Popular video game engine Unity has had a lot of bad press over the last year, the result of things like large-scale layoffs and some really terrible comments from its CEO. Today the trend continues, as it was recently announced that the company has signed a new multi-million dollar, three-year deal with a technology company that will see it become the “preferred real-time 3D platform” provider for the US government and its various defense agencies and militaries.
Unity is a widely used video game engine that is often cited as being lightweight, easy to work with, and flexible, allowing indie devs and large studios to create games that can scale across multiple platforms, like Xbox, PC, and Switch. The engine powers numerous gameslike Among Us, V Rising, Call of Duty Mobile, and Cuphead. But this flexibility and power have also attracted the attention of folks outside of the game industry, including companies that help build simulations and other systems for the US government and military.
As announced earlier this weekUnity is parenting with CACI International on what the company calls an “exciting” three-year, multi-million dollar deal that will help it become the “preferred real-time 3D platform for future systems design and simulation programs across the US Government.”
If you, like most folks reading this, don’t know what CACI is, here’s how the company describes itself on its own website:
CACI is a $6 billion company whose mission and enterprise technology and expertise play a vital role in our national security, safeguarding our troops, and enabling our government to deliver cost-effective and high-quality support for all Americans.
This sounds a lot like Unity is once again cutting deals to help the US government and military in developing technology that could aid soldiers and the country’s ability to fight wars overseas. And while some might not mind working on such tech, as we saw last year, many staff members at Unity did indeed have an issue with how the company was handling these deals. There were reports that some employees were working on parts of the engine that would benefit Unity’s government and military contracts, yet the devs had no idea.
Kotaku has contacted Unity about this latest contract and how it plans to keep its game engine devs separate from or informed about its military and government contract work with CACI.
EVO, the year’s biggest fighting games event, went down over the weekend, and in terms of news perhaps the biggest announcement was that not one but two games will be getting Rollback Netcode improvements over the next 12 months. Don’t know what that means, or why it’s important? I got you!
So in online multiplayer games, a large part of allowing everyone to play together is the way the game registers everyone’s actions at the same time. when a person in Canada is playing someone in Germany they’ll both be pressing buttons in their own homes, and the game needs to pick up those inputs, apply them to the game and have them play out in a way that makes the whole thing look as seamless as though they they were playing with (or against) each other in the same room.
Different games (and different genres) handle this differently, depending on how important speed and accuracy is to the player’s experience, but one type of input recognition that’s especially important to anyone playing a fighting game—where every frame and millisecond can mean the difference between victory and defeat—is called Rollback Netcode.
Rollback Netcode doesn’t rely on waiting for everyone’s input before registering actions; instead it lets both players press their buttons and see the action play out instantly without lag or delay, as though they were playing offline, and in the downtime between that and the opponent’s action arriving the game basically guesses what was going to happen next. If it guessed right the game continues with nobody noticing, and if it was wrong, it checks down to play out the action that the other player actually made, which sometimes involves a little “teleporting”.
The very helpful video below, by Coby Mystics, explains how Rollback Netcode works, and how in fighting games it’s speed and accuracy make it so superior to the more traditional Input Delay:
Code Mystics Explains Netcode: Input Delay vs. roll-back
OKAY! So now that we’re all up to speed on Rollback Netcode, you can understand why such a seemingly minor announcement is actually a huge deal for fighting game fans, and why these two announcements made at EVO went down so well with fans.
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First up, producer Tomoko Hiroki took to the stage to announce that the upcoming versions of dragon ball fighter z on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S will be getting Rollback Netcode, as will the PC version, though on the latter players will get the option whether to use Rollback Netcode (which will carry a slightly steeper system requirement) or stick with Input Delay.
It doesn’t look like the upgrade will be coming to the PS4, Xbox One or Switch versions of the game, though the last-gen PlayStation and Xbox versions will have upgrade paths made available for anyone who upgrades to newer systems.
As for when this is actually coming, it doesn’t sound like it will be soon, with the announcement saying “It will take some time until the system is implemented, but we sincerely hope you will enjoy it as soon as possible. More information will be released at a later date. Please wait for further details.”
The 2019 reboot of samurai showdown got the same announcement, with SNK teaming up with Code Mystics—creators of the vid above—to implement the upgrade. It’ll be coming to the PC, PS4, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S versions of the game (again leaving the Switch behind), and is “planned” for Spring 2023.
Here’s a sign of the times: Activision has confirmed via newly released financial documents that it made more money on its phone games last quarter than it did on all of its console and PC games combined.
As spotted by tweaktown, Activision’s quarterly report was published last week and sheds some light on how its biggest games across PC, console, and mobile are doing financially. And because of games likeDevil Immortal, Call of Duty Mobileand Candy Crush Sagathe beleaguered Call of Duty publisher’s making a lot of cash off phone games. In fact, more than half of its total earnings for the second quarter of 2022 came from mobile titles and not console or PC games.
According to the report, about 51 percent of Activision’s total earnings from the Q2 2022 period came from mobile games. That adds up to a total of $831 million in mobile game earnings. Meanwhile, its console games earned around $376 million and PC games brought in a bit less, $332 million. Finally, it made $105 million from events and esports.
What you might not expect, especially if you don’t realize how massive mobile gaming has become over the last decade, is that of the $831 million made off phone games, most of it came from King’s titles and not stuff like Call of Duty Mobile. In the report, Activision says that King titles like candy crush and FarmHeroes brought in over $680 million.
ReadMore:Lawyer To Pay Activision For Not Playing Call Of Duty
What these numbers reveal is that for big publishers like Activision, the future is likely one where it invests even more resources and money into mobile games and focuses less and less on console games. In an era where AAA games are more expensive to make than ever, take years to createand often flop, mobile games have become a lifeline for large game companies looking to keep their heads above water.
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For Activision it’s especially important asCall of Duty continues to lose millions of players and underperform. Seeing as the company has spent years focusing much of its energy on Call of Duty—at one point even having every studio it owned working on the franchise in some capacity—it’s likely it will seek to diversify into mobile more, not less, moving forward.
It should also be noted that Activision’s hugely successful mobile games are one of the main reasons Microsoft began the process of buying the company earlier this year following a huge, public fallout after the company was sued over years of sexual harassment and discrimination.
in some way, Call of Duty and warcraft are more like bonuses that Xbox gets top of King and his money-printing games.
We’ve all been there: You have an external hard drive or USB thumb stick plugged into your Mac, and you’re ready to part ways. You drag it to the the Trash, or right-click to eject it, only to be greeted by the infamous, “The disk wasn’t ejected because one or more programs may be using it.” You look around your Mac: No app is open, no program is running. Whatever is causing the ejection delays certainly isn’t your fault. In the wise words of Peter Parker“I missed the part where that’s my problem.”
Unfortunately, macOS has made it your problem. There could be multiple reasons why your computer won’t let go of your disk (we’ve run through them before), but often, the main issue is this: macOS is running a process accessing a file on the disk you can’t see. That’s why, even though everything is shut down and closed as far as you can see, your Mac insist the disk is in use. We all have trouble letting go sometimes.
That said, your Mac doesn’t always leave you hanging out to dry: Occasionally, you’ll see the option to Force Eject the disk, but even that solution comes with a caveat: How do you really know your Mac isn’t currently writing something to the disk? If you force eject it, either with software or by unplugging the disk from your Mac, you could damage your data.
Luckily, there’s a simple solution, so long as you’re OK usingTerminal. in to Reddit thread musing on this subjectone user suggested the following command to quickly end any unknown processes running between macOS and your hard drive:
sudo lsof /Volumes/{Name of the disk}
The “lsof” command, which stands for “list open files,” does exactly what is says: It’s a command meant to list all open files in your system, and dish on the processes that opened them in the first place. Because of this, it’s often used when users cannot unmount (or eject) disks—the command tells you which process is using which file, something you wouldn’t see just by using surface-level macOS. As long as you’ve stopped using the hard drive yourself, you should only see whatever process is holding things up on macOS’ end.
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Once you know the process in question, you can terminate it, and safely eject the disk without worry. To do so, you’ll need to open Activity Monitor (press Command + Space then search “Activity Monitor”). Switch to the Disk tab, then scroll through the “Process Name” list until you see the one out in Terminal. Click on it, then click the (X) at the top of the menu bar. Finally, choose “Quit” on the pop-up to end the process. Now, try ejecting your disk: It should leave your computer right away.
As pointed out by another user in that Reddit thread, the culprit in many cases—at least on macOS—is Quick Look. Quick Look is the feature that allows you to peek at documents, images, and other files without needing to actually open those files first. If Quick Look pops up for you after running this Terminal command, this user recommends you try using Quick Look on another file not on your external disk. For example, open your Mac’s main disk and Quick Look a file there: That process can shake things loose, and allow you to eject your disk without issue.
Do you remember how your parents tried to convince you to eat your vegetables as a kid by promising they were good for your health? That’s the same tactic a lot of wearable makers are using today, by adding health-tracking features to devices like smartwatches. Now, researchers have developed a way for earbuds to track your ear health, too.
Every time Apple holds an event, it spends a few minutes touting the health benefits of wearing an Apple Watch, which has heart rate tracking features that can potentially identify heart problems before they become a serious complication. Yot’s also rumored that the long overdue update to Apple’s AirPods Pro wireless earbuds will potentially include body temperature measuringallowing the devices to detect a fever: an early symptom of countless other conditions.
It turns out the inherent capabilities of earbuds—namely blasting sound into your ears—also allows them to potentially detect conditions that can afflict the inner ear and the ear canal, as researchers from the University of Buffalo have found with an experimental device they’ve called EarHealth.
What’s most interesting about EarHealth is that it relies on earbuds that more or less feature off-the-shelf hardware, although with an upgraded microphone inside designed to pick up sounds in the ear, not around the wearer. Based on shared images of the prototype, the EarHealth doesn’t even appear to rely on wireless earbuds, although an official release on the research on the University of Buffalo website does specifically mention the use of Bluetooth earbuds—which is good, because none of us want to go back to wires.
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looks good Aside from being 65″ in size, this TV offers UHD 4K visuals which are a constant feast for the eyes, features HDR to make sure you can appreciate the full range of colors and contrasts, and it also allows you to use it as a hub for all of your streaming services.
whereas the Apple Watch uses optical detection tricks to monitor heart health, the EarHealth uses sound instead. The earbuds emit a quick chirp which reverberates through the ear canal, producing unique sounds and echoes which are captured by the microphone. The captured sounds are then processed by a custom app on a connected smartphone that relies on a deep learning algorithm to generate a profile of the user’s inner ear geometry.
The first chirp is done while the user is healthy to generate a baseline profile of their inner ear, while later chirps, which can be regularly scheduled, generate profiles that are compared against the original to spot differences. estos can be used to diagnose one of three different conditions: earwax blockage, ruptured ear drums, and otitis media, which is a common infection or inflammation of the middle ear caused by colds or sore throats.
In tests done with 92 users that included 27 healthy subjects, 22 with ruptured eardrums, 25 with a confirmed case of otitis media, and 18 with earwax causing a blockage, the EarHealth had a diagnosis accuracy of 82.6%, but that can potentially be improved as the researchers refine both the hardware and the sample base of users. The benefit to using AI-powered algorithms is that they will continue to improve and become more accurate at making diagnoses over time as more sample data is made available.
While it’s not the most powerful console out there, the smaller and more affordable Xbox Series S has been a big hit for Xbox. But reportedly, some devs have felt the strain of getting bigger, more advanced games to work on the console and in response, Microsoft is freeing up some memory to help improve the tiny console’s performance.
As spotted by TheVergeMicrosoft is hoping to make the Xbox Series S a bit more powerful by freeing up some memory and letting developers access that extra memory if needed. In a video explaining this new developer-focused update, Microsoft says that it is unlocking “hundreds of additional megabytes of memory” and that this will, in theory, give studies more control over how to use the console’s limited memory. Microsoft says this “can improve graphics performance in memory-constrained conditions.”
The June Game Development Kit (GDK) is Available Now
To be clear, this isn’t like Microsoft quadrupling the power of the Series S. Nor is this Microsoft flipping some secret switch to let the console start running games at 8K and 240hz or anything wild like that. Instead, the amount of memory dedicated to non-gaming functions in the $300 Series S is being tweaked.
While the more powerful xbox series x console has 16GB of RAM the cheaper Xbox Series S has only 10GB. But before this update, devs only had access to 8GB of that memory as Microsoft reserved around 2GB for the console’s OS. Now devs will have a few hundred extra megabytes of memory, which could help some games run a bit better moving forward.
The Xbox Series S has always been positioned by Microsoft as a cheaper, less-powerful, but still capable next-gen console option. and it’s proven to be a very popular piece of hardware since releasing alongside the beefier Xbox Series X in 2020. Hell, I already had an xbox series x and I ended up buying one. It’s become the main way we play games in our living room, perfect for Fall Guys and Fortnite. But for more intense games it can struggle, requiring cutting down on framerate or resolution. This has reportedly led to some issues and frustration from devs trying to get certain games running on the lesser machine.
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A recent example of a game performing differently on Series S is the Evil Dead game, which launched without a 60fps performance mode on the cheaper machine. Resident Evil Village also limits the game to only 45fps at 1440p and 30fps if you turn ray tracing on.
Hopefully, a few extra bits and bobs of memory can help devs working on Xbox ports not feel as hamstrung by the weaker Xbox Series S.
Signals, such as putting your hand over your heart to signify empathy or thumbs up to show you agree, seem to improve people’s experience of video calls more than typing words or using emojis
Technology
August 3, 2022
By Chris Stokel-Walker
Giving signs like a thumbs up can make video calls feel better
Josep Suria/Shutterstock
Using simple hand gestures during video calls seems to improve people’s experience of such interactions.
Paul Hills at University College London (UCL) came up with a set of gestures after many video calls during covid-19 lockdowns. “It was born out of my frustration with [online] meetings,” says Hills – who also works as a management consultant – during a video call with New Scientist in which he uses the hand actions.
In online meetings, he began informally testing a range of gestures, including ones borrowed from his work as a volunteer lifeguard and as a mentor to an addiction support group.
Initial positive feedback prompted him to team up with Daniel Richardson at UCL and other colleagues to more formally test the signals.
The researchers arranged a randomized trial involving about 120 undergraduate psychology students at UCL and their seminar leaders who were introduced to nine gestures, which they called Video Meeting Signals.
These include putting your hand over your heart to signify empathy, thumbs up or down to show agreement or disagreement and putting your hand on your head to suggest you want to ask a question. The last of these signals, says Hills, was borrowed from the movies of Laurel and Hardy.
Half of the students were asked to use those signals in seminars done by video call, and a control group had meetings, but didn’t use the signs. Participants reported in surveys afterwards that their group affiliation felt stronger because of their use of gestures. The data suggests a 98 per cent probability that this was because of the gestures, and a 93 per cent probability that they contributed to a better personal experience.
“It seemed to be helping,” says Richardson, speaking in the same video call interview as Hills and also using some of the gestures. “It did make these conversations more efficient, people said. They felt like they were achieving their goals sooner.”
The researchers did a second experiment, in which non-students were paid for their time, which also included a third group using emojis instead of gestures. Gestures showed a similar advantage over the control group again, and also over the emoji group.
Hills and Richardson feel that gestures are better than using emojis or typed words in a text chat because of their speed – although they acknowledge that using gestures requires participants to devote their full focus to video call screens, rather than multitasking on video calls, as many people do.
Hills now runs video meeting workshops for businesses on how to use the gesture technique, for a fee.
“It is interesting to see an empirical study examining the efficacy of gesture in this space,” says Matt Wood at the University of the West of England in Bristol, UK. He points out that the commercialization of the work means its results should be treated with caution. “The structure of conversation in videoconferencing appears to be important and to these ends, this paper introduces a potentially interesting framework,” he says. “But the use of gesture is not in any one researcher’s – or marketing company’s – hands.”
Apple silicon—including the M1 and new M2 chips—has a reputation for staying cool even under intense workloads. Intel Macs, on the other hand, run notoriously hot. They’re still capable computers, but they heat up fast, which, in turn, slows things down. If you have an Intel-based Mac, you’ve probably experienced this computational heatwave for yourself. Rather than guessing how hot your computer is getting, however, there’s a hidden monitor built into every Intel-based Mac that lets you know exactly what the internal temperature is.
Why your Mac overheats (and why it’s bad)
I talked about this subject beforewhen I mostly focused on laptops. Whether you have a MacBook or an iMac, however, the general principle is the same: You don’t want your machine to overheat.
Computers heat up because the internal components, namely the CPU and GPU, generate heat as they work. Depending on your computer, you might not notice it while performing light tasks. Once you start pushing the machine, however, you’ll feel the temperature ramping up.
It’s not that this heat will damage or break your computer. I mean, it absolutely could, but manufacturers make sure that will never happen. A little heat is okay; the parts are designed to operate normally within a wide range of temperatures. However, when the chips start to get too hot—usually around 90 degrees FAhrenheit—your computer will slow down its processing speed in order to cool things down, a process referred to as “throttling.”
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Throttling sucks, because it means you’re not getting the performance you expect from your machine. Truea slow machine is better than a burnt and broken one, but avoiding the overheating problem in the first place can help you prevent throttling before it kicks inand push your Mac to its maximum potential.
While there are many ways to combat overheating, one is to keep tabs on your Mac’s temperature. And if you have an Intel Mac, you already have a monitor built right into macOS.
macOS’ hidden temperature monitors for Intel Macs
You won’t find these temperature monitors by searching through the apps installed on your Mac. You won’t even find them in Activity Monitor, as useful a utility as it is. Rather, your Mac’s temperature monitor is found in Terminal. Using Terminal likely seems intimidating to many users, because it allows you to control your Mac using only text-based commands. But you don’t actually need to memorize any of thosee commands to use Terminal; a copied and pasted command works just as well.
There are plenty of useful Terminal commands everyone can use (we covered many of them in this piece) but we’re focusing on the temperature monitors this time. There are two commands you can use here. The first lets you see temperature stats for your Mac’s CPU. Copy and paste the following command exactly as-is into a new Terminal window (quotation marks and all):
sudo powermetrics —samplers smc |grep -i “CPU die temperature”
If done right, Terminal will ask for your password. Enter it (you won’t be able to see what you’re typing, unfortunately), then press the return key. After a moment, you’ll begin seeing temperature readings, updating roughly every five seconds. The temperatures are written in Celsius, so you’ll need to convert to Fahrenheit on your own, but, after a while, you start to pick up which temperatures are cool, warm, hot, and too hot.
Speaking of which, you will also get access to one of my favorite data points in macOS: When things start to get too hot and your Mac decides it needs to cool things down, you’ll see (fan) written next to the temperatures (if your Mac has fans, that is). That lets you know the fans are starting to work harder to move hot air out of your machine. Fans are obviously a good tool for cooling computers, but they aren’t perfect: If your CPU is still heating up to unsafe levels—usually 98 degrees Fahrenheit, going by my experience in Terminal—you’ll start to see (power) instead. When this reading appears, it means macOS is throttling your CPU to keep the temperature from going overboard.
You can also check your GPU temperatures with the following command:
sudo powermetrics –samplers smc |grep -i “GPU die temperature”
Notice that you won’t see (fan) or (power) appear on this Terminal windowonly temperature readings.
Options for Apple silicone
While Apple’s suite of silicon chips don’t face as many heat ramps as Intel-based Macs, they can still overheat and throttle like any other chip. Unfortunately this built-in Terminal command won’t work on M1 and newer, since those chips are designed differently than Intel chips in how they handle heat.
The only solid temperature monitor for Apple silicon available rright now is TG-Prowhich comes at a cost. It’s usually $20, though at the time of this writingit’s on sale for $10. If you’re looking for a temporary solution, the app offers a two-week free trial, so you can monitor your temperatures on M1, M2, or any other Apple silicon variant for 14 days free of charge.
Hopefully, as Apple silicon is adopted by more and more of the Mac user base, developers will write more temperature monitoring apps for the platform. Hey, maybe Apple will even make their own—for free.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is the biggest contract chipmaker in the world. But it has been thrust in the middle of US-China geopolitical tensions. logo displayed on the screen.
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may have left Taiwan but the visit has cast a spotlight once again on the island’s critical role in the global chip supply chain and in particular on the world’s biggest chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., or TSMC.
The controversial visit, which angered Beijing, saw Pelosi meet with TSMC Chairman Mark Liu, in a sign of how critically important semiconductors are to US national security and the integral role that the company plays in making the most advanced chips.
Semiconductors, which go into everything from our smartphones to cars and refrigerators, have become a key part of the US and China’s rivalry over technology in the past few years. More recently, a shortage of semiconductors has spurred the US to try to catch up with Asia and maintain a lead over China in the industry.
“Taiwan’s unresolved diplomatic status will remain a source of intense geopolitical uncertainty. Even Pelosi’s trip underlines how important Taiwan is for both countries,” Reema Bhattacharya, head of Asia research at Verisk Maplecroft, told CNBC’s “Street Signs Europe” on Wednesday.
“The obvious reason being its crucial strategic importance as a chip manufacturer and in the global semiconductor supply chain.”
Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan and meeting with TSMC show the US can’t do it alone and will require collaboration with Asian companies that dominate the most cutting-edge chips.
TSMC’s crucial role
TSMC is a foundry. That means it manufactures chips that other companies design. TSMC has a long list of clients from Apple to Nvidia, some of the world’s biggest technology companies.
As the US fell behind in chip manufacturing over the last 15 years or so, companies like TSMC and Samsung Electronics in South Korea, pushed ahead with cutting-edge chipmaking techniques. While they still rely on tools and technology from the US, Europe and elsewhere, TSMC in particular, managed to cement its place as the world’s top chipmaker.
TSMC accounts for 54% of the global foundry market, according to Counterpoint Research. Taiwan as a country accounts for about two-thirds of the global foundry market alone when considering TSMC alongside other players like UMC and Vanguard. That highlights the importance of Taiwan in the world’s semiconductor market.
When you add Samsung into the mix, which has 15% of the global foundry market share, then Asia really dominates the chipmaking sphere.
That’s why Pelosi made it a point to meet with TSMC’s chairman.
Taiwan invasion fears
China views democratically, self-ruled Taiwan as a renegade province that needs to be reunified with the mainland. Beijing spent weeks telling Pelosi not to come to Taiwan.
During her visit, China ratcheted up tensions by carrying out military drills.
There is a concern that any kind of invasion of Taiwan by China could massively affect the power structure of the global chip market, giving Beijing control of technology it had not previously had. On top of that, there is a fear that an invasion could choke off the supply of cutting-edge chips to the rest of the world.
“Most likely, the Chinese would ‘nationalize it,’ (TSMC) and begin integrating the company, and its technology, into its own semiconductor industry,” Abishur Prakash, co-founder of advisory firm the Center for Innovating the Future, told CNBC via email.
What is the US doing?
How does China stack up?
SMIC is crucial to China’s ambitions, but sanctions have cut it off from the key tools it requires to make the most cutting-edge chips as TSMC does. SMIC remains years behind its rivals. And China’s semiconductor industry still relies heavily on foreign technology.
TSMC does have two chipmaking plants in China but they are producing less sophisticated semiconductors unlike the manufacturing facility in Arizona.
Chipmaking alliances
The US has been looking to form partnerships on semiconductors with allies in Asia including Japan and South Korea as a way to secure supply of the crucial components and maintain a lead over China.
TSMC meanwhile is caught in the middle of the US-China rivalry and could be forced to pick sides, according to Prakash. Its commitment to an advanced semiconductor plant in the US could already be a sign of which country it is siding with.
“In fact, a company like TSMC has already ‘picked sides.’ It’s investing in the US to support American chip making, and has said it wants to work with ‘democracies,’ like the EU, on chip making,” Prakash said.
“Increasingly, companies are striking an ideological tone in whom they work with. The question is, as tensions between Taiwan and China increase, will TSMC be able to maintain its position (aligning with the West), or will it be forced to recalibrate its geopolitical strategy.”
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is the biggest contract chipmaker in the world. But it has been thrust in the middle of US-China geopolitical tensions. logo displayed on the screen.
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may have left Taiwan but the visit has cast a spotlight once again on the island’s critical role in the global chip supply chain and in particular on the world’s biggest chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., or TSMC.
The controversial visit, which angered Beijing, saw Pelosi meet with TSMC Chairman Mark Liu, in a sign of how critically important semiconductors are to US national security and the integral role that the company plays in making the most advanced chips.
Semiconductors, which go into everything from our smartphones to cars and refrigerators, have become a key part of the US and China’s rivalry over technology in the past few years. More recently, a shortage of semiconductors has spurred the US to try to catch up with Asia and maintain a lead over China in the industry.
“Taiwan’s unresolved diplomatic status will remain a source of intense geopolitical uncertainty. Even Pelosi’s trip underlines how important Taiwan is for both countries,” Reema Bhattacharya, head of Asia research at Verisk Maplecroft, told CNBC’s “Street Signs Europe” on Wednesday.
“The obvious reason being its crucial strategic importance as a chip manufacturer and in the global semiconductor supply chain.”
Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan and meeting with TSMC show the US can’t do it alone and will require collaboration with Asian companies that dominate the most cutting-edge chips.
TSMC’s crucial role
TSMC is a foundry. That means it manufactures chips that other companies design. TSMC has a long list of clients from Apple to Nvidia, some of the world’s biggest technology companies.
As the US fell behind in chip manufacturing over the last 15 years or so, companies like TSMC and Samsung Electronics in South Korea, pushed ahead with cutting-edge chipmaking techniques. While they still rely on tools and technology from the US, Europe and elsewhere, TSMC in particular, managed to cement its place as the world’s top chipmaker.
TSMC accounts for 54% of the global foundry market, according to Counterpoint Research. Taiwan as a country accounts for about two-thirds of the global foundry market alone when considering TSMC alongside other players like UMC and Vanguard. That highlights the importance of Taiwan in the world’s semiconductor market.
When you add Samsung into the mix, which has 15% of the global foundry market share, then Asia really dominates the chipmaking sphere.
That’s why Pelosi made it a point to meet with TSMC’s chairman.
Taiwan invasion fears
China views democratically, self-ruled Taiwan as a renegade province that needs to be reunified with the mainland. Beijing spent weeks telling Pelosi not to come to Taiwan.
During her visit, China ratcheted up tensions by carrying out military drills.
There is a concern that any kind of invasion of Taiwan by China could massively affect the power structure of the global chip market, giving Beijing control of technology it had not previously had. On top of that, there is a fear that an invasion could choke off the supply of cutting-edge chips to the rest of the world.
“Most likely, the Chinese would ‘nationalize it,’ (TSMC) and begin integrating the company, and its technology, into its own semiconductor industry,” Abishur Prakash, co-founder of advisory firm the Center for Innovating the Future, told CNBC via email.
What is the US doing?
How does China stack up?
SMIC is crucial to China’s ambitions, but sanctions have cut it off from the key tools it requires to make the most cutting-edge chips as TSMC does. SMIC remains years behind its rivals. And China’s semiconductor industry still relies heavily on foreign technology.
TSMC does have two chipmaking plants in China but they are producing less sophisticated semiconductors unlike the manufacturing facility in Arizona.
Chipmaking alliances
The US has been looking to form partnerships on semiconductors with allies in Asia including Japan and South Korea as a way to secure supply of the crucial components and maintain a lead over China.
TSMC meanwhile is caught in the middle of the US-China rivalry and could be forced to pick sides, according to Prakash. Its commitment to an advanced semiconductor plant in the US could already be a sign of which country it is siding with.
“In fact, a company like TSMC has already ‘picked sides.’ It’s investing in the US to support American chip making, and has said it wants to work with ‘democracies,’ like the EU, on chip making,” Prakash said.
“Increasingly, companies are striking an ideological tone in whom they work with. The question is, as tensions between Taiwan and China increase, will TSMC be able to maintain its position (aligning with the West), or will it be forced to recalibrate its geopolitical strategy.”
