Last May, insiders alleged that the US Government Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) was eyeing up a handful of Chinese tech companies. At the time, ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) was considered for inclusion within an extensive "export blacklist." With the regional exit of more mainstream computer memory manufacturing companies, the likes of CXMT and Yangtze Memory Technologies Corporation (YMTC) are being tracked as the native Chinese industry's leading lights. Earlier today, a revised Pentagon Section 1260H document seemed to no longer feature the aforementioned duo of memory and storage makers. Hours later, industry observers and journalists noticed that the updated list had been removed from public view. A fresh Reuters news article mentions the adding of Alibaba and Baidu to the latest edition of the US administration's trade blacklist. Across the past few years, these gigantic tech players are best known for unprecedented large-scale purchases of AI-crunching hardware, mostly supplied by NVIDIA.

The US Department of War's (DOW) Section 1260H document designates Chinese companies with (alleged) military or communist party connections. Last year's addition of CXMT caused plenty of head scratching—the Hefei, Anhui-based memory chip manufacturer largely specializes in consumer-grade products. Earlier this month, Nikkei Asia divulged inside track information about ASUS, Acer, Dell, and HP's supposed consideration of CXMT DDR5 and DDR4 lines. The apparent lifting of blacklist status could make it easier for Western OEMs to acquire DRAM from CXMT, and NAND from YMTC, although the latter still remains within the US Commerce Department's sights (considered a threat to the region's supply chain). CXMT's recent advancement into mass production of HBM3 will (inevitably) elevate its local profile, but a reported collaboration with Huawei—involving the next-gen Ascend 950 AI accelerator—could attract extra Pentagon scrutiny.

NVIDIA continues to gingerly navigate trade restrictions that affect shipments of high-end graphics cards and AI accelerators into China. Over the past couple of years, region-specific "nerfed" GPU specifications and reduced allocations of VRAM have produced a good number of "lesser" gaming and professional components. For example, a November 2025 leak suggested the readying of an appropriately "reduced" RTX 6000D Blackwell model—seemingly based on Team Green's "unpasteurized" Western market variant. Despite recently arriving without a "PRO" designation, Chinese AI companies and well-heeled PC enthusiasts will be receiving a highly capable bit of hardware. The passively-cooled NVIDIA RTX 6000D card carries 84 GB of GDDR7 video memory; representing a slight downgrade over its non-nerfed sibling's provision of 96 GB (on a 512-bit bus). A video teardown—courtesy of the GINNSOD Bilibili channel—shows an incredibly dense module layout on the card's PCB, consisting of 28 individual 3 GB chips.

This clever clamshell layout surrounds a Team Green "GB202-891-KA-A1" GPU die. Aptly, GINNSOD's presenter refers to the TechPowerUp GPU database for key points of interest—notably, the card's 448-bit memory bus, 19968 shader unit count, and 2430 MHz boost clock. The reference board design is listed as having a 600 W TDP rating, but yesterday's presentation shows only a maximum of 419 watts being sipped by the lab's test subject. International observers have noted that the gory teardown shows a PCB design reminiscent of the RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell model's internal setup, though the latter enjoys having all of its VRAM module bays filled up (with thirty-two 3 GB chips). By contrast, the RTX 6000D's board features four unoccupied spaces. As a system integrator, GINNSOD offers aftermarket liquid-cooled modifications/upgrades—the latter half of the teardown vid delves into the fitting of a custom-made solution. VideoCardz noted that the company has listed a ~$26,000 workstation system armed with twin RTX 6000D cards and an AMD Threadripper Pro CPU. Said pre-built computer can be seen at various points in GINNSOD's showcase.

According to recent reports, TSMC leadership is expediting a major next phase at the Arizona campus—a second fabrication facility could come online by 2027, with a move into mass production of 3 nm (N3) wafers. A fresh news article—published by CNA Taiwan—signals an uncertain technological roadmap for the leading foundry service's North American operations. Taiwanese regulators have reportedly questioned TSMC's commitment to a long-term "N-2" rule. Under strict guidelines, the nation's premier chipmaker is not allowed to narrow a two generation-wide gap between domestic and offshore foundry capabilities. Presently, the Arizona Fab 21 Phase 1 site—at best—can pump out 4 nm (N4) products. Additionally, it produces more mature 5 nm (N5) wafers.

Given the current global political climate, TSMC's executive team could have a tough time satisfying demands from both sides of the Pacific. CNA's news piece highlighted observations made by Lin Fa-cheng, the Deputy Minister of Taiwan's National Science and Technology Council (NSTC). According to that report, Fa-cheng believes that TSMC will continue to adhere to the "N-2" policy, due to the vast majority of company R&D expertise being concentrated domestically—once native development moves onto the creation of truly cutting-edge 1.2 nm and 1.4 nm technologies, their 1.6 nm-class process (A16) knowledge can be shared with overseas facilities. Almost a month ago, insiders posited that TSMC was planning another expansion of its home turf footprint—a speculated $28 billion investment could lead to the construction of three 2 nm specialist fabs.

Earlier this week, the US government approved exports of NVIDIA H200 data center-grade accelerators to China. This reverses a previous decision, to prevent "full fat" H200 hardware reaching Chinese shores. Team Green engineers were reportedly working on a severely reduced "H20" alternative—whispers of this sanction-conforming design emerged earlier on in 2025. A competing Chinese product—Huawei's Ascend 910C accelerator—is often regarded as a main rival to newly approved past-gen Team Green AI-crunching solutions. According to Bloomberg's inside sources, White House officials were assessing the Ascend 910C's capabilities—most notably in the form of Huawei's super node CloudMatrix 384 system.

Despite lagging behind the H200, in terms of computing power and memory bandwidth, a large array of Ascend 910C accelerators (384 in total) is still a significant force. Additionally, Bloomberg's unnamed sources allege that the current US administration is worried about China rapidly improving its domestic semiconductor production capacities. Anonymous industry figures have whispered about Huawei and foundry partners working towards manufacturing 600,000 units throughout the coming year. Supposedly, the aforementioned White House staffers have considered a slightly different scenario—that Huawei: "would be capable, in 2026, of producing a few million of its Ascend 910C accelerators." According to a related Reuters news article, Chinese regulators are reportedly weighing up methods that will limit local industry's access to NVIDIA H200 systems.

Moore Threads, a growing force within China's domestic graphics card development industry, has scheduled its very first MUSA Developer Conference (MDC 2025). The Beijing-based event will kick of on December 19, and wrap up a day later. Earlier today, Zhang Jianzhong—the company's founder, chairman and CEO—issued a pre-game primer. Primarily, his upcoming keynote presentation will focus on full-stack development strategy—utilizing Moore Threads Unified System Architecture (MUSA). The former NVIDIA China executive also mentioned an imminent unveiling of his firm's next-generation GPU design. This teased future technology is set to succeed previous attempts, mostly launched three years ago—TechPowerUp has covered previous-gen "Chunxiao" MTT S80 16 GB (mainstream desktop) and MTT S4000 48 GB (AI workstation-grade) card models in the recent past.

Moore Threads leadership is likely keen ride a large wave of momentum—mostly generated by a $1.1 billion listing, following the company's early December debut IPO. Last week, this valuation buzz generated lofty headlines, with a couple of titles dubbing Moore Threads as the "Chinese NVIDIA." This month's MUSA Developer Conference seems to be aimed at the enterprise market segment, so desktop gaming products are not expected to feature prominently (if at all) during a run through of the Moore Threads hardware roadmap. According to local news reports, Chinese GPU specialists are expected to rapidly respond to NVIDIA's newly-awarded export license—clearing the way for a major injection of H200 data center accelerators into the region.

Two days ago, a low-key Reuters news article described recent efforts made by Fushan Technology (a Foxconn subsidiary) and Luxshare-ICT (a Chinese firm) to expand games console production facilities in Vietnam. Insiders believe that Fushan Tech is seeking permission to bolster an existing plant—leaked documents, submitted to a local government body, mention a major manufacturing goal. Once permitted, the Foxconn off-shoot supposedly wants to produce "up to 4.8 million Microsoft Xbox gaming devices (per annum), as well as "parts of the consoles, and other unspecified electromagnetic devices." Allegedly, Luxshare-ICT has lodged a similar request—pending a decision regarding an upgraded facility's annual "(up to) 4.5 million game consoles" production target.

Ongoing trade wars have caused manufacturers to pivot away from a traditional reliance on Chinese hubs. Instead, facilities located in nearby nations offer relief from severe tariffing. Jez Corden, of Windows Central fame, has weighed in on the topic of an alleged geopolitically-motivated change of plans at Microsoft's computer games division. Availability of current-gen Xbox consoles has declined across a fair number of regions, with big name retail outlets no longer selling the big green brand. Corden noted a decline in hardware supplies: "posted nearly every quarter for the past couple of years. To make matters worse, (Xbox leadership) was forced to raise prices a few months ago, making the Xbox Series X, and in some cases, the less powerful Xbox Series S more expensive than some PS5 models. Tariffs have played a huge part in making Xbox Series X|S less competitive."

Mid-September news reports placed NVIDIA's Chinese market exclusive RTX PRO 6000D model in a dubious position. Insiders believed that this "Blackwell" architecture-based AI accelerator was banned by the nation's Cyberspace Administration (CAC), in favor of boosting the prospects of domestic equivalents. Team Green has gingerly navigated these choppy waters for a number of years; an encouraging stack of sanction-conforming products have been released during trying times. These variants often feature lesser specifications—for example, the aforementioned RTX PRO 6000D is rumored to be a spin-off of the familiar RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell card. Despite facing an uncertain future in China, a curious Geekbench browser entry shines a ray of hope for the latest workstation-grade "D"-affixed product.

Team Green's upcoming NVIDIA RTX 6000D Blackwell GPU—now missing a "PRO" designation—seems to sport 156 compute units (CUs)/SMs; translating to 19,968 CUDA cores. An "AIC CB502-NM" test system was running this 84 GB GDDR7-laden card in conjunction with an AMD EPYC 9654 CPU. In comparison, the unpasteurized RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell model harnesses a largely uncompromised GB202 chip. 24064 CUDA cores are on tap, alongside 96 GB GDDR7 of video memory. The weaker 6000D makes do with a reduced 2430 MHz clock frequency (versus its sibling's 2600+ MHz credentials). Expert analysis posits that the cut-down card makes use of a 448-bit bus interface, rather than the standard unit's 512-bit avenue. VideoCardz has kindly formulated a comparison table of NVIDIA's RTX 6000 "Blackwell" products. The latest addition managed to generate an OpenCL score of 390656 points in Geekbench's 6.5 gauntlet (for Linux AVX2). The evaluated AIC computer was operating on Rocky Linux 9.4 (Blue Onyx).

According to the Financial Times, new restrictions—affecting the supply of Electronic Design Automation (EDA) software suites to Chinese companies—will cause major disruption within the domestic chip design industry. The US government's latest trade amendments are expected to impact Xiaomi and its freshly launched flagship XRING mobile chip family; the first iteration is a compelling first-party effort. Unlike many Chinese tech firms, the popular smartphone specialist can access pretty advanced TSMC node processes. Xiaomi's CEO—Lei Jun—announced his team's 3 nm design during pre-launch preview events.

Days later, closer analysis indicated a selection of TSMC's "N3E" node process. Digital Chat Station—a noted smartphone industry expert—summarized an uncertain future: "under this ban (of EDA tools), XRING chips will not be breaking through a 2 nm barrier, and can only revolve around the (current 'N3E') 3 nm node for a long time. XRING O1 will also be the only time in recent years that it can be on par with current-gen (proprietary) Apple, Qualcomm, and MediaTek mobile chipsets." Crucially, EDA software plays an important role in creating Gate All Around Field Effect Transistor (GAAFET) structures. TSMC's upcoming 2 nm node process is a GAA product. Tom's Hardware believes that several big Chinese tech players, including Huawei, are in the process of developing in-house EDA tools. Not long after unveiling their XRING flagship, Xiaomi outlined an extended Qualcomm chip deal.

Around mid-April, an unusual custom GeForce RTX 5090D design received international news coverage. Under normal circumstances, NVIDIA's board partners have not equipped modern gaming graphics cards with blower-style cooling solutions—typically, this type of treatment is reserved for workstation-grade products (operating at lower TDPs). Team Green's GB202 "Blackwell" GPU is in high demand, due to its AI-crunching prowess—even in slightly nerfed form. Smaller Chinese AI firms and well-heeled hobbyists seemed to be snapping up sanction-adjusted flagship gaming GPUs that are/were coupled with very unofficial blower-type coolers. A month and a half later, Olrak29 has placed a spotlight on a curious batch of bootleg-esque "RTX 5090 32G D7 Turbo" models. As implied by this identifier, these offerings seem to leverage the unpasteurized GeForce RTX 5090 (non-D) GPU.

Photo evidence was scraped from Goofish; a second-hand trading platform owned and operated by Alibaba. As of last month, industry whispers suggested another downgrade of the Chinese market-exclusive GeForce RTX 5090D design—following the complete cutoff of GB202 die shipments into the region. Given current global tensions and export restrictions, NVIDIA and Leadtek's Blackwell PRO W card series faces an uncertain future in China. The Goofish photo uploads indicate an impressive volume of unbranded "RTX 5090 32G D7 Turbo" stock. Stacks of boxes in the background are labelled with "NVIDIA RTX 4090 24G AIB BLOWER" or "NVIDIA RTX 4070 12G AIB BLOWER" stickers—perhaps as diversion tactics. According to VideoCardz and Tom's Hardware, Team Green is not expected to play detective—the North American corporation will probably not provide in-depth comments about elaborate "GPU smuggling" channels.

The rising profile of ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) has supposedly attracted international scrutiny as-of-late. Despite dealing in commercial memory product lines—currently DDR5, DDR4, LPDDR5 and LPDDR4X—the Chinese manufacturer could be stepping up its game in the near future. According to a fresh DigiTimes Asia news report, the nation's "top DRAM supplier" could be freeing up production capacity—in favor of enterprise-grade third-gen High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM3). Industry moles believe that a major sacrifice will be made; namely CXMT's DDR4 line. Despite an alleged early 2025 ramping up of related activities, the firm's factories could refocus on new endeavors by mid-2026. Additionally, insiders reckon that company leadership is shifting commercial priorities: "by year-end 2025, DDR5 is expected to make up more than 60% of CXMT's output, alongside LPDDR4/5."

The move into more advanced memory technologies is reportedly the result of government instruction. DigiTimes outlined a new strategy: "as CXMT scales up, it's also shifting rapidly to DDR5. The company only began mass-producing DDR4 in late 2024, yet it's already expected to issue an end-of-life (EOL) notice by the third quarter of 2025. The speed of this pivot and retooling has surprised many across the industry. Industry sources say the sudden shift is policy-driven, as Beijing pushes key chipmakers to accelerate alignment with national goals, especially around AI and cloud infrastructure." Murmurs of CXMT's forthcoming exit from DDR4 production have spread across local chip making businesses; causing a sudden doubling of Nanya-branded 8 Gb DDR4 chip prices in China. The manufacturer's early journey into DDR5 territories looked promising on paper—around January 2025—but the latest DigiTimes report disclosed inside track info regarding troubled quality and yield issues. In particular, initial samples have reportedly exhibited unstable performance when crossing a 60°C (140°F) threshold.

According to a Financial Times (FT) news article, the US Government's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) is considering an implementation of additional "export blacklist" entries. Roughly two months ago, a significant update affected the export trade of around eighty Chinese business "entities." Despite a recent "cooling off" of elevated tariff-related activities, significant political tensions still exist between the two powerhouse nations. According to five of FT's unnamed insiders, ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT)—a rising star within China's growing memory manufacturing industry—is a potential candidate for "banishment." Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), and Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. are (allegedly) already categorized as blacklisted organizations.

Apparently, the nation's most prominent chipmaker and memory module producer (respectively) have managed to sidestep certain restrictions, via offshoot avenues. FT believes that the US administration is actively investigating several of these subsidiaries. CXMT seems to be an independent body, with no military connections—specializing in commercial DDR5 and DDR4 products—but its rising profile has attracted international attention. Around March 2024, Bloomberg heard rumors about the US BIS department's "weighing up" of sanctions, with CXMT in mind. The relatively young DRAM manufacturer (established back in 2016) still trails behind South Korean and Western competitors, in terms of technological advancements—but its initial DDR5 efforts have (supposedly) impressed local evaluators and early adopters.

Around late April, Chinese industry insiders started whispering about a possible halting of NVIDIA GB202 "Blackwell" GPU shipments into the region. Team Green's local board partners released custom "market exclusive" GeForce RTX 5090D 32 GB cards; featuring slightly downgraded flagship silicon. Since launch, Chinese hardcore gaming enthusiasts and DIY AI firms have observed impressive performance credentials, despite the presence of factory limited specifications. On May 6, reports suggested a complete halt of GeForce RTX 5090D sales in China. Fresher rumors indicate NVIDIA's engineering team return to the drawing board; with their alleged preparation of an even weaker GeForce RTX 5090D design.

A group of Baidu tipsters have discussed a key area of (further) compromise: VRAM capacity. The original GeForce RTX 5090D configuration was armed with 32 GB of GDDR7 VRAM; mid-May speculation envisioned a 24 GB variant. Earlier today, harukaze5719 highlighted an intriguing Weibo post. A Manli webshop representative has "confirmed" that revised GeForce RTX 5090D cards will become available around July. Up until recent events, this Chinese brand was selling flagship GPU-based Gallardo (black) and Stellar (white) models. A web chat session was captured and shared on Weibo—in addition, the sales agent disclosed their belief that (NVIDIA's) supply of GeForce RTX 5090D GPUs has been "insufficient since launch" time. On a semi-positive note, customers will not be greeted by price hikes. Manli anticipates "unchanged" price tags; albeit associated with lesser specifications.

We wanted to give you a quick update on the estimated shipping schedule for our upcoming CRKD Gibson Les Paul Guitar Controller. Over the past few weeks, we've run into some inbound component delays with our manufacturing partner—largely due to ongoing uncertainty around international tariffs and broader supply chain challenges. As a result, we're making a slight adjustment to our estimated shipping windows to finalize production and better navigate the current logistics environment.

While we've taken steps to mitigate the impact of tariffs, a portion of these costs must be passed on. All U.S. pre-orders placed before June 1 will be honored at their original price. International pricing remains unchanged at this time. All pre-orders placed before June 1 on crkd.gg—U.S. and international—will also receive a complimentary CRKD Gradient Guitar Strap and Collector's Pin.

Martin Lau, President of Tencent, has divulged that his company has accumulated a "pretty strong stockpile" of NVIDIA AI chips. In a mid-week earnings call, the Chinese executive reckoned that this surplus will come in handy—upon the company unleashing its full-on upcoming "AI strategy." Lau was responding to a question regarding ripples caused by a recent introduction of revised licensing requirements for "high-end GPUs." His lengthy reply seems to align with "leaked April time" information; when industry analysts theorized a massive $16 billion spend—reportedly, big Chinese tech firms had splurged out with swift acquisitions of NVIDIA H20 GPUs. Lau commented on present day conditions: "it's actually a very dynamic situation right now. Since the last earnings call, we have seen an H20 ban, and then after that there was the BIS new guidelines that just came in overnight...If you look at the allocation of the usage of these chips, obviously they'll be used for the applications that will generate immediate returns for us. For example, in the advertising business as well as content recommendation product, where we actually would be using a lot of these GPUs to generate results and generate returns for us. Secondly, in terms of the training of our large language models, they will be of the next priority and the training actually requires higher-end chips."

Team Green's engineering team has likely been strong-armed into designing further compromised hardware; as "exclusive" sanction-conforming options for important enterprise customers in China. Tencent seems to have enough pre-ban specimens to tide things over, for a while. The firm's president envisioned a comfortable position, for the foreseeable future: "over the past few months, we (started) to move off the concept or the belief of American tech companies—which they call 'the scaling law'—which required continuous expansion of the training cluster. And now we can see even with a smaller cluster you can actually achieve very good training results. And there's a lot of potential that we can get on the post-training side which do not necessarily meet very large clusters. We should have enough high-end chips to continue our training of models for a few more generations going forward." Huawei's controversial Ascend 910C AI accelerator seems to be the top alternative contender; tech watchdogs believe that this design's fortunes will be closely tied to the rising dominance of DeepSeek. Fairly recent leaks have indicated impressive progress being made within China's domestic AI accelerator infrastructure.

A month ago, Sony increased its PlayStation 5 home console prices for EMEA and ANZ regions—affecting customers in Europe, Middle East, Africa, Australia and New Zealand. At the time, industry experts surmised that company leadership was considering a similar strategy for a primary market: North America. Instead of freshly implemented 25% upward hikes for certain products/packages, reports suggested a 30% climb—for the North American market. Weeks later, company leadership has discussed this hot topic. During yesterday's (projected) earnings call with investors, top brass confirmed their consideration of "passing along" additional costs to consumers—in response to a reported/anticipated 100 billion yen (~$680 million) impact from US tariffs. They outlined a stockpile of PS5 consoles; enough units have been accumulated for roughly three months of supply—unaffected by adjusted conditions, in the States.

Despite this provision, Hiroki Totoki—Sony's president/CEO—is open to exploring alternative production avenues, in the face of looming extra charges. When asked about this matter, he replied with: "hardware can of course be produced locally, I think that would be an efficient strategy. PS5 is being manufactured in many areas, whether it is going to be manufactured in the US or not—it needs to be considered going forward." In efforts to navigate a trying situation, Nintendo has juggled its geographic manufacturing footprint—recent-ish developments have shifted away from a complete reliance on Chinese facilities. Industry insiders reckon that the bulk of US-bound Switch 2 units will be Vietnamese-made. Like Sony, Nintendo's executive team has publicly disclosed thoughts about future price hikes—maybe following the launch of its much-anticipated "next-gen" hybrid console. Earlier this month, Microsoft upped modern Xbox portfolio price tags—affecting customers across the world.

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a technology leader enabling connected intelligent computing, and HUMAIN, a national artificial intelligence (AI) champion advancing Saudi Arabia's goals for AI, today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the intent to enter a strategic collaboration for the development of next-generation AI data centers, infrastructure and cloud-to-edge services to meet the rapidly growing demand for AI across the globe, including the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The MOU was signed during the Saudi-US Investment Forum in Riyadh, which was held during the official visit of President of the United States Donald Trump to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The data centers and supporting ecosystem are intended to provide both government and enterprise organizations with access to high-performance and power efficient CPU and AI cloud infrastructure and cloud-to-edge services. These offerings will enable the deployment of AI solutions that can make real-time predictions and decisions, in addition to significantly increasing the availability and value of advanced AI-enabled applications.

NVIDIA and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) have announced partnerships to transform the country into a global powerhouse in AI, cloud and enterprise computing, digital twins and robotics. During a state visit today with U.S. President Donald Trump and His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Crown Prince and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang said that the effort will harness sovereign AI infrastructure and expertise to propel Saudi Arabia to the ranks of global hyperscale AI leaders. "AI, like electricity and internet, is essential infrastructure for every nation," Huang said. "Together with HUMAIN, we are building AI infrastructure for the people and companies of Saudi Arabia to realize the bold vision of the Kingdom."

"Our partnership with NVIDIA is a bold step forward in realizing the Kingdom's ambitions to lead in AI and advanced digital infrastructure," said Tareq Amin, CEO of HUMAIN. "Together, we are building the capacity, capability and a new globally enabled community to shape a future powered by intelligent technology and empowered people."

Nintendo's Switch 2 hybrid console is set to arrive early next month (June 5), complete with promised launch prices. Early last month, the company's basic cost of entry for next-gen access—$450 (US)—seemed to be on tenuous ground. Nintendo and its retail partners decided to postpone their opening of pre-orders—affecting excited customers in the United States, then (days later) in Canada. Thanks to political posturing, a number of big industry players had to restrategize. Late last week, Microsoft announced their implementation of global Xbox Series price increases. In April, Sony revealed similar changes for PlayStation 5; restricted to select market territories. Nintendo has allowed a re-opening of Switch 2 pre-orders; gamers can secure core hardware at original MSRPs. Unfortunately, a compromise was made—first-party Switch 2 accessories will be more expensive, on launch day and beyond.

During a recent call with investors, Nintendo's president—Shuntaro Furukawa—confirmed that their core hardware pricing is subject to change. Launch price tags are safe (for the moment); the company will need to radiate some goodwill during their next-gen design's salad days. Commenting on a shifting political landscape, Furukawa-san stated: "at this time, the top priority is to quickly popularize the Switch 2 hardware...If the assumptions regarding tariffs change significantly, we would like to consider what price adjustments we should make, and implement them after considering various factors." Industry analysis has produced a scary projection; worst case scenarios could send tech prices up by roughly 70%. Considering the vintage of Switch 2's alleged internals, gaming hardware enthusiasts have questioned the value offered by this $450 hybrid handheld.

Our Stargate project, an unprecedented investment in America's AI infrastructure announced in January with President Trump and our partners Oracle and SoftBank, is now underway with our first supercomputing campus in Abilene, Texas, and more sites to come. We've heard from many countries asking for help in building out similar AI infrastructure—that they want their own Stargates and similar projects. It's clear to everyone now that this kind of infrastructure is going to be the backbone of future economic growth and national development. Technological innovation has always driven growth by helping people do more than they otherwise could—AI will scale human ingenuity itself and drive more prosperity by scaling our freedoms to learn, think, create and produce all at once.

We want to help these countries, and in the process, spread democratic AI, which means the development, use and deployment of AI that protects and incorporates long-standing democratic principles. Examples of this include the freedom for people to choose how they work with and direct AI, the prevention of government use of AI to amass control, and a free market that ensures free competition. All these things contribute to broad distribution of the benefits of AI, discourage the concentration of power, and help advance our mission. Likewise, we believe that partnering closely with the US government is the best way to advance democratic AI.

Mid-way through April, a few Asian media outlets proposed a fairly recent formation of Xiaomi's "chip platform department"—most likely operating as part of the Chinese corporation's mobile phone development operation. Industry insiders claimed that this special branch was tasked with the designing of "Xuanjie" chipsets, with added expertise provided by an ex-Qualcomm marketing director. Weeks later, Jukanlosreve has weighed in with alleged new details. The keen tracker—of unannounced flagship smartphone chips and semiconductor business revelations—believes that previous leaks were of merit, but made some corrections.

Given reported greater than expected "new division" headcounts, Xiaomi probably established its "Xring SoC" team a while ago—on this topic, Jukanlosreve divulged: "it operates as a new company; independent of the original parent firm. It's not a small team either—it has over 1000 people. To be honest, I see it as a positive development if a domestically produced chip gets used in a domestically made smartphone and sold globally. I genuinely hope it becomes reality. If Xring succeeds, it might encourage more companies to get involved, and even engineers currently working at major firms could see better pay opportunities."

The first couple of paragraphs within Anthropic's "Securing America's Compute Advantage: (Our) Position on the Diffusion Rule" article are standard fare. Roughly half-way through a read of this policy-related piece, the North American (Amazon-backed) AI startup makes some bizarre claims about the smuggling of AI-oriented products into China. Given ongoing global tensions and growing industry demands, these activities are somewhat expected—but Anthropic leadership described very specific methodologies. As stated within their "Chip Smuggling is a Major Threat" passage: "China has established sophisticated smuggling operations, with documented cases involving hundreds of millions of dollars worth of chips. In some cases, smugglers have employed creative methods to circumvent export controls, including hiding processors in prosthetic baby bumps and packing GPUs alongside live lobsters." Specific bits of hardware were not mentioned in this section, but the author later alludes to the frictionless transfer of thousands of "NVIDIA H100 advanced chips" into Chinese territories.

In a statement issued to CNBC, a Team Green spokesperson dismissed Anthropic's fanciful claims: "American firms should focus on innovation and rise to the challenge, rather than tell tall tales that large, heavy, and sensitive electronics are somehow smuggled in 'baby bumps' or 'alongside' live lobsters." This very public spat has received mainstream attention; with further coverage documenting additional "to and fro" barbs. NVIDIA criticized Anthropic's anti-foreign competition stance: "China, with half of the world's AI researchers, has highly capable AI experts at every layer of the AI stack. America cannot manipulate regulators to capture victory in AI." Amusingly, Anthropic's operations rely heavily on Team Green hardware—many online critics reckon that top US AI companies are jostling for priority access to cutting-edge GPUs/accelerators. In reaction to NVIDIA's dismissal of their report, a company spokesperson retorted with: "Anthropic stands by its recently filed public submission in support of strong and balanced export controls that help secure America's lead in infrastructure development and ensure that the values of freedom and democracy shape the future of AI."

As disclosed in a new press release—issued by the US Commerce Department—TSMC's North American operation has started another expansion. Last month, Taiwan's leading chip foundry committed a substantial $100 billion investment—eventually leading to a greater production footprint in Phoenix, Arizona. Reports suggest that ground has already been broken, in a low-key manner—as of yesterday (April 29)—at a planned third location, only hours after TSMC's receiving of permits—aka a "thumbs up" from the US government. According to local news outlets, key administrative representatives were in attendance to witness the initiation of construction work. TSMC's third plant is destined to pump out cutting-edge products via a 2 nm (N2) process technology, with Apple, NVIDIA and AMD confirmed as "front of the queue" customers. Despite recent fanfare and celebrations, industry analysts reckon that it will take up to a decade for the foundry's North American operation to solidify a dependable supply chain. In the interim, certain elements will require shipping to overseas locations—for packaging and finalization purposes.

GeForce RTX 5090 graphics cards—whether in Founders Edition or AIB custom form—are still in very high demand; certain buyers are even flying into nearby nations to take advantage of even the slightest favorable conditions. This was apparent during launch week—three months ago—with so-called "tourists" queuing up alongside locals in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. Day one anti-scalping measures were implemented, but launch stock of GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 graphics cards was rapidly depleted. According to the latest reports, (mostly) Chinese buyers have been making regular visits to Japan's big electronics retail hub, in Osaka. Up until fairly recently, tax-free circumstances—for non-natives—have made the purchase of flagship NVIDIA "Blackwell" GPU-based gaming GPUs worth the trip, even with the added expense of plane tickets and other overheads.

Additionally, certain outlets actually had units readily available on shelves or behind shop counters. Eventually, stores dropped the whole tax-free thing. This measure did not cause much discouragement; tourists were still willing to pay the extra cost—still reasonable, compared to escalated (global) card prices. As disclosed in a MyDrivers news report, multiple Osaka-based retailers have bolstered their anti-tourist sales methodologies—one visitor spotted an updated placard that stated: "GeForce RTX 5090/RTX 5080 cards are only sold to customers who use it in Japan. If the purchased product is to be taken out of Japan, it will not be sold." VideoCardz believes that this newer "symbolic" countermove will be tricky to enforce; are shop workers going to be tasked with performing "Japanese citizen tests" on a regular basis? Chinese ultra high-end GPU seekers could continue to source units from abroad; the latest rumblings suggest a potential forthcoming ban of NVIDIA's region-exclusive GeForce RTX 5090D model.

Mid-way through April, we heard about sanctions affecting shipments of NVIDIA's H20 AI chips into China. Despite (rumored) best efforts made by Jensen Huang and colleagues, the US government has banned the export of Team Green's formerly sanction-conformant design. Similarly, NVIDIA prepared a slightly less potent GPU for gaming applications—exclusively for the Chinese market. Despite sporting a restricted GB202 "Blackwell" GPU die, the GeForce RTX 5090D 32 GB is still a monstrous prospect. According to Chinese PC hardware news sources, Team Green representatives have sent alerts to "all" of its Chinese add-in-card partners (AICs)—early warning signs have indicated a possible cut-off of GB202 GPUs in the near future. A member of the Chiphell forum disclosed some insider knowledge and dismissed unfounded speculation about RTX 5090D cards being replaced by "full fat" RTX 5090 options.

sthuasheng commented on Team Green's alleged bulletin—distributed at some point last week: "the notice only said that the supply of RTX 5090D was suspended, ...this did not mean any sales or transportation ban; it urged everyone not to make any speculations or judgments unless there was an official notice issued at a later date. After this notice was issued, each AIC began to notify agents to suspend sales, because the inventory of 5090D has always been very small, so it is necessary to keep these stocks to observe the subsequent situation and deal with the subsequent after-sales. At the same time, we might as well speculate that each AIC and dealer may also have the intention to stockpile 5090D units and then sell them at an elevated price." BenchLife.info decided to reach out to industry moles, following an absorption of various Chiphell whispers.

Earlier today, TechPowerUp covered the alleged performance prowess of Huawei's CloudMatrix 384 system super node. According to SemiAnalysis opinion, the system's Ascend 910C AI accelerators are a generation behind—in terms of chip performance—when compared to NVIDIA's GB200 "Blackwell" AI GPU design. SMIC seemed to be in the picture, as Huawei's main fabrication partner—possibly with an in-progress 5 nm node process. Instead, SemiAnalysis has surmised that the Ascend 910C is based on plenty of non-native technologies. Huawei's (current and prior) "aggressive skirting of export controls" has likely enabled the new-gen AI chip's better than expected performance stats. SemiAnalysis documented the early sample's origins: "while the Ascend chip can be fabricated at SMIC, we note that this is a global chip that has HBM from Korea (Samsung), primary wafer production from TSMC (Taiwan), and is fabricated by 10s of billions of wafer fabrication equipment from the US, Netherlands, and Japan...One common misconception is that Huawei's 910C is made in China. It is entirely designed there, but China still relies heavily on foreign production."

Despite China's premiere foundry business making pleasing in-roads with a theorized "7 nm N+2" manufacturing test line, Huawei has seemingly grown impatient with native immature production options. Today's SemiAnalysis article presents a decent dose of inside knowledge: "while SMIC does have 7 nm, the vast majority of Ascend 910B and 910C are made with TSMC's 7 nm. In fact, the US Government, TechInsights, and others have acquired Ascend 910B and 910C and every single one used TSMC dies. Huawei was able to circumvent the sanctions on them against TSMC by purchasing ~$500 million of 7 nm wafers through another company, Sophgo...It is rumored Huawei continues to receive wafers from TSMC via another 3rd party firm, but we cannot verify this rumor." Another (fabless) Chinese chip design firm—Xiaomi—appears to still have direct/unrestricted access to TSMC manufacturing lines, albeit not for enterprise-grade AI products.