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US Closes China Chip Loophole, AMD Venice 2nm Ramps & EU Fab Push
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
The US Commerce Department closes a year-long China chip export loophole as AMD's Venice EPYC enters production on TSMC's 2nm node. Plus: EU sovereign fab ambitions, Qualcomm edge AI hardware, and data centres as grid assets.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
AMD's Venice EPYC processor is now in production on TSMC's two-nanometre node. That's not a roadmap slide anymore.
The other major development this cycle is on the export control side, and the backstory here is important. For roughly a year, a regulatory gap allowed Chinese-headquartered entities operating outside China to receive advanced chips, including Nvidia and AMD silicon, without triggering licence requirements.
In Europe, the European Commission is in active discussion with Belgium's Imec and Germany's SPRIND on what's being described as an EU-made advanced semiconductor manufacturing initiative. A one-nanometre fabrication facility by twenty-thirty-five is part of the draft framing, positioned under the Chips Act two-point-zero framework.
On the edge hardware side, Radxa expanded its Qualcomm single-board computer portfolio with the Dragon Q8B, built on Snapdragon eight-c-x Gen three with over twenty-nine TOPS of AI performance, and the Q5E on QCS sixty-six-ninety. Twenty-two Qualcomm-based systems are on the twenty-twenty-six roadmap, including a desktop station and a NAS configuration.
One broader shift worth tracking: AI data centres are starting to function as grid infrastructure, not just power consumers. Rack densities above one-hundred-and-forty kilowatts are driving mandatory liquid cooling, and the waste heat and battery storage capacity those systems require creates real potential for grid-balancing services.
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