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first_img The Republican Party warns AI companies that data centers have become a sensitive issue in elections

According to Axios, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) warned in an internal memo to top AI companies that the negative public perception of data centers in the U.S. is harming the party's chances of retaining a key Senate seat in Ohio. The memo pointed out that Democrats have made data centers a core issue in defeating Republican Senator Jon Husted, and it has been effective, stating that if he loses and blames it on data centers, politicians nationwide will avoid future projects, making this issue a potential focal point of the current election cycle.The memo, titled "Ohio Data Center Risks," urges AI companies to improve perceptions by explaining "who benefits, who pays, and why the community should welcome" them. Currently, over 4,000 data centers are operating across the U.S., with more than 3,000 under construction or planned to support AI development. However, they are facing protests due to high electricity and water consumption, rising utility costs, limited job opportunities, and concerns about AI job displacement. Internal polling shows their unpopularity is close to that of nuclear waste and has become a proxy indicator of sentiment towards AI.Husted's opponent, former Senator Sherrod Brown, has invested millions in advertising, calling him the "Ohio data center spokesperson." A Fox News poll shows Brown leading by 8 percentage points. Republicans hope that AI companies can curb the backlash; otherwise, Husted's defeat will cause lasting damage to data center development nationwide. Democrats are also acting based on polling, with Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro signing an executive order imposing strict restrictions on data center development.

first_img Winbond Electronics has initiated the expansion of its Kaohsiung Luzhu plant, with Module B expected to start construction in 2027

According to the Industrial and Commercial Times, driven by the long-term growth in demand for memory and advanced packaging due to AI, Winbond Electronics has proactively initiated expansion plans for its Kaohsiung Luzhu plant, merging the originally planned phases two and three into Module B for simultaneous development. Construction of the cleanroom is expected to start in 2027, with equipment installation beginning as early as the beginning of 2029, and equipment will be phased in according to customer demand forecasts and LTA. Currently, there are already customers negotiating for capacity in 2029 and 2030.Industry sources indicate that Winbond's niche DRAM and SLC NAND are in short supply in the third quarter, with a quarterly price increase estimated at about 50%; NOR Flash benefits from large cloud service provider customers stocking up, with a quarterly price increase estimated at about 30%. The price increase for memory in the fourth quarter is expected to converge to 2% to 5%, but thanks to increased DRAM capacity and growing shipment volumes, revenue and profits can still maintain a quarterly increase. Winbond's consolidated revenue in the second quarter was NT$59.843 billion, a quarterly increase of 56.4% and a year-on-year increase of 184.7%. DRAM prices increased by about 100% quarter-on-quarter, while Flash rose by about 43%, with consolidated gross margin rising to 66.2% and after-tax earnings per share of NT$5.40.The Module B product plan includes Standard DRAM, CUBE DRAM, Wafer-on-Wafer (WoW), and silicon capacitors (Si-Cap), which will support 14-nanometer and future 12-nanometer DRAM processes, with plans to introduce EUV equipment in the future.

first_img Samsung Electronics advances the expansion of the P5 factory in Pyeongtaek into a three-story wafer plant

According to the Dong-A Ilbo, Samsung Electronics plans to expand the core project of the P5 1·2 factory (Fab 5·6) in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, from a dual-layer wafer factory to a three-layer wafer factory to respond to the global artificial intelligence semiconductor and memory supercycle and maximize production capacity. Samsung Electronics has recently submitted a plan to change the industrial park, proposing to increase the floor area ratio from 350% to a maximum of 490%. This change must be reviewed by the Gyeonggi Province governor and approved by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport's industrial site policy review committee before it can be finalized.The Pyeongtaek P5 1·2 factory is the largest semiconductor factory in the world under a single standard, which began construction in 2022 and aims to be completed by 2030. It will produce high bandwidth memory (HBM), high-end DRAM, next-generation V-NAND, and advanced foundry products. The currently operational Pyeongtaek P4 uses a dual-layer structure with four clean rooms in a single building; if the change is approved, P5 will be configured with up to six clean rooms, and the number of clean rooms and production capacity is expected to increase by about 1.5 times. SK Hynix also plans to use a three-layer structure for all newly constructed wafer factories in the Yongin semiconductor cluster.Market research firm Counterpoint Research expects the global memory market size to increase from approximately 360 trillion won last year to 1,500 trillion won this year and 2,100 trillion won next year. In the context of increasingly difficult access to electricity, water, and land, increasing the floor area ratio to build three-layer wafer factories has become an important path to overcome the physical limitations of limited space and rely on the existing semiconductor industry ecosystem.

hot_img The new AI chip company Etched faces skepticism: Behind the $21 billion valuation, performance has yet to be verified by a third party

AI chip startup Etched recently completed a $700 million financing round at a valuation of $21 billion, but its technology claims are facing industry skepticism. The well-known hacker George Hotz's AI computing team, the tiny corp, publicly criticized Etched's marketing approach: there are many investors, orders, and hardware photos, but there is too little third-party data to truly verify performance.Etched's core selling point is LVI (Low Voltage Inference) technology, claiming it allows trillion-parameter sparse MoE chips to run at over 80% of theoretical peak computing power (MFU). Chip design professional Wesley Yue raised technical doubts about this: high MFU does not necessarily represent absolute performance—if the chip's peak computing power is low, even with an 80% utilization rate, actual performance may still lag behind competitors. Yue believes that Etched's design "does not make sense from first principles" and may be a result of repackaging after its early Transformer ASIC faced power consumption issues.Etched has not yet disclosed complete computing power, power consumption, and third-party benchmark data; the official website only states that "early customer tests have reached leading levels," and detailed performance data will be "released later." There is currently no evidence to prove that Etched is fraudulent. Etched has not publicly responded to this matter.
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