News & Reviews:   chips

The United States Department of Commerce has officially lifted its full export restrictions on artificial intelligence (AI) chips to Malaysia, reclassifying the country under a new category that permits limited access to these advanced technologies.

During the weekend, President Trump made a U-Turn on his tariffs. As for now, the tariffs for electronics such as smartphones, computers, chips and other tech devices and components are exempted. However, an admin working for Trump said it's only temporary.

For the uninitiated, TikTok is owned by ByteDance and according to Reuters, the company is planning a new AI model that is trained with Huawei chips. Dubbed the Ascend 910B chip, it will be training a large-language AI model to employ better pattern recognition to make decisions.

Intel and MediaTek have announced a strategic partnership under the former’s foundry services, whereby Intel will be manufacturing chips for the Taiwanese fabless semiconductor company. The partnership is meant to help MediaTek build a more balanced, resilient supply chain.

Huawei regained access to Qualcomm chips this year, even if it can only get 4G variants. For instance, the recently launched P50 series came with the Snapdragon 888 4G. Now, two more Huawei devices with Snapdragon chipsets are on the way.

HUAWEI could be taking small steps to free itself from the US trade ban as it's reported that the Chinese company could be allowed to purchase chips from the country again. However, the chips are not for smartphones but car parts such as video screens and sensors. Therefore, you might need to put the thought of the company gaining back its access to the Qualcomm chips or even Android on hold.

A new report is claiming that Apple was the largest buyer of semiconductor chips in 2020. According to Gartner, the tech giant had spent 53.6 billion USD (~RM216 billion) and took 11.9% of the global market share, representing 24% growth year-on-year. Let's read on to find out why Apple had to spend so much on semiconductors.