TSMC

Huawei lost to Google, Qualcomm and TSMC. What he didn’t lose was something more important: his reputation.

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Last week were the Xataka Awards 2025. Stella Li, global vice president of BYD, took the Xataka Legend. He Galaxy S25 Ultra It swept the super high range. Freepik was crowned as best Spanish technology company. It was a night of proper names, drinks and conversations with readers. But There is a prize that, for those of us who spend a lot of time in Xatakaas workers or as readers, has a special weight. Not because of its glamour, but because of what it represents. The Community Award is not decided by any jury. There are no internal debates. You, the readers, decide with your votes. It is the device that you liked the most, without filters. In fact, it is the only one that is not delivered by any employee of the house, but rather by members of the community who represent it on stage. In the image that heads this article, three of them with Cristina Isidoro, PR Manager of Huawei in Spain, who collected the award. Because this year he won it Huawei Watch GT 6 Pro. And when I saw the result, I smiled slightly: it was more than just a reward for a well-made smartwatch. It was pure symbolism. Look at the historical list of winners of this award: Almost all, Chinese devices or devices with a Chinese soul that share a pattern: focus on value for money, practical innovation, and in some cases, arriving wanting to break molds. But among all of them, Huawei is the only one that did not arrive yesterday promising a lot for little. It is the only one that was already in the world elite, disputing the throne with Samsung and in fact about to snatch it awaybefore the United States decided to use it as a pawn in its trade war. Because Huawei has not conquered the perception of premium quality by offering more gigabytes for fewer euros. It conquered it by being, for years, simply a great option. He P20 Pro It was the first mobile phone with a triple camera that really worked. The Mate 20 Pro was an unapologetic technical beast compared to the high-end greats. Their MateBook laptops have been worthy rivals of the Surface. And their GT watches already stood out for batteries that lasted weeks when Apple asked for a charger every night. They weren’t cheap. They were good. And that difference, in the technology market, is abysmal. Then 2019 arrived. EntityList. American veto. Goodbye Google, goodbye Qualcomm, goodbye TSMC. Sales outside China plummeted and the Western narrative was unanimous: Huawei was dead. Without the Google ecosystem, without access to the supply chain, it was impossible to survive in this business. But no one explained to them that it was impossible. Instead of giving up, they built their own universe. HarmonyOS on more than a billion devices. Kirin Chips own, then Ascend for AI. Huawei Cloud growing in Asia, Africa and Latin America. They didn’t beg to go back to Google Play like we might perhaps have expected them to do. They simply built another entire ecosystem. Without one word higher than another. At the beginning of the month I was in China and was able to try several of their devices, including some that just left there. The premium feel is real. And something that we do have here, the GT 6 Pro, is not a gadget 150 euros that promises too much and falls halfway. It is a watch in the 400 euro range that performs very well. and the community of Xataka has passed sentence with his prize. That doesn’t happen by chance. Xiaomi shines in value for money. Realme and Oppo play there. Nothing has its aesthetic indie. But Huawei is the only Chinese brand that, when you mention it, the European consumer automatically thinks of “serious quality”, without the asterisks that others have. And she did it right after they tried to destroy her. The Huawei Watch GT 6 Pro is a great watch. But winning the 2025 Community Award means something else: It is the recognition of the only Chinese brand that has come out of the perception low cost without giving up its origin. It is the prize that, in a way, China had been pursuing for decades. Respect without conditions. And it has been won by a company that they tried to annihilate. Sometimes vetoes don’t kill. They forge legacies. Featured image | Xataka In Xataka | The LG OLED Signature AI T4 is the best television of the year for a simple reason: we are saying goodbye to the black monolith

ASML and TSMC are masters of semiconductors. A US startup believes it knows how to end them: with X-rays

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A mysterious American startup called Substrate has made its appearance with a purpose extraordinarily ambitious: compete head to head with ASML. The Dutch company has become the master of the segment of advanced photolithography machines for chip manufacturing, but at Substrate they believe they have the key to turn the tables. Why is it important. ASML has no competition in the market since it placed its first equipment of UVE photolithography. The ASML thing is a monopoly de facto: If a chip manufacturer or designer wants to access to produce the most advanced models, it depends entirely on the Dutch company. No one has managed to stop it since then, and even China, which is trying to free itself from that dependence, it’s really complicated. Substrate. This is the name of this startup that has developed a new team in which use particle acceleration to manage lithography. This technology allows microscopic circuits to be etched onto silicon wafers, and this new company claims that its machines could be in manufacturing plants in the US within the next two years. It all sounds very good. Maybe too much, but they already have funds to try: they have just raised 100 million dollars and among investors There is Peter Thielco-founder of PayPal and current CEO of Palantir. And already, they will try to help create the new TSMC. The challenge is enormous: ASML has invested decades and billions of dollars to perfect its photolithographic equipment, and the complexity of this market makes it very difficult for companies created from scratch to compete. Substrate’s objective is twofold, because it also aims to ensure that its machines enable the affordable chip manufacturing in the US. Or what is the same: it not only wants to compete directly with ASML, but also allow American manufacturers to compete with TSMC on American soil. There it is nothing. Light is everything. When creating those circuits, some of the lines created are so fine that their dimensions are even thinner than the wavelength of light. To solve that ASML problem they do use of extreme ultraviolet light (EUV) through a very complex set of lenses and mirrors. These machines generate a type of artificial light that is capable of engraving those very fine lines on advanced chips. Very special X-rays. In Substrate they propose a different idea. Although they do not give all the details to prevent someone from copying them, their machines use X-ray lithography (LRX). A particle accelerator creates a light source from x-rays with a shorter wavelength, allowing the beam to be used to create advanced chips. Current Substrate machines are currently capable of working with 12 nanometer nodes, comparable to ASML High NA EUV machines: That would put them on par with the most advanced chip production lines in the world. LRX technology is not new. This technique has existed since the 1970s, but had been abandoned because longer wave techniques (UVP and UVE) continued to scale without the need to overcome the great technical challenges of RXL. In substrate they seem to have precisely the solution to those problems, which focused on optics and the need to use massive particle accelerators as a light source. And they promise brutal cost savings. At Substrate they maintain that their LRX equipment will have an estimated cost of about 40 million dollars, compared to 400 million for ASML’s High-NA EUV. In addition, there would be another associated revolution: the possibility of carrying out the so-called single exposure patterning at advanced resolutions (2 nm, 1 nm and beyond), thus eliminating the additional costs of the multipatterning (multiple exposures). If that promise is fulfilled, the production cost of advanced wafers would be 50% lower according to Substrate. But. Of course, it’s one thing to say it and another to do it. The precision of the process, they explain in Semianalysisis a monumental obstacle. The transfer of patterns (going “from light to silicon” almost “carving it”) remains problematic, and among the challenges is solving the roughness of the edges of the printed patterns, which is amplified during engraving. There is also the problem of stochastic noise (shot noise, random fluctuations in photons that cause defects) and secondary electron blurring inherent to the high energy of X-rays, which fundamentally limits resolution. There are also currently problems with the 1.6 nm overlay, which is still high for more advanced processes where 1.0 or 1.2 nm are sought. In Xataka | AMD is today a semiconductor giant. In its beginnings it was something much more humble: a blatant copy of Intel

OpenAI, Broadcom and TSMC want to end their XPUS

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Openai wants to hit the table in the race to dominate artificial intelligence. At the beginning of September we knew that “a mysterious client” made an investment in Broadcom of 10,000 million dollars for the design of AI chips. Through sources close to the company, we learned that it was OpenAI, with the intention of form a strategic alliance with both Broadcom and TSMC for the manufacture of own chips. Called ‘Xpus’, they have a clear objective: stop depending on Nvidia, something that Many great technology want. Have independence in AI is paid expensive. For Openai, depending completely on Nvidia to feed chatgpt and its future models is a capital risk, especially for having to deal with astronomical costs, and being limited to the technological evolution and stock of a company like NVIDIA. Creating your own chips allows OpenAI to optimize hardware specifically for your language models, reduce operating expenses and free yourself from the bonds of a single supplier. A strategy on the Apple line when He said goodbye to Intel to start making their own chips in their Mac. Although stop depending on Nvidia today is complicated. The golden trio behind the XPUS. Broadcom Lead the design Of these specialized processors, contributing their experience in custom chips for technological giants. The company controls approximately 70% of the Custom IA processors market and has already collaborated with Google in His tpus For years. TSMC, the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturer, will be responsible for producing chips using their advanced 3 nanometers technology. Mass production would predictably start in 2026with the first shipments arriving that same year. What are exactly the Xpus. These chips are not adapted gpus for AI, which is what is broadly marketing nvidia, but architectures designed from scratch With a single purpose: accelerate language models. While the NVIDIA GPUSs were born to rendering graphics and then adapted to artificial intelligence, OpenAi XPUS are specifically conceived for training and inference tasks of AI. They incorporate systemic matrices, high bandwidth (HBM) and integrated network capabilities, similar to the most advanced NVIDIA processors but optimized for the specific needs of OpenAI. The rebellion against Nvidia has several fronts. Openai is not alone in his efforts to break the hegemony of Nvidia. Google has been developing its TPUS (Tensioner Processing Units), which already go for its seventh generation. Amazon created its chips Trainium and Inferentia For AWS. Microsoft designed Maia For Azure. Goal collaborates with AMD In alternative solutions. Even from China, Huawei threatens face face In the next three years. It is clear that all large technological ones want to have greater control of their products, and for that they must go down to the chip supply chain to start rethinking the scheme. Nvidia’s real pit. Despite how the panorama is, Nvidia preserves An ace in the manga That will not be easy to overcome: CUDA. This development platform has become the industry standard for more than a decade. Virtually all the researchers and developers of the CUDA program, which generates a very powerful network effect. Changing to a different architecture not only implies acquiring new chips, but rewriting software, removing equipment and, in many cases, starting from scratch. This technology is the one that keeps Nvidia in a privileged position even before the avalanche of competitors. A dual strategy. The paradoxical of the case is that Openai is not abandoning Nvidia. Parallel to this own chips project, the company maintains An agreement of 100,000 million dollars With the Santa Clara giant for its Stargate project, which plans to build huge data centers until 2028. On the one hand, the calculation power supply with NVIDIA is ensured, while on the other they develop their long -term alternative. The idea is that XPUS are initially used internally, especially for inference (apply already trained models), while NVIDIA GPUS will continue to be necessary for training the most demanding models. The board is removed. Broadcom is clearly reinforced from this movement. The announcement of your agreement with Openai He shot his actions In the stock market and consolidate its position as a preferential partner for companies that seek custom chips. TSMC also wins: each new wave of specialized chips reinforces its indispensable role as a world reference manufacturer. Nvidia, on the other hand, saw his price slightly fall after knowing the news, although he continues to maintain A dominant position Very difficult to collapse. In addition, AMD could benefit if smaller companies, unable to develop their own chips, look for more accessible alternatives than NVIDIA. Cover image | NVIDIA, VECTEEZY, Village Global In Xataka | The companies of AI tell us that they want to achieve an AGI. What they are really conquering is the economy of attention

The undisputed winner of the aggressive competition of TSMC, Intel and Samsung is a European company: ASML

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Integrated 2 nm circuits are about to disembark in the market. Users know that nanometers have lost much of their usefulness, and that, in reality, They represent a category of semiconductors. In fact, they no longer faithfully reflect the length of logical doors or other physical parameter, such as the distance between transistors. Each chips manufacturer He manages them with freedomwhich prevents us from directly comparing the lithographs that try to “sell us.” Whatever the important thing is that TSMC, Intel and Samsung are about to engage in a new battle that seeks to capture the maximum possible number of customers for their 2 Nm or comparable line nodes. Whatever happens we can be sure that the great beneficiary of this contest will be The Dutch Company ASML. And it will be because it is the only manufacturer on the planet that produces the equipment of extreme ultraviolet photolithography (UVE) and haute opening that are necessary to go beyond the 2 Nm reaching the optimal performance. Digitimes Asia He has just confirmed that those responsible for the Samsung semiconductors manufacture are weighing the possibility of increasing the number of Uve haute opening machines that will buy at ASML. And, according to this Asian medium, it will do it because it needs to reduce the technological and commercial gap that separates it from TSMC, which leads the chip market with A fee close to 60%. The Uve High Opening machines are still in the test phase, but there are no doubt that they will be the authentic protagonists of the semiconductor industry in 2026 and successive years. ASML Haute Opening Lithography Machography is an engineering prodigy It weighs as much as two Airbus A320 and incorporates more than 100,000 pieces, 3,000 cables, 40,000 bolts, and also more than 2 km of electrical connections. The photolithography team Twinscan Exe: 5000 Designed and manufactured by ASML is the most sophisticated integrated circuit production machine that exists. And also the most expensive. The most up -to -date information we have reflects that only one of these teams costs 350 million euroswhich will surely cause some chips manufacturers think twice Before buying it. ASML plans to deliver to its customers annually from 2025 about 20 Uve Haute Opening teams ASML engineers have invested a decade in the development of the technology necessary to set up this machine, which, in reality, is a team of extreme ultraviolet lithography (UVE) second generation. This company of the Netherlands plans to deliver to its customers annually From 2025 about 20 teams of this type with a purpose: put in their hands the possibility of producing chips of 2 nm and beyond. Interestingly, to develop this machine, ASML engineers have made a very advanced optical architecture that has an opening of 0.55 compared to the 0.33 value that the first -generation UVE lithography equipment has. This refinement of the optics allows to transfer to the wafer patterns of greater resolution, hence it is possible to manufacture chips using more advanced integration technologies than those currently used in the nodes of 3 Nm. However, this is not all. ASML has also improved the mechanical systems that are responsible for the manipulation of wafers with the purpose of making it possible for a single UVE Machine to be able to produce more than 200 wafers per hour. The cover photography of this article allows us to intuit the extreme complexity and sophistication that one of these teams has, which, by the way, would not be possible without the cooperation of other companies, such as the German Zeiss or Cymer, a company of American origin that is currently consolidated within the ASML structure. Somehow this last company Delivery to ASML the raw material that need their photolithography machines. And that raw material is none other than the ultraviolet light that is responsible for transporting the geometric pattern described by the mask so that it can be transferred with great precision to the surface of the Silicon wafer. Image | ASML More information | Digitimes Asia In Xataka | The great covered in the War of Critical Minerals is Tungsten. The US needs it and 83% have it China

China’s last US hint threatens a TSMC chip factory ahead

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On December 31, it will be a very important day for semiconductor manufacturers that have plants in China. From that date they will not be able Its facilities in this Asian country. And they cannot do it because The US does not want chips manufacturing equipment that resort to American technologies and innovations They arrive in China. Not even integrated circuit factories that do not belong to Chinese companies. In 2022 the US Department of Commerce granted a temporary exemption to several manufacturers of foreign semicondators who have plants in China so that they could equip their facilities with the machines they needed. But this permissive period is about to expire. From now on any chips manufacturer who has plants in China will have to request a license from the US Commerce Department to be able to install in its factories machines with US components or technologies. Intel has sold Your Dalian plant (China), so this measure no longer affects it. However, there are three foreign companies of enormous relevance in the semiconductor industry that will be affected by this measure of the US government: South Korean Samsung and Sk Hynixand the TSMC Taiwanese. The latter has a chips factory in Nankín, in the province of Jiangsu (China), in which as of December 31 it will not be able to install advanced lithography equipment. The US and TSMC strip and loosen The semiconductor production plant that TSMC has in Nankín is important for this company, but it is not a toe. In fact, it manufactures mostly chips in its 16 and 28 nm nodes. This installation currently represents only 3% of TSMC’s total production capacity, but this does not mean that it is not relevant within the manufacturing infrastructure of this Taiwanese company. In fact, in 2021 announced an investment plan of 2,870 million dollars that in 2023 allowed expanding the manufacturing capacity of the plant to about 40,000 wafers per month. These presumably “restrictions” will condemn “in the short and medium term to this factory to the production only of mature chips During the last weeks, the TSMC Directive dome has met with the US Department of Commerce in an attempt to protect the interests of its Nankín plant, But it has not been successful. These presumably “restrictions” will condemn “in the short and medium term to this factory to Production only with ripe chipsalready long term will probably lose its relevance in the Integrated Circuite Production Infrastructure of TSMC. Whatever this is only One more episode in the awkward relationship that support the US and TSMC government for years. For this chips manufacturer the country led by Donald Trump is very important because a good part of his best clients is American. Nvidia, Apple, AMD, Broadcom or Qualcomm, among other companies, get the chips they design in TSMC’s lithographic nodes. However, this currency has a second face. And it is currently the USA cannot do without TSMC. Intel is American, and It has advanced lithography nodesbut the competitiveness of his Taiwanese rival is difficult to match. TSMC has cemented its leadership on the tuning of a range of Very advanced high integration technologiesand, at the same time, On a colossal production capacity which is only possible reaching a very high wafer performance. The US government knows very well the strength of this company. And also how important it is for US companies that I have mentioned in the previous paragraph. Image | TSMC More information | SCMP In Xataka | Intel was about to snatch Apple as a client from TSMC. Having achieved its story would be another

Nvidia, TSMC and SK Hynix are the most powerful chip companies on the planet. None can allow any of the others to fall

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Nvidia dominates the global chips market for artificial intelligence (AI) with a fee that during the last three years has oscillated between 80 and 94%, according to Fourweekmba. Your leadership is supported by A very competitive hardware and a software ecosystem in which CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) It has an essential role. This technology brings together the compiler and development tools used by programmers to develop their software for NVIDIA GPUs. However, the company led by Jensen Huang has a fundamental partner: TSMC. Nvidia designs the chips for AI and this manufacturer of Taiwanese semiconductors, the eldest of the planet with A global quota close to 60%it produces them. Its iron leadership is the result of Its peak technology and its titanic production capacity. TSMC has many important clients, such as AMD, Qualcomm, MediaTak or Broadcom, among many others, but thanks to the AI ​​NVIDIA, it has established itself as Your second best customer Only behind Apple. Presumably TSMC is about to start MANUFACT 2 NM GPU For Nvidia, but this is not the only thing that this chips manufacturer is going to do for one of its best customers. And this Taiwanese company has decided to start An expansion plan for five years of its manufacturing capacity of integrated circuits using its advanced cowos packaging technology (Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate). According to Beth Kindigof the I/O Fund consultant, this technology will monopolize between 50 and 60% of the market in 2025 compared to 15% it supported during 2024. The synergy of these companies is indisputable The high demand for GPUs for AI with Blackwell MicroAritectura de Nvidia is largely responsible for the implementation of this plan. The company led by Jensen Huang can respond better to the needs of its customers and will see how its competitiveness is increased in a phase in which Depseek and other Chinese companies represent a challenge. In March 2024 TSMC officially announced which was building two cowos packaging plants in the town of Chiayi, housed in southern Taiwan. However, this is not all. He also shuffled the option to put a plant more specialized in this advanced packaging technology in Japan, presumably on the island of Kyushu, in which this company is currently building two semiconductor production plants of avant -garde. In any case, there is something else. And it is that Chiayi plants will be trained to work, in addition to the packaging cowos, With advanced Info and Soic technologies (System on Integrated Chips). Nvidia and TSMC synergy is indisputable, but this recipe requires a third ingredient: SK Hynix It is evident that TSMC wants to cover your back well and look to the future to prevent its production capacity from being threatened by a bottleneck. An interesting note: currently the Cowos packaging is being used with the AMD Instinct Mi250 chips and with the A100, H100, H200, B100 and B200 NVIDIA GPUs, as well as in its derivatives. The review used in these last two chips, the B100 and B200, is known as Cowos-L. Before the TSMC ends this year, you will be able to process no less than 60,000 wafers per month using its advanced packaging technology. The synergy of Nvidia and TSMC is indisputable, but this recipe requires a third ingredient: SK Hynix. This South Korean manufacturer of memory chips leads the HBM memories market (High Bandwidth Memory) that work side by side with the GPUs for ia with a shocking authority. Your market share Broken 70%so that the remaining 30% are distributed by Samsung and Micron Technology. After them, Chinese manufacturers of Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (YMTC) and CXMT (Changxin Memory Technologies). At the end of 2024 SK Hynix took advantage of the celebration of an innovation forum organized by TSMC to publicize its mastery of the manufacture of HBM memories. According to SK Hynix itself Its MR-MUF process, which, in broad strokes, is a technology that makes possible a faster punch of the DRAM compared to the TC-NCF process that other companies use, has allowed it to achieve an efficiency 8.8 times higher than that of Samsung and Micron. This simply means that it manufactures its HBM chips much faster than its main competitors. SK Hynix is ​​manufacturing 12 -layer HBM3E memories on a large scale while Samsung and Micron have problems with their production As we can intuit, the speed at which a company that is dedicated to manufacturing semiconductors is capable of producing its integrated circuits deeply condition its competitiveness. It is evident that greater efficiency will allow you supply more guarantees to your customersespecially in an upward market like that of HBM memories. In addition, SK Hynix is ​​manufacturing 12 -layer HBM3e memories on a large scale while Samsung and Micron have problems with their production. In any case, both Samsung and SK Hynix are already working on the development of HBM4 memories with the purpose of catapulting their competitiveness. Here it is precisely where Nvidia appears. SK Hynix announced in October 2024 that he intended to deliver the first HBM4 memory chips to his clients during the second half of 2025. However, Jensen Huang asked him That the delivery advances. Chey Tae-Won confirmed itthe president of SK Group, so it is absolutely reliable information. Why does NVIDIA require so urgently the HBM4 chips? Simply because you need to support your chips for the most capable with the most available energy and energy efficiency memories. And in this field SK Hynix currently has the pan well grabbed by the handle. Image | TSMC In Xataka | South Korea fears US reprisals. To avoid their old lithography equipment, they take dust on a warehouse

China needs its own TSMC to withstand the US pressure. His best candidate already grows at a rhythm of vertigo

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The US wants to avoid at any price that China has avant -garde photolithography equipment. These complex machines are necessary to manufacture very high integration semiconductorssuch as those used by the data centers specialized in artificial intelligence (AI). And without them the technological development of the country led by Xi Jinping has slowed down. It is fair What the US government wants. China is dedicating a huge amount of resources to the development of its own avant -garde lithography teams. Two of its largest investments They arrived in 2014 and 2019before the technological war of which we are witnessing was unleashed. In 2014, the Chinese government injected about 19,000 million dollars into its chip industry, and in 2019 this figure increased to touching 27.5 billion dollars. However, these investments pale in front of China at the end of 2023. And it is that just two years ago the government approved An investment of 41,000 million dollars expressly dedicated to manufacturers of lithography equipment. In any case, these machines are only one of the ingredients of a recipe in which the leading role is interpreted by chips manufacturers. And the best option that China has is SMIC (Semiconductor manufacturing international corp). This company has cost more than two years to refine its most advanced integration technology as necessary to produce integrated 5 nm circuitsbut your effort is already paying fruit. And is that, According to SCMPtheir income during the first semester of 2025 has increased by 22% if we compare them with the same period last year. And its benefits have grown by 35.6%. This is SMIC’s great challenge: go beyond 7 nm Dr. Kim, an expert in chips manufacturing who has worked in Samsung and currently investigating TSMC in the US, He maintains that SMIC It is about to start the production of 5 Nm chips. It is perfectly credible because, as we have just seen, we know with certainty that this company has been Working in this technology. And, in addition, Dr. Kim is a reliable source. However, this expert has pointed out something crucial that we should not overlook: the performance per wafer that SMIC has currently achieved in its 5 Nm nodes is less than 30%. When semiconductor manufacturers produce a chip wafer, some of those nuclei do not work properly. It is normal. And when they launch a new lithographic node their performance per wafer usually has a wide margin, but little by little, as engineers refine their integration processes, This parameter improves. A mature lithography can deliver to integrated circuit manufacturers a very high performance, but an incipient technology usually moves in the orbit of 50% performance, so only half of the chips produced work correctly. The 5 Nm chips that SMIC will manufacture for Huawei are possible thanks to a technology known as SAQP The problem is that for an integration technology to be profitable from an economic point of view, its performance by wafer has to be At least 70%. And, as we have just seen, Dr. Kim argues that the SMIC 5 NM node is below 30%. It is objectively a very poor performance, but we know what this low figure explains: the technique used by this manufacturer to produce these semiconductors. It is known as Multiple patterningand SMIC has used it for more than a year and a half to make 7 NM chips for Huawei and other customers. This strategy consists in transferring the pattern to the wafer in several passes with the purpose of increasing the resolution of the lithographic process. It works, but is responsible for wafer performance is clearly improvable. However, all probability Integrated 5 nm circuits that presumably SMIC will manufacture soon for Huawei are possible thanks to a technology known as SAQP (Self-alledhed Quadruple Patterning), which is nothing more than a Multiple patterning more aggressive and sophisticated than the one used to manufacture the soc Kirin 9000s of 7 nm and other chips. A report published by the Taiwanese media Economic Daily News ensures that SMIC will start the manufacture of 3 Nm semiconductors equipped with GAA transistors (Gate-alall-around) For Huawei in 2026. However, this is not all. This article also maintains that this last company has already completed laboratory tests that pursue the manufacture of integrated circuits using carbon nanotubes. Huawei’s plan presumably is to give this innovation to SMIC to adapt it to large -scale production. Image | SMIC More information | SCMP In Xataka | The US has declared the total war on Huawei: he does not want him to sell his chips for the most advanced outside of China

There are two suspicious companies of the theft of critical data of TSMC and none of them is China: the two are Japanese

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TSMC leadership has a price. This Taiwanese company is The largest semiconductor manufacturer on the planet and has built its success on the tuning of Extremely competitive integration technologies. Your most advanced photolithography is currently The 2 Nm; In fact, it is about to start the large -scale manufacture of chips of this class. All probability of their competitors, they could know their most sophisticated processes, especially those that are linked to their 2 nm node. And, apparently, some of them are trying to get this information. As We explain three days agothe Taiwanese authorities have arrested three TSMC employees because they have allegedly stole commercial secrets of this company. As we can expect, behind this detention is TSMC itself, as He has revealed The Taiwan Superior Prosecutor’s Office in a statement. According to Nikkei Asiathose responsible for this company have realized that two employees and a former employee have been made with critical information about their photolithography of 2 Nm. This information is very valuable. In fact, it could be used by a competitor to optimize its own semiconductor manufacturing processes. Two unexpected suspects: Tokyo electron and rapidus corporation The research has not yet determined if this stolen information has reached another company, but United Daily News ensures that researchers have registered the offices of the Japanese company Tokyo Electron. The latter is specialized in the design and manufacture of wafering processing equipment, and currently its most ambitious project is the tuning of wafering engraving machines by plasma. These equipment are involved in the definition of the pattern that will later be transferred to the wafer. Rapidus is making a chip manufacturing plant in northern Japan in which it plans to produce 2 Nm semiconductors According to SCMPTokyo Electron has confirmed that he has fired an employee of his Taipéi subsidiary (Taiwan) for being involved in the theft of TSMC’s critical information. This Japanese company also ensures that He is collaborating with the Taiwanese authorities They are carrying out the investigation. “That Tokyo Electron is located in the center of attention for this incident is an unfortunate accident,” has declared ASUSHI OSANAIProfessor at the University of Waseda (Japan). However, this company is not the only Japanese company that has been involved in this conflict. And is that Money.udn.com maintains that some of the TSMC employees who have been arrested have delivered to Rapidus corporation Hundreds of photographs and data linked to their most advanced process integration techniques. This company is intended to compete from you to you with TSMC, Intel or Samsung in the chip production market. Interestingly, it is very young: it was founded on August 10, 2022 by the Japanese government with an initial capital of 7,346 million yen (just under 46 million euros) contributed by, and here comes the interesting, Sony, Toyota, Nec, Softbank, Kioxia, Denso, Nippon Telegraph and Mufg Bank. Rapidus is currently putting a circuit manufacturing plant integrated in northern Japan, in the city of Chitose (Hokkaido), in which it plans to produce 2 Nm semiconductor. The first prototypes of these chips are already ready, but large -scale manufacturing It will not arrive at best until 2027. Anyway, as in relation to Tokyo Electron, the possible implication of Rapidus in the theft of data to TSMC has not been officially confirmed. In fact, it is possible that the authors of this crime have acted on their own and have offered the stolen information to Rapidus without this last company having requested or accepted. Those responsible for the investigation will have to settle. More information | Money.udn.com | SCMP In Xataka | South Korea fears US reprisals. To avoid their old lithography equipment, they take dust on a warehouse

Industrial espionage is threatening the largest chips manufacturer on the planet: TSMC

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It is no secret: espionage is very present in The semiconductor industry. It is in other sectors and we can be sure that a strategic industry such as integrated circuits It is not at all immune to him. On this occasion “the victim” is the Taiwanese company TSMC, The largest integrated circuit manufacturer of the planet. And, curiously, this plot of industrial espionage does not arrive at any time. And this company is about to start the large -scale manufacture of chips using its most advanced integration technology: The 2 Nm. What we know at the moment is that, According to Reutersthe Taiwanese authorities have arrested three TSMC employees because they have allegedly stole commercial secrets of this company. As we can expect, behind this detention is TSMC itself, as He has revealed The Taiwan Superior Prosecutor’s Office in a statement. According to Nikkei Asiathose responsible for this company have realized that two employees and a former employee have been made with critical information about the photolithography of 2 Nm of TSMC. This information is very valuable. In fact, it could be used by a competitor to optimize its own semiconductor manufacturing processes. The research has not yet determined whether this stolen information has reached another company, but United Daily News ensures that researchers have registered the offices of the Japanese company Tokyo Electron. At the moment this last signature has not confirmed or denied anything. Other industrial espionage frames that have given much to talk Our next protagonist is Asml. This Dutch company is the only one that is currently capable of manufacturing teams of extreme ultraviolet photolithography (UVE) that are necessary to produce avant -garde chips. At the end of 2023 Peter Wennink, the then general director of ASML, confirmed that a Chinese origin employee had abandoned the company in 2022 after being recruited by Huawei with the purpose of revealing this Chinese company secrets of the Dutch firm that a priori could compromise their business. According to the Dutch medium, Russia has something important in its favor: it has spies inside Asml This event was so serious that those responsible for ASML decided to include it in their 2022 annual report and Wennink was forced to Give explanations In a meeting with investors. According to this executive, the information stolen by the former Chinese employee It was partial. In fact, he described it as “one piece in a puzzle whose box is not in your power.” This Wennink statement rightly reflects The titanic complexity that have the most advanced lithography equipment produced by ASML. At the end of last year this company starred in another plot of espionage. Again as “victim.” The Government led by Vladimir Putin intends to have a prototype of UVE lithography equipment capable of manufacturing 130 Nm chips ready in 2026. And in 2028 another similar one trained to produce integrated 7 nm circuits. A priori it is difficult to believe it, but, according to the Dutch medium USRussia has something important in your favor: it has spies within ASML. Like China. In fact, one of them, a former employee of Russian origin, He has been arrested and is accused of stealing critical commercial secrets. The last plot of industrial espionage that I propose that we review is starring the South Korean company SK Hynix and the Chinese company Huawei. In mid -April 2024 a former employee of Chinese sk Hynix origin It was stopped at a South Korean airport when he was about to enter the country. The accusation that was cernia about it was very serious: it was suspected of having stolen confidential information about semiconductor manufacturing processes Used by SK Hynix to give it to Huawei. This employee decided to print 3,000 pages of technical documents, and that movement gave it away because it aroused suspicion immediately within the company. He faces 18 years in prison. Image | TSMC More information | Reuters | Nikkei Asia In Xataka | South Korea fears US reprisals. To avoid their old lithography equipment, they take dust on a warehouse

The TSMC factory in Arizona is going well, although its chips are more expensive than those of Taiwan

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Lisa her, the general director of AMD, He has just confirmed what we suspect since the beginning of this year: semiconductors that It is already manufacturing The new TSMC plant in Phoenix (Arizona) are Between 5 and 20% more expensive that the comparable integrated circuits produced in Taiwan. AMD will receive its first chips manufactured in this plant at the end of 2025, and given the increase in costs with all likelihood its market price It will be taller than that of semiconductors from Taiwan. Even so, Smooth his He maintains that the existence of this factory in the US is good news for all, for companies and users, because it contributes to the diversification of the supply of the chips and the strengthening of the distribution chain. According to histhanks to this plant and those that will arrive in the future will be more difficult for it to occur again A semiconductor crisis As serious as the one that triggered the Covid-19 pandemic between 2020 and 2023. Despite all the performance of the TSMC factory in Arizona it is high According to financial journalist Walter BloombergTSMC will increase the price of integrated circuits produced by 30% in the US to compensate for the costs triggered by tariffs on the production equipment of imported chips from Europe and Japan. Of course, the Government led by Donald Trump has not yet revealed how the import tariffs of photolithography machines used by TSMC, Intel or Samsung plants in the US will affect the importation tariffs. N4 and N4P lithographs are part of the TSMC Finfet Integration Technologies Family In mid -April 2024 CC Wei, the executive who at that time held the reins of TSMC, advance that the increase in costs derived from the manufacture of integrated avant -garde circuits in the plants that the company has outside of Taiwan It would be assumed by both TSMC and its customers: “If my client wants to manufacture in a specific area (out of Taiwan) then TSMC and the client himself will have to share the increase in costs (…) We are already discussing it with our customers.” Whatever it is beyond the costs linked to the production of chips in the US, The TSMC factory in Arizona is fine. This plant is manufacturing semiconductors in the N4 node (5 Nm). Lithographs N4 and N4P are part of the TSMC Finfet integration technologies family, although on paper the N4P process is a bit more refined. In any case, the plant we are talking about will not be the only one that this company will have in Arizona. The second factory will be operational in 2028 and will produce integrated circuits in N3 (3 Nm) and N2 (2 Nm) nodes. And finally, the third factory will not be listed at all until the end of this decade and It will produce chips in the node N2 (2 nm). TSMC can manufacture integrated 2 nm circuits In its US plants, although the Taiwanese administration will cauture the use of this technology in the country led by Donald Trump. “Private companies must make their own commercial decisions covered in their own technological progress (…) TSMC is building factories in the US with the purpose of serving their US clients because 60% of the world’s chip designer companies are based precisely in the US.” These words of Jw KuoMinister of Economic Affairs of Taiwan, are a declaration of intentions. It will be interesting to verify how the relationship of the US and Taiwan governments in the future prosper. Image | TSMC More information | SCMP In Xataka | The US confesses its worst nightmare: if China invades taiwan and controls TSMC the US economy will go to pique

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