka | We knew that Mars has gravity. Now we have just discovered the unexpected effect it has on the Earth’s climate

20,000 million more will be spent on a factory with little water and labor

by

TSMC’s journey in Arizona (USA) continues. Yesterday the board of directors of this chip manufacturer, the largest on the planetapproved an injection of 20 billion dollars in what is already its most advanced semiconductor production plant of any it has in the US. The start-up of this factory It was full of setbacks.. In fact, it started production of integrated circuits almost a year late due to how much it cost TSMC. find qualified personnel that I needed. At the beginning of 2025 the first good news arrived. The plant had been producing semiconductors for several months at the N4 lithography node, which belongs to the 5nm FinFET family, and was ready to deliver to Apple the first batch of SoC A16 and SiP S9. This factory, known as Fab 21, made $514 million in profit last year according to Yeh Chun-Hsienthe minister of the National Development Council of Taiwan. This is not bad at all if we keep in mind that during the first year of operation, semiconductor plants do not usually deliver profits. In this scenario, the investment of an additional 20 billion dollars in the expansion of Fab 21, which is the purpose of this money, makes sense. In fact, this project is part of the $165 billion expansion plan that TSMC presented last year. However, not everything is going well for this company in Arizona. According to the newspaper Taipei Timesthe shortage of labor, and, above all, of water, is giving many headaches to the management leadership of this factory. And solving this last problem is not easy. Arizona’s water shortage is a huge challenge for TSMC Arizona is the second driest state in the US only behind Nevada. Semiconductor factories need a large amount of this resource, but it is not ordinary water like what comes out of our taps; They need a type of water almost impossible to find in nature. And its scarcity is getting worse. In fact, it is slowly becoming a systemic threat to the industry that sustains the artificial intelligencecell phones, electric cars and virtually any device that has an advanced chip inside. The water we are familiar with, such as that which comes from the tap, spring water, and even bottled mineral water, is full of impurities. It contains bacteria, dissolved gases, mineral salts and microscopic particles in suspension. This is not a problem for most of the everyday applications we usually use it for, but This water is not suitable for making chips. Even the slightest impurity invisible to the human eye is pure poison when involved in the production of cutting-edge semiconductors, such as the 2nm integrated circuits currently being manufactured by TSMC. The industry standard calls for water with an electrical resistivity of 18.2 megohms per centimeter The integrated circuit manufacturing process requires cleaning silicon wafers dozens of times. Every time a geometric pattern is transferred to wafers using lithography, they need to be cleaned. Also after pouring chemical reagents and photoresist fluids on them. However, the water used to remove any residue that may have deposited on the wafer cannot have the slightest impurity. It must be absolutely pure. In fact, the industry standard calls for water with an electrical resistivity of 18.2 megaohms per centimeter, which is the theoretical limit of water purity at room temperature. The problem is that producing ultrapure water is not easy. And it is not because it is necessary to subject it to reverse osmosis in multiple stages and ion exchange treatments. It is also necessary to degas it under vacuum, eliminate any microorganisms it may contain with ultraviolet light and filter it using membranes expressly designed to capture the slightest impurity. In this article we do not need to investigate these processes in detail, but there is something that we cannot ignore: this treatment consumes energy and requires the use of a large amount of chemicals. Furthermore, a significant part of the water that is processed is not transformed into ultrapure water, so it cannot be used. Once the water has been subjected to this demanding treatment, it acquires such a high purity that it becomes corrosive if it comes into contact with a very wide range of materials. Because it lacks its own ions, ultrapure water absorbs ions from virtually any material it comes into contact with. This is the reason why the pipes used to transport it must be made of materials immune to corrosion, such as PVDF (polyvinylidene fluoride), a fluorinated thermoplastic polymer similar to Teflon, non-polluting and extremely stable because it does not give up ions to ultrapure water. A single cutting-edge semiconductor plant consumes between 10 and 30 million liters of ultrapure water every day. This range is equivalent to the daily drinking water consumption of a city of between 50,000 and 150,000 inhabitants. Plus, there’s another challenge we haven’t looked into yet: ultrapure water degrades very quicklyso chip factories must have a very sophisticated production and distribution system capable of working in real time to deliver the ultrapure water required by the manufacturing process of advanced integrated circuits. Image | TSMC More information | Taipei Times In Xataka | Intel’s plan against an unattainable TSMC: beat Samsung and consolidate itself as the second largest chip manufacturer

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.