Hi everybody! This is Cheng Ting-Fang sending greetings from Europe, the place I’m basking within the sudden glow of winter sunshine.
I not too long ago launched into a twin-city journey to Brussels and London, the place I had the privilege of collaborating as a panellist in two dialogues between the European bloc and the Indo-Pacific area. The journey started with a prolonged flight from Taipei to Brussels, with a connecting cease in Frankfurt, adopted by a two-hour prepare journey on the Eurostar from Brussels to London.
During the occasions, I used to be in a position to speak with a various group of diplomats, commerce officers and international affairs students from Asia, the US and Europe, a uncommon alternative given my work overlaying trade and the tech provide chain. The commonest matter these policymakers and specialists raised was tips on how to meaningfully scale back financial dependence on China whereas additionally coexisting with the world’s second-largest financial system.
“In the past five to six years, economic security has become a very crucial thing for every country I spoke with,” a senior Japanese diplomat in Europe instructed me throughout a gala dinner in Brussels. “We do see this shared and growing concern in Europe and Asia that we all need to look beyond China.”
Other diplomats and officers mentioned Europe ought to develop into a “third force” outdoors of the US-China rivalry and forge nearer ties with Asian allies like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and south-east Asian nations — all now essential gamers in making certain the safety of the tech provide chain.
While many international locations wish to decrease their dependence on China, China itself is searching for to localise extra manufacturing and scale back its dependence on overseas suppliers. While the nation has been profitable in constructing a aggressive trade for some key digital elements, together with liquid crystal shows and batteries, they’re now venturing into areas extra closely dominated by overseas rivals, corresponding to reminiscence chips.
Memory improve
China is ramping up efforts to advance its synthetic intelligence applied sciences, together with the rising area of superior reminiscence chips. As a part of that push, ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) goals to provide the nation’s first domestically made excessive bandwidth reminiscence (HBM) chips, an important element for enabling complicated AI computing operations, writes Nikkei Asia’s Cheng Ting-Fang.
China’s drive to provide HBMs is aimed toward decreasing overseas dominance on this space amid an intensifying tech rivalry between Washington and Beijing.
CXMT is the nation’s high maker of dynamic random entry reminiscence (Dram) and has been engaged on growing its personal HBM applied sciences since final 12 months. Sources say it has already ordered manufacturing and testing gear for such manufacturing.
The Chinese Dram maker has lastly caught up with overseas rivals in mainstream reminiscence applied sciences. It introduced that it has efficiently produced LPDDR5, a brand new sort of cellular Dram appropriate for smartphones that trade leaders began to make round 2021. Leading handset makers Xiaomi and Transsion have verified CXMT’s merchandise.
But constructing HBMs not solely wants high-quality manufacturing of Dram chips as a basis. It additionally requires the know-how for exactly stacking them collectively, and analysts say it is going to be very difficult for CXMT to shake the worldwide dominance in Dram and HBM within the quick time period. In the Dram world, South Korea’s Samsung and SK Hynix and Micron of the US managed 97 per cent of market share, whereas in HBM, SK Hynix and Samsung already had greater than 92 per cent of the market.
Explicit content material warning
India has put tech corporations on discover that they are going to be held legally accountable for “deepfakes” revealed on their platforms, because the world’s most populous nation wields its regulatory energy within the run-up to a nationwide election.
Rajeev Chandrasekhar, minister of state for electronics and IT, mentioned India had set “very clear and explicit rules” on prohibited materials — which in India consists of content material deemed dangerous to kids or a risk to nationwide safety, write the Financial Times’ John Reed in New Delhi and Hannah Murphy in London.
A authorities directive dated December 26 and despatched to social media and messaging platforms lively in India, together with YouTube, X, Telegram and Snap and native social community Koo, reminded them to adjust to Indian legislation on unlawful content material and make the foundations clear to customers of their phrases of service and consumer agreements.
The warning makes India the most recent nation to rein in AI-generated fakes, partly with an eye fixed to the hazard they may pose to the integrity of democratic elections. Prime minister Narendra Modi, who will probably be searching for re-election to a 3rd five-year time period in an election anticipated in April and May, flagged the problem in remarks final 12 months that seem to have both presaged or triggered the discover to tech corporations.
“We are the world’s largest democracy [and] we are obviously deeply concerned about the impact of cross-border actors using disinformation, using misinformation, using deepfakes to cause problems in our democracy,” Chandrasekhar instructed the FT in an interview.
Overseas alternatives
Small and midsize Chinese corporations are more and more venturing abroad for progress, even searching for alternatives within the US regardless of geopolitical stress between Washington and Beijing.
Chinese companies going abroad isn’t a novel idea, however the urgency to take action has intensified since China shifted away from three years of pandemic restrictions, writes Nikkei Asia’s Cissy Zhou.
A disappointing home financial restoration and intensifying competitors at residence are fuelling the development, serving to to make “going global” a buzzword in China over the previous 12 months. Local governments have actively supported this development by facilitating the participation of export-oriented corporations in worldwide commerce reveals and exhibitions.
This abroad push comes as China’s exports declined for the primary time since 2016 in greenback phrases final 12 months, highlighting the sluggishness of world demand. Exports to the US led the downturn, plummeting by 13 per cent from the earlier 12 months.
Hot progress in cool tech
As the unreal intelligence race intensifies, the power calls for of those highly effective programs have created a brand new enterprise alternative for tech suppliers: tips on how to successfully settle down AI information centres.
Liteon Technology Corp, a Taiwanese electronics element and energy provide options maker, is amongst these aiming to faucet this large alternative, write Nikkei Asia’s Lauly Li and Cheng Ting-Fang.
The rising energy consumption of AI chips has led to a surge in warmth technology, which conventional air cooling options are struggling to maintain up with, Liteon senior govt Simon Ong instructed Nikkei Asia. That means liquid cooling is turning into more and more necessary to make sure the efficiency and longevity of AI servers.
AI servers are outfitted with parallel computing energy, permitting them to deal with complicated information processing and AI workloads. Growing demand for this kind of server, which is way increased in worth than conventional information servers, has created a brand new alternative for corporations to sort out the problem of extra warmth.
Suppliers increasing their efforts on this space embrace Delta Electronics, a serious participant within the energy and thermal options phase, and thermal management suppliers Cooler Master Technology and Auras Technology. Chipmakers like Intel and server system integrators corresponding to Gigabyte Technology, Inventec and Wiwynn are additionally investing closely in growing revolutionary cooling applied sciences to fulfill the rising demand for AI servers.
Suggested reads
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The Japanese semiconductor deal spooking rivals and buyers (FT)
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India’s electrical automobile growth stalls over charging challenges (Nikkei Asia)
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Canon goals to ship low-cost ‘stamp’ machine this 12 months to disrupt chipmaking (FT)
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Elon Musk’s AI start-up seeks to lift $6bn from buyers to problem OpenAI (FT)
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Vietnam is a high goal for Chips Act assist funds, US says (Nikkei Asia)
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Samsung expects reminiscence enterprise to show worthwhile in Q1 (Nikkei Asia)
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White House science chief alerts US-China co-operation on AI security (FT)
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Fujitsu CFO apologises for UK Post Office scandal (Nikkei Asia)
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SK Hynix returns to revenue boosted by AI reminiscence chip demand (FT)
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Chinese EV chief BYD makes aggressive push in Asean (Nikkei Asia)
#techAsia is co-ordinated by Nikkei Asia’s Katherine Creel in Tokyo, with help from the FT tech desk in London.
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