Qualcomm was fined NTD 23.4 billion by Taiwan’s Fair Trade Commission in 2017 for antitrust violations. Both parties reached a settlement the following year, which sparked some official discontent. However, a report from Korean media outlet The Elec has pointed out that this move ultimately contributed to Taiwan’s long-term industrial growth.

Under the settlement in the subsequent year, Qualcomm reportedly committed to investing USD 700 million in Taiwan over the next five years. This included establishing operational and manufacturing facilities, testing centers, and other investments, with the plan set to conclude by the end of 2023.

Qualcomm was accused of leveraging modem chip patents to force companies into unfavorable licensing agreements, resulting in fines in Taiwan, China (2015), South Korea (2016), and the EU (2018). Taiwan initially imposed a fine of NTD 23.4 billion on Qualcomm but later reduced it, instead requiring Qualcomm to commit to investing USD 700 million over the next five years to promote local industries such as 5G.

The report points out that, at that time, Taiwan lagged behind the US, China, Japan, and South Korea in 5G development, necessitating this compromise. The reports suggest that this decision, which now appears to be correct, was not intended to boost the 5G industry but to pivot towards the semiconductor sector. Over the past five years, industry dynamics have rapidly shifted focus to the semiconductor sector, with Qualcomm channeling substantial funds into Taiwan’s chip packaging industry.

Taiwanese officials reportedly stated that Qualcomm has successfully implemented its industrial investment plan over the past five years while maintaining a strong relationship with Taiwan. All aspects of the promised investment have been fulfilled, with the investment amount exceeding USD 1.4 billion, far surpassing the initial commitment of USD 700 million—effectively doubling Qualcomm’s investment amount.

Reports further indicate that Siliconware Precision Industries (SPIL) has confirmed Qualcomm’s purchase of 500 pieces of equipment dedicated to handling Qualcomm’s backend demands. Additionally, a South Korean packaging company informed TheElec that they lost Qualcomm orders to Taiwanese competitors over the past few years. In essence, Taiwan’s government initiative has also benefited the local packaging industry, despite this not being the original intention.

While SPIL’s performance was weak during the global chip market downturn last year, its revenue steadily grew from 2018 to 2022. Qualcomm not only provides equipment and orders to SPIL but also deploys engineers directly at SPIL’s plants to ensure proper chip packaging.

Qualcomm continues to entrust its high-end chip packaging orders to Amkor’s Incheon plant. However, the report suggests that Qualcomm’s close partnership with Taiwanese packaging companies may lead to more opportunities.

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• [News] Battle in AI PCs: Exploring Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm Chips’ AI Computing Power
• [News] Intel, Qualcomm, Google Reportedly Form Alliance, Posing Challenges to NVIDIA’s Dominance in AI?

(Photo credit: Qualcomm)

The global laptop and PC market is experiencing a gradual recovery, driven by the growing trend of AI-powered PCs (AIPC). Consequently, as per a report from TechNews, the competition to enhance AI chip computing power has emerged as a key global focus. 

One of the competitors, Intel, during its Vision 2024 event, showcased its next-generation laptop chip, Lunar Lake. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger stated that this chip will deliver over 100 TOPS (trillion operations per second) of AI performance, with the NPU alone contributing 45 TOPS. This marks a threefold increase in AI performance compared to Intel’s current generation of chips and meets the 45 TOPS NPU performance threshold previously set by Intel for the next generation of AI PCs.

Currently, Intel’s Meteor Lake processor NPU can only deliver 10 TOPS, which falls short of the standard required for the next generation of AI PCs. However, the NPU performance of Lunar Lake precisely meets the 45 TOPS standard.

Pat Gelsinger did not provide detailed breakdowns of the remaining 55+ TOPS performance between the CPU and GPU, but it can be reasonably speculated that the GPU contributes around 50 TOPS, while the CPU cores contribute 5-10 TOPS.

As for Intel’s competitors, AMD’s current-generation Ryzen Hawk Point platform offers NPU performance of 16 TOPS, which is also below Intel’s envisioned standard for the next generation of AI PCs.

However, AMD has recently indicated that their next-generation products will make significant breakthroughs to meet the demands of AI computing, incorporating a robust architecture with powerful CPU, GPU, and NPU components. This design philosophy has been consistent for AMD from the Ryzen 7040 series to the current 8040 series.

At an AI event in December last year, AMD unveiled the next-generation Ryzen Strix Point mobile processor featuring the XDNA 2 architecture, boasting a threefold increase in AI performance compared to the previous generation.

Yet, AMD has not provided detailed performance allocations for each component. Nonetheless, a simple calculation suggests that if the NPU performance triples, then the NPU performance of Ryzen Strix Point would reach 48 TOPS.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite platform represents another competitor in the escalating competition, with chips based on ARM-based architecture scheduled to launch in mid-2024. Qualcomm has stated that its NPU performance will reach 45 TOPS, further heightening the competition among Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm for dominance in the next generation of AI computing.

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• [News] AMD Hosts Innovation Summit, CEO Lisa Su Highlights the Beginning of AIPC Era
• [News] PC Market on the Rise, Tremendous Potential for AIPC Next Year

(Photo credit: Intel)

With the rapid advancement of AI-powered PC chips, industry giants like Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm, alongside various brands, are optimistic about the inaugural year of AI PCs entering the market.

According to a report from Commercial Times, chip manufacturers are showcasing their AI PC chip solutions, with newcomer Qualcomm partnering with Google to launch Snapdragon X expected mid-year, while Intel leveraging both hardware and software resources.

Per the same report citing sources, laptop brands are beginning to plan AI PC-related products for the second half of the year. Recently, companies like Dell, Lenovo, and HP have held internal meetings with the Taiwan supply chain. In addition to contract manufacturers, IC design is also a key focus, with companies like MediaTek and Realtek being actively engaged.

Reportedly, each company currently has its own perspective on AI PC, with many opting to integrate AI accelerator chips. However, Microsoft and Intel have jointly defined AI PC as requiring NPU, CPU, and GPU, along with support for Microsoft’s Copilot. They are also incorporating a physical Copilot key directly on the keyboard and become the standard setters.

To adapt to significant changes in software and hardware, Intel is expanding its ecosystem. In addition to AI application software, they are incorporating Independent Hardware Vendors (IHVs) into their AI PC acceleration program.

This collaboration assists IHV partners in preparing, optimizing, and leveraging hardware opportunities in AI PC applications. Support is provided from the early stages of hardware solutions and platform development, offering numerous opportunities for IC design companies in Taiwan to enter Intel’s supply chain during the nascent stage of AI PC.

Reportedly, Qualcomm is rumored to maintain its partnership with Google as it ventures into the AI PC market this year with Snapdragon X Elite. Qualcomm and Google have previously collaborated closely in the realm of Android smartphones, with many devices equipped with Snapdragon chipsets already using Google software.

Intel estimates that by the end of this year, the market will introduce over 300 AI acceleration applications, further advancing its AI software framework and enhancing the developer ecosystem. Intel further predicts that by the end of 2025, there will be over 100 million PCs shipped with AI accelerators, indicating immense opportunities in the AI PC market. However, competition is fierce, and success in this market requires innovative products that are differentiated and meet user needs. With both Intel and Qualcomm unveiling unique strategies, the AI PC market is poised for significant developments.

For AI PC, TrendForce believes that due to the high costs of upgrading both software and hardware, early development will be focused on high-end business users and content creators. This targeted group has a strong demand for leveraging AI processing capabilities to improve productivity efficiency and can also benefit immediately from related applications, making them the first-generation primary users.

The emergence of AI PCs is not expected to necessarily stimulate additional PC purchase demand. Instead, most upgrades to AI PC devices will occur naturally as part of the business equipment replacement cycle projected for 2024.

Nevertheless, looking to the long term, the potential development of more diverse AI tools—along with a price reduction—may still lead to a higher adoption rate of consumer AI PCs.

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• [News] AMD Hosts Innovation Summit, CEO Lisa Su Highlights the Beginning of AIPC Era
• [News] PC Market on the Rise, Tremendous Potential for AIPC Next Year

(Photo credit: Intel)

Intel, Qualcomm, Google, and other tech giants are reportedly joining forces with over a hundred startups to challenge NVIDIA’s dominance in the market, as per a report from Reuters. Reportedly, their goal is to collectively penetrate the artificial intelligence (AI) software domain, guiding developers to migrate away from NVIDIA’s CUDA software platform.

NVIDIA’s CUDA is a parallel computing platform and programming model designed specifically to accelerate GPU computing. It allows GPU users to fully leverage their chip’s computational power in AI and other applications. As per a previous report from TrendForce, since 2006, NVIDIA has introduced the CUDA architecture, nearly ubiquitous in educational institutions. Thus, almost all AI engineers encounter CUDA during their academic tenure.

However, tech giants are now reportedly aiming to disrupt the current status quo. According to a report from Reuters on March 25th, Intel, Qualcomm, and Google are teaming up to challenge NVIDIA’s dominant position. They plan to provide alternative solutions for developers to reduce dependence on NVIDIA, encourage application migration to other platforms, and thereby break NVIDIA’s software monopoly and weaken its market influence.

The same report from Reuters further indicated that several tech companies have formed the “UXL Foundation,” named after the concept of “Unified Acceleration” (UXL), which aims to harness the power of acceleration computing using any hardware.

The project plans to leverage Intel’s oneAPI technology to develop software and tools supporting multiple AI accelerator chips. The goal is to reduce the technical barriers developers face when dealing with different hardware platforms, streamline the development process, enhance efficiency, and accelerate innovation and application of AI technology.

Vinesh Sukumar, Head of AI and Machine Learning Platform at Qualcomm, stated, “We’re actually showing developers how you migrate out from an NVIDIA platform.”

Bill Magro, Head of High-Performance Computing at Google, expressed, “It’s about specifically – in the context of machine learning frameworks – how do we create an open ecosystem, and promote productivity and choice in hardware.” The foundation is said to aim to finalize technical specifications in the first half of this year and strives to refine technical details by the end of the year.

However, CUDA software has established a solid foundation in the AI field, making it unlikely to be shaken overnight. Jay Goldberg, CEO of financial and strategic advisory firm D2D Advisory, believes that CUDA’s importance lies not only in its software capabilities but also in its 15-year history of usage. A vast amount of code has been built around it, deeply ingraining CUDA in numerous AI and high-performance computing projects. Changing this status quo would require overcoming significant inertia and dependency.

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• [News] NVIDIA’s EULA Amendments Tighten Grip, Suppressing Third-Party CUDA Emulation
• [Insights] Microsoft Unveils In-House AI Chip, Poised for Competitive Edge with a Powerful Ecosystem

(Photo credit: NVIDIA)

According to a report from IJIWEI, there are recent indications that Huawei’s P70 series and smartphones with smaller foldable screens are set to be launched in the first half of this year, with the Kirin 5G chip making a comprehensive return.

Citing information from a blogger, Huawei’s return to the top spot in China’s market in the first week of 2024 is attributed to the outstanding performance of the Nova 12 series. In addition to this success, the first half of this year will witness the release of new models such as the P70 series flagship for imaging and compact foldable screen devices. The Kirin 5G platform is expected to make a full comeback.

In the first half of 2024, Huawei plans to unveil the P70 series and devices with smaller foldable screens, all powered by the Kirin 5G platform. It is reported that the P70 series will feature the Kirin 9010 chip. Looking at Huawei’s recent releases, the Kirin 5G platform is set to cover a broad spectrum, including the Mate series, P series, and nova series, among other mid-to-high-end product lines.

Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo from TF International Securities revealed that Huawei’s smartphone shipments are expected to reach 60 million units in 2024, making it the fastest-growing brand in the industry. Kuo also mentioned that due to Huawei adopting the new Kirin 5G platform, Qualcomm’s System-on-Chip (SoC) shipments to Chinese smartphone brands are anticipated to decrease by 50-60 million units in 2024 compared to 2023.

(Image: Huawei)