Fab FOMO? Singapore’s mature semiconductor industry misses out on AI boom

IN FOCUS

In today’s newsletter, we look at:

• Is Singapore losing out on the AI chip boom?
• What a second term for Trump means for Silicon Valley and the AI industry
• Singapore’s AI scene needs more doers and less talkers, says Reka founder

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Hi there,

Back in 2008, I bought one of Nvidia’s GeForce video cards. It was the first time I had ever purchased a GPU, and it set me back a couple hundred US dollars. I used it for no other reason than to play video games.

That card was pretty awesome at the time and was capable of around 100 gigaflops of processing power. By today’s standards, that’s 💩.

Consumer-level GPUs today can process teraflops of data, and the big boys – the ones that the US doesn’t want China to have – are monsters. In August 2022, the US banned the export of Nvidia’s H100 GPUs, capable of performing at 4,000 teraflops, to China.

No one is playing video games with these. They are strictly for AI.

Demand for these chips is driving up the price. In February, it was reported that the H100 was selling at over US$40,000, but there have been some reports that the chip was selling for US$309,000 just a few months later.

Singapore has a long history of making microchips. However, they are mature-node chips, not cutting-edge AI ones. That’s why today’s featured story asks: Is Singapore losing out on the AI chip boom?

It’s a complicated question, because high-end GPUs aren’t the only chips in demand on the market, and retooling a fab is massively expensive.

After that, I’ll focus on another growing issue: why Donald Trump is being championed by the AI industry.

But first, our Big Story.

— Scott

THE BIG STORY

Is Singapore losing out on the AI chip boom?

THE HOT TAKE

DEEP READS

FYI