After many joys, the stock exchange gave some sorrows to Nvidia on September 3 when the company’ shares reportedly lost 9.5% in what is considered “the deepest ever single-day decline in market value for a U.S. company”. In absolute terms, Nvidia lost $279 billion in market capitalization, an indication – according to some observers – that investors are becoming more cautious about AI technology.
Intel reportedly considering selling Altera
Intel’s troubles inevitably are in the spotlight this week. Let’s quickly recap some of the latest updates, based on Reuters reports. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger and key executives are expected to present a plan in mid-September to cut unnecessary businesses and revamp capital spending. This plan could include selling Altera – but not Intel Foundry – and pausing or halting the new fab in Magdeburg, Germany. Analysts and investors think Intel will likely be removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average index, due to the stock’s near 60% decline this year. A Republican senator has asked Gelsinger for more details on Intel’s plans to cut more than 15,000 jobs despite being set to receive nearly $20 billion from the U.S. CHIPS Act. Former Cadence CEO Lip-Bu Tan left the Intel board – where he was sitting – as he grew “frustrated by Intel’s large workforce, its approach to contract manufacturing and its risk-averse and bureaucratic culture.”
GlobalFoundry’s new partnerships
And Lip-Bu Tan gave a keynote address at this year’s GlobalFoundry Technology Summit in Santa Clara. The event was the occasion for announcing GF’s partnerships with Efficient and Finwave. US-based startup Efficient will use GF’s 22FDX process to build its ultra-low-power CPUs. The implementation will also take advantage of 22FDX’s MRAM and Adaptive Body Biasing (ABB) capabilities. According to Efficient, current general-purpose processors are over-designed for generality, with most of their energy consumed by unnecessary internal data movement and instruction control overheads. The Efficient Fabric processor architecture, instead, is based on a dataflow execution model and provides reconfigurable hardware at compile time – promising up to 99% lower DC power without compromising performance. Massachusetts-based Finwave will collaborate with GF to optimize and scale its RF GaN-on-Si enhancement-mode (E-mode) MISHEMT technology to volume production at GF’s 200mm fab in Burlington, Vermont, using the foundry’s 90RFGaN platform. Target applications include power amplifiers in future mobile phones.
