Current news Flashcards
Who is the boss of AMD?
Lisa Su
(cousin of Jensen Huang)
What is AMD’s latest AI chip and what are its specs?
MI300
(153b transistors, 192 Gb of memory, 5.3 Tb/s memory bandwidth)
How has AMD shares performed under Ms Su (since 2014)?
Up 100 fold
to $270b market cap
It’s now number 2 US semiconductor company, ahead of Intel
What strategy did Ms Su adopt for AMD when she took over?
Moving away from CPU’s for PC market to CPU’s for data centers (it has now gained from 0 to 30% market share) and GPU’s for gaming
Lego approach - putting blocks together on one chip
What is Nvidia’s share of the AI chip market?
86%
What strengths does Nvidia have in the AI chip market?
Best chips
Networking (to link chips to each other)
Software
How will AMD compete with Nvidia on software
Plans to make its software ROCm open source
What did Joe Biden announce in October 2022, re. exporting tech to China?
Most sweeping set of export controls in decades
The new rules cut off people and firms in China from many advanced technologies of American origin, and from products made using these
The list includes chips used for artificial intelligence (ai), software to design advanced chips and the machine tools to manufacture them.
Selling such things to China is now barred without explicit permission from America’s government. Rulebreakers risk being cut off from American tech themselves.
America has previously used similar rules to kneecap Huawei, China’s telecoms-gear giant. (2019)
(https://www.economist.com/business/2022/10/13/america-curbs-chinese-access-to-advanced-computing)
What is America’s goal with its export controls of advanced chips to China?
“put the high-end Chinese chip-design industry out of business”, says Greg Allen, a former defence-department official who has studied the new rules.
(https://www.economist.com/business/2022/10/13/america-curbs-chinese-access-to-advanced-computing)
What is Huawei’s latest results on chip design? (and who makes them)?
Chips are made by SMIC (China’s largest foundry)
Last August made smartphone with 7nm chip, capable of 5G speeds … on cusp of 5nm (apparently)
Makes Ascend chip, used by Baidu (creator of Ernie, a rival to ChatGPT)
What’s the cutting edge size of chips? acheived by Samsung and TSMC in 2022?
3nm
What’s China’s main lithography company and what size chips can it produce?
SMEE
28nm
(vs. ASML which can produce 3nm)
What’s China’s chip software (that Huwaei is now relying on)?
EDA = electronic design automation
Empyrean
How has China’s local supply of chip making equpiment grown?
4% share in 2019
14% in 2023
How has Nvidia got round the export restrictions to China?
By making a lower performance chip (not cutting edge) which the restrictions don’t apply to
