Source: Semiconductor Industry Watch. At yesterday's Conputex conference, Dr. Lisa Su released the latest roadmap. Afterwards, foreign media morethanmoore released the content of Lisa Su's post-conference interview, which we have translated and summarized as follows: Q: How does AI help you personally in your work? A: AI affects everyone's life. Personally, I am a loyal user of GPT and Co-Pilot. I am very interested in the AI used internally by AMD. We often talk about customer AI, but we also prioritize AI because it can make our company better. For example, making better and faster chips, we hope to integrate AI into the development process, as well as marketing, sales, human resources and all other fields. AI will be ubiquitous. Q: NVIDIA has explicitly stated to investors that it plans to shorten the development cycle to once a year, and now AMD also plans to do so. How and why do you do this? A: This is what we see in the market. AI is our company's top priority. We fully utilize the development capabilities of the entire company and increase investment. There are new changes every year, as the market needs updated products and more features. The product portfolio can solve various workloads. Not all customers will use all products, but there will be a new trend every year, and it will be the most competitive. This involves investment, ensuring that hardware/software systems are part of it, and we are committed to making it (AI) our biggest strategic opportunity. Q: The number of TOPs in PC World - Strix Point (Ryzen AI 300) has increased significantly. TOPs cost money. How do you compare TOPs to CPU/GPU? A: Nothing is free! Especially in designs where power and cost are limited. What we see is that AI will be ubiquitous. Currently, CoPilot+ PC and Strix have more than 50 TOPs and will start at the top of the stack. But it (AI) will run through our entire product stack. At the high-end, we will expand TOPs because we believe that the more local TOPs, the stronger the AIPC function, and putting it on the chip will increase its value and help unload part of the computing from the cloud. Q: Last week, you said that AMD will produce 3nm chips using GAA. Samsung foundry is the only one that produces 3nm GAA. Will AMD choose Samsung foundry for this? A: Refer to last week's keynote address at imec. What we talked about is that AMD will always use the most advanced technology. We will use 3nm. We will use 2nm. We did not mention the supplier of 3nm or GAA. Our cooperation with TSMC is currently very strong-we talked about the 3nm products we are currently developing. Q: Regarding sustainability issues. AI means more power consumption. As a chip supplier, is it possible to optimize the power consumption of devices that use AI? A: For everything we do, especially for AI, energy efficiency is as important as performance. We are studying how to improve energy efficiency in every generation of products in the future-we have said that we will improve energy efficiency by 30 times between 2020 and 2025, and we are expected to exceed this goal. Our current goal is to increase energy efficiency by 100 times in the next 4-5 years. So yes, we can focus on energy efficiency, and we must focus on energy efficiency because it will become a limiting factor for future computing. Q: We had CPUs before, then GPUs, now we have NPUs. First, how do you see the scalability of NPUs? Second, what is the next big chip? Neuromorphic chip? A: You need the right engine for each workload. CPUs are very suitable for traditional workloads. GPUs are very suitable for gaming and graphics tasks. NPUs help achieve AI-specific acceleration. As we move forward and research specific new acceleration technologies, we will see some of these technologies evolve-but ultimately it is driven by applications. Q: You initially broke Intel's status quo by increasing the number of cores. But the number of cores of your generations of products (in the consumer aspect) has reached its peak. Is this enough for consumers and the gaming market? Or should we expect an increase in the number of cores in the future? A: I think our strategy is to continuously improve performance. Especially for games, game software developers do not always use all cores. We have no reason not to adopt more than 16 cores. The key is that our development speed allows software developers to and can actually utilize these cores. Q: Regarding desktops, do you think more efficient NPU accelerators are needed? A: We see that NPUs have an impact on desktops. We have been evaluating product segments that can use this function. You will see desktop products with NPUs in the future to expand our product portfolio.

Since the elected president Donald Trump took office, the USA has been using trade restrictions and sanctions to contain china's technological progress. Now that Trump has returned to the White House, the semiconductor war between USA and china may escalate further.

Arthur Dong, a professor at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, said in an interview with Quartz before the election: "If Trump takes office, as he has stated in his campaign speeches, he will double down his efforts, even increasing tariffs and export controls."

During Trump's first term as president, the Biden administration continued to work on mitigating China's advanced semiconductor manufacturing capabilities.

Earlier this year, the Biden administration reportedly debated the use of an export control measure called the "foreign direct product rule," which would affect companies of U.S. allies including Tokyo Electron Ltd. unsponsored ADR (TOELY) in Japan and Dutch chip manufacturer ASML. The rule stipulates that if any product is manufactured using a certain percentage of U.S. intellectual property components, it is not allowed to be exported to any country. Later reports indicated that some allies would receive exemptions if the rule expands.$ASML Holding (ASML.US)$ Dong said: "He [Trump] may go further than the Biden administration in imposing comprehensive tariffs on more types of commodities."

Arthur Dong, a professor at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, said in an interview with Quartz before the election: "If Trump takes office, as he has stated in his campaign speeches, he will double down his efforts, even increasing tariffs and export controls."

Trump has already implemented restrictions on the sale of chips to China.

During the first term of Trump's government, Chinese tech giant Huawei was placed on the US Entity List in 2019 because the US government deemed Huawei to have 'engaged in activities that are contrary to US national security or foreign policy interests.' Other Chinese semiconductor companies were also included in the list to restrict US companies from sending equipment used in advanced chip manufacturing.

Trump extended the ban on Huawei products to 2021, and the Biden administration's trade restrictions on Huawei and other Chinese tech companies have become increasingly stringent.

Reports indicate that prior to the election, US chip equipment manufacturers were preparing for the Biden administration's strengthened export controls. They informed suppliers of their concerns that using certain components supplied from China could jeopardize their supplier status. These companies also instructed suppliers not to have Chinese investors or shareholders.

"If you look at the geopolitical landscape, it seems obvious to me that the US will continue to pressure its allies to take more restrictive measures," ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet said in October. "The question is, what is right for the Netherlands? What is right for Europe?"

Charging protective fees to the Taiwan region.

In the recent presidential election, Trump stated that he would impose tariffs on chips from the Taiwan region. This could have a significant impact on the global chip manufacturing industry, as most of the world's most advanced chips are produced by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), a **** chip manufacturer. $NVIDIA (NVDA.US)$ and $Apple (AAPL.US)$ As the main customer.

In October, Trump accused Taiwan of stealing the American semiconductor industry - in July, he also mentioned this in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek. Trump also said Taiwan "took away our chip business".

"What I mean is, how stupid are we," Trump said. "They took away all of our chip business. They are very wealthy."

Trump stated that instead, the Taiwan region should pay the United States to protect it.

Trump told Bloomberg, "I think we're no different than insurance policies. Why? Why should we do that?"

Casting a shadow over Taiwan Semiconductor and Samsung.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company in China and Samsung in South Korea are facing an uncertain future in the USA. These two Asian chip giants are waiting to see if the next government led by Donald Trump will continue to support their large-scale expansion plans.

The President-elect criticized the bipartisan "CHIPS Act", which was signed by President Joe Biden in August 2022, providing billions of dollars in support for bringing semiconductor manufacturing to the USA.

In April of this year, the US government announced grants of $6.6 billion and $6.4 billion to Taiwan Semiconductor and Samsung respectively, making them the largest beneficiaries of the "CHIPS Act", second only to Intel, which received a $8.5 billion grant. As part of the incentive program, these two Asian companies also commit to receiving government loans and investment tax credits.

In October, Trump described the "CHIP Act" as "very bad" during an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, and stated that he would use tariffs to incentivize companies to produce semiconductors in the USA.

Trump said, "We put in billions of dollars to get rich companies to come in, borrow money, and set up chip companies here, but they're never going to give us great companies no matter what."

The grants and other incentive measures announced in April this year towards $Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM.US)$ and Samsung are just preliminary, with final agreements yet to be reached. This leaves room for the incoming Trump administration to modify terms and potentially cancel some benefits.

So far, only one project has actually received funding under the CHIPS Act: American semiconductor manufacturer Polar Semiconductors, received 0.123 billion US dollars in funding. An insider said that the CHIPS for America office under the Department of Commerce is working hard to accelerate the allocation process, but due to the complexity of the transactions, it is unlikely to finalize all terms and allocate most of the funds before the end of Biden's term.

Rob Atkinson, President of the Washington think tank Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, said, In my view, the Biden administration made a fundamental mistake by not allocating this funding. Why would you let the next administration choose not to spend this money?

Due to labor shortages, rising costs, and differences in work culture, Taiwan Semiconductor and Samsung face a tough battle in establishing semiconductor fabs in the United States.

Taiwan Semiconductor originally planned for its first US factory in Arizona to be fully operational in 2024, but has postponed the target to 2025. The company has also pushed back the production date of its second fab from the initial 2026 to 2027 or 2028. Media reports indicate that due to insufficient output, Samsung has also delayed the production plans for its Texas fab from the second half of 2024 to sometime in 2026.

These chip manufacturers have previously stated that the CHIPS Act is crucial for their expansion plans in the USA, and delays in fund allocation will impact the speed and scale of construction.

However, not everyone believes that Trump would genuinely attempt to repeal the chip act, especially since many projects (such as TSMC's factory in Arizona and Samsung's factory in Texas) are located in states strongly supported by the Republican party.

Atkinson said, Politically speaking, it is not worth it for Trump to do so, especially since the money has already been appropriated by Congress.

But the Trump administration may try to limit or slow down the allocation of funds, just to show their stance, even though they cannot legally transfer this money elsewhere, he added.

Editor/rice