Semiconductor News 20250818

Main News

1. Trump warns on semiconductor tariffs (up to 300% possible): Trump has announced that he may impose tariffs of up to 300% on semiconductor products manufactured outside the US. The tariffs, which could take effect by the end of the month, are intended to encourage companies to invest in the U.S. and avoid a huge tax burden. This could be a policy shift with major implications for the global semiconductor supply chain.
2. U.S. Government Considering Investment in Intel: The Trump administration is reportedly considering acquiring a stake in Intel in order to strengthen domestic chip manufacturing capacity. This is seen as part of a move to support Intel’s foundry business and make the U.S. self-sufficient in semiconductors, but it has also generated controversy as “extreme medicine, not nourishment.
3. SK Hynix Emerges as DRAM Market Leader; Samsung’s Share Plummets: SK Hynix has overtaken Samsung in the DRAM market, ending Samsung’s nearly 30-year dominance in the market. Samsung experienced its largest ever drop in market share this year, indicating that the competitive environment in the memory market has changed dramatically.
4. Surge in U.S. AI Data Centers Puts Domestic Power Grid at “Critical Bottleneck”: The rapid growth of AI data centers in the U.S. is putting the nation’s power grid at a “critical bottleneck.” In response to this power shortage, major tech companies are reportedly being forced to build their own power plants to power their massive data centers.
5. GlobalWafers Achieves First Domestic Productionof Silicon Wafers in the U.S.: The U.S. semiconductor industry has reached a new milestone, as GlobalWafers, backed by investments from Apple and TSMC, has begun domestic production of its first silicon wafers in the United States. This marks an important milestone in strengthening the semiconductor supply chain in the US.
6. TSMC Preparesto Transition from Advanced CoWoS to CoPoS Packaging: TSMC is preparing to transition from its current CoWoS packaging technology to CoPoS for next-generation semiconductor manufacturing. This is an important step to accommodate larger panels (750 x 620 mm) and to increase production capacity and efficiency for future high-performance chips.
7. Intel Demonstrates Arm-Based SoC Manufacturing with 18A Process, Aims to Win Customers: Intel has unveiled a reference design showing that its state-of-the-art 18A process supports Arm-based SoC manufacturing. With this, Intel aims to increase its competitiveness in the foundry business by targeting major fabless companies such as Qualcomm and Apple.
8. NVIDIA Black well GPUs Outperform Competitors with Industry’s Best AI InferencePerformance: NVIDIA’s Blackwell GPUs deliver the industry’s best AI inference performance, significantly outperforming the competition. In particular, profit margins of up to 78% have been reported when using the GB200 chip, giving it a significant advantage over AMD through software optimization.
9. U.S. Tariffs Force Taiwan Semiconductor Materials Plant to Close: Unable to withstand the impact of U.S. tariffs, a semiconductor materials plant that has operated in Taiwan for more than half a century has gone bankrupt. This demonstrates that international trade policies, especially U.S. tariffs, can have a severe impact on certain companies in the semiconductor supply chain in the form of direct closures.
10. OpenAI’ s GPT-5faces a problem of generating “ridiculous answers” and a talent exodus: OpenAI’s next-generation AI model, GPT-5, is facing a problem of generating “ridiculous answers,” and a talent exodus has been identified as the cause of the problem. OpenAI is on the verge of a “crisis” and needs to take special measures to address this problem.

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