❌

Vue normale

Il y a de nouveaux articles disponibles, cliquez pour rafraîchir la page.
Aujourd’hui — 23 mai 2024Actualités numériques

Hopes For Sustainable Jet Fuel Not Realistic, Report Finds

✇Slashdot
Par : BeauHD
23 mai 2024 à 03:30
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Hopes that replacement fuels for airplanes will slash carbon pollution are misguided and support for these alternatives could even worsen the climate crisis, a new report has warned. There is currently "no realistic or scalable alternative" to standard kerosene-based jet fuels, and touted "sustainable aviation fuels" are well off track to replace them in a timeframe needed to avert dangerous climate change, despite public subsidies, the report by the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive thinktank, found. "While there are kernels of possibility, we should bring a high level of skepticism to the claims that alternative fuels will be a timely substitute for kerosene-based jet fuels," the report said. [...] In the U.S., Joe Biden's administration has set a goal for 3 billion gallons of sustainable aviation fuel, which is made from non-petroleum sources such as food waste, woody biomass and other feedstocks, to be produced by 2030, which it said will cut aviation's planet-heating emissions by 20%. [...] Burning sustainable aviation fuels still emits some carbon dioxide, while the land use changes needed to produce the fuels can also lead to increased pollution. Ethanol biofuel, made from corn, is used in these fuels, and meeting the Biden administration's production goal, the report found, would require 114m acres of corn in the U.S., about a 20% increase in current land area given over to to the crop. In the UK, meanwhile, 50% of all agricultural land will have to be given up to sustain current flight passenger levels if jet fuel was entirely replaced. "Agricultural land use changes could threaten global food security as well as nature-based carbon sequestration solutions such as the preservation of forests and wetlands," the report states. "As such, SAF production may actively undermine the Paris agreement goal of achieving greatly reduced emissions by 2050." Chuck Collins, co-author of the report, said: "To bring these fuels to the scale needed would require massive subsidies, the trade-offs would be unacceptable and would take resources aware from more urgent decarbonization priorities." "It's a huge greenwashing exercise by the aviation industry. It's magical thinking that they will be able to do this." Phil Ansell, director of the Center for Sustainable Aviation at the University of Illinois, added: "There's an underappreciation of how big the energy problem is for aviation. We are still many years away from zero pollution flights. But it's true that the industry has been slow to pick things up. We are now trying to find solutions, but we are working at this problem and realizing it's a lot harder than we thought. We are late to the game. We are in the dark ages in terms of sustainability, compared to other sectors."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon Plans To Give Alexa an AI Overhaul, Monthly Subscription Price

✇Slashdot
Par : BeauHD
23 mai 2024 à 02:02
According to CNBC, Amazon plans to enhance its Alexa voice assistant with generative AI and introduce it to customers through a monthly subscription service. While the price point has yet to be determined, sources say it will not be included in the company's $139-per-year Prime offering. From the report: The team is now tasked with turning Alexa into a relevant device that holds up amid the new AI competition, and one that justifies the resources and headcount Amazon has dedicated to it. It has undergone a massive reorganization, with much of the team shifting to the artificial general intelligence, or AGI, team, according to the three sources. Others pointed to bloat within Alexa, a team of thousands of employees. As of 2023, Amazon said it had sold more than 500 million Alexa-enabled devices, giving the company a foothold with consumers. [...] One source estimated the cost of using generative AI in Alexa at 2 cents per query, and said a $20 price point was floated internally. Another suggested it would need to be in a single-digit dollar amount, which would undercut other subscription offerings. OpenAI's ChatGPT charges $20 per month for its advanced models. Still, they point to Alexa's installed user base, with devices in hundreds of millions of homes, as an opportunity. Those who worked on Alexa say the fact that it's already in people's living rooms and kitchens makes the stakes higher, and mistakes more costly if Alexa doesn't understand a command or provides unreliable information. [...] Amazon will use its own large language model, Titan, in the Alexa upgrade, according to a source.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

US Lawmakers Advance Bill To Make It Easier To Curb Exports of AI Models

✇Slashdot
Par : msmash
23 mai 2024 à 01:25
The House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to advance a bill that would make it easier for the Biden administration to restrict the export of AI systems, citing concerns China could exploit them to bolster its military capabilities. From a report: The bill, sponsored by House Republicans Michael McCaul and John Molenaar and Democrats Raja Krishnamoorthi and Susan Wild, also would give the Commerce Department express authority to bar Americans from working with foreigners to develop AI systems that pose risks to U.S. national security. Without this legislation "our top AI companies could inadvertently fuel China's technological ascent, empowering their military and malign ambitions," McCaul, who chairs the committee, warned on Wednesday. "As the (Chinese Communist Party) looks to expand their technological advancements to enhance their surveillance state and war machine, it is critical we protect our sensitive technology from falling into their hands," McCaul added. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The bill is the latest sign Washington is gearing up to beat back China's AI ambitions over fears Beijing could harness the technology to meddle in other countries' elections, create bioweapons or launch cyberattacks.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

FCC Chair Proposes Disclosure Rules For AI-Generated Content In Political Ads

✇Slashdot
Par : BeauHD
23 mai 2024 à 00:45
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel has proposed (PDF) disclosure rules for AI-generated content used in political ads. "If adopted, the proposal would look into whether the FCC should require political ads on radio and TV to disclose when there is AI-generated content," reports Quartz. From the report: The FCC is seeking comment on whether on-air and written disclosure should be required in broadcasters' political files when AI-generated content is used in political ads; proposing that the rules apply to both candidates and issue advertisements; requesting comment on what a specific definition of AI-generated comment should look like; and proposing that disclosure rules be applied to broadcasters and entities involved in programming, such as cable operators and radio providers. The proposed disclosure rules do not prohibit the use of AI-generated content in political ads. The FCC has authority through the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act to make rules around political advertising. If the proposal is adopted, the FCC will take public comment on the rules. "As artificial intelligence tools become more accessible, the Commission wants to make sure consumers are fully informed when the technology is used," Rosenworcel said in a statement. "Today, I've shared with my colleagues a proposal that makes clear consumers have a right to know when AI tools are being used in the political ads they see, and I hope they swiftly act on this issue."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Why Your Wi-Fi Router Doubles As an Apple AirTag

✇Slashdot
Par : BeauHD
23 mai 2024 à 00:10
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Krebs On Security: Apple and the satellite-based broadband service Starlink each recently took steps to address new research into the potential security and privacy implications of how their services geo-locate devices. Researchers from the University of Maryland say they relied on publicly available data from Apple to track the location of billions of devices globally -- including non-Apple devices like Starlink systems -- and found they could use this data to monitor the destruction of Gaza, as well as the movements and in many cases identities of Russian and Ukrainian troops. At issue is the way that Apple collects and publicly shares information about the precise location of all Wi-Fi access points seen by its devices. Apple collects this location data to give Apple devices a crowdsourced, low-power alternative to constantly requesting global positioning system (GPS) coordinates. Both Apple and Google operate their own Wi-Fi-based Positioning Systems (WPS) that obtain certain hardware identifiers from all wireless access points that come within range of their mobile devices. Both record the Media Access Control (MAC) address that a Wi-FI access point uses, known as a Basic Service Set Identifier or BSSID. Periodically, Apple and Google mobile devices will forward their locations -- by querying GPS and/or by using cellular towers as landmarks -- along with any nearby BSSIDs. This combination of data allows Apple and Google devices to figure out where they are within a few feet or meters, and it's what allows your mobile phone to continue displaying your planned route even when the device can't get a fix on GPS. With Google's WPS, a wireless device submits a list of nearby Wi-Fi access point BSSIDs and their signal strengths -- via an application programming interface (API) request to Google -- whose WPS responds with the device's computed position. Google's WPS requires at least two BSSIDs to calculate a device's approximate position. Apple's WPS also accepts a list of nearby BSSIDs, but instead of computing the device's location based off the set of observed access points and their received signal strengths and then reporting that result to the user, Apple's API will return the geolocations of up to 400 hundred more BSSIDs that are nearby the one requested. It then uses approximately eight of those BSSIDs to work out the user's location based on known landmarks. In essence, Google's WPS computes the user's location and shares it with the device. Apple's WPS gives its devices a large enough amount of data about the location of known access points in the area that the devices can do that estimation on their own. That's according to two researchers at the University of Maryland, who theorized they could use the verbosity of Apple's API to map the movement of individual devices into and out of virtually any defined area of the world. The UMD pair said they spent a month early in their research continuously querying the API, asking it for the location of more than a billion BSSIDs generated at random. They learned that while only about three million of those randomly generated BSSIDs were known to Apple's Wi-Fi geolocation API, Apple also returned an additional 488 million BSSID locations already stored in its WPS from other lookups. "Plotting the locations returned by Apple's WPS between November 2022 and November 2023, Levin and Rye saw they had a near global view of the locations tied to more than two billion Wi-Fi access points," the report adds. "The map showed geolocated access points in nearly every corner of the globe, apart from almost the entirety of China, vast stretches of desert wilderness in central Australia and Africa, and deep in the rainforests of South America." The researchers wrote: "We observe routers move between cities and countries, potentially representing their owner's relocation or a business transaction between an old and new owner. While there is not necessarily a 1-to-1 relationship between Wi-Fi routers and users, home routers typically only have several. If these users are vulnerable populations, such as those fleeing intimate partner violence or a stalker, their router simply being online can disclose their new location." A copy of the UMD research is available here (PDF).

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Initial Windows NT Sync Driver Merged Into Linux 6.10 But Not Yet Complete

✇Phoronix
Par : Michael Larabel
23 mai 2024 à 00:07
Greg Kroah-Hartman today sent in the char/misc updates for Linux 6.10 alongside the other areas of the kernel he oversees. Among the char/misc changes is adding the NTSYNC driver that exposes the /dev/ntsync character device for use by the likes of Wine and Valve's Steam Play (Proton). But for Linux 6.10 the driver is effectively "broken" as most of the feature patches have yet to be included...

Microsoft Edge Will Begin Blocking Screenshots On the Job

✇Slashdot
Par : BeauHD
22 mai 2024 à 23:20
Microsoft is adding screenshot prevention controls in Edge to block you from taking screenshots at work. "It's all designed to prevent you from sharing screenshots with competitors, relatives, and journalists using Microsoft Edge for Business," reports PCWorld. From the report: Specifically, IT managers at corporations will be able to tag web pages as protected, as defined in various Microsoft policy engines in Microsoft 365, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Microsoft Intune Mobile Application Management and Microsoft Purview, Microsoft said. The screenshot prevention feature will be available to customers in the "coming months," Microsoft said. It's also unclear whether third-party tools will be somehow blocked from taking screenshots or recording video, too. Microsoft will also roll out a way to force Edge for Business users to automatically update their browsers. The feature will enter a preview phase over the next few weeks, Microsoft said. "The Edge management service will enable IT admins to see which devices have Edge instances that are out of date and at risk," Microsoft said. "It will also provide mitigating controls, such as forcing a browser restart to install updates, enabling automatic browser updates or enabling enhanced security mode for added protections."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hier — 22 mai 2024Actualités numériques

The First Crew Launch of Boeing's Starliner Capsule Is On Hold Indefinitely

✇Slashdot
Par : BeauHD
22 mai 2024 à 22:40
Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Ars Technica: The first crewed test flight of Boeing's long-delayed Starliner spacecraft won't take off as planned Saturday and could face a longer postponement as engineers evaluate a stubborn leak of helium from the capsule's propulsion system. NASA announced the latest delay of the Starliner test flight late Tuesday. Officials will take more time to consider their options for how to proceed with the mission after discovering the small helium leak on the spacecraft's service module. The space agency did not describe what options are on the table, but sources said they range from flying the spacecraft "as is" with a thorough understanding of the leak and confidence it won't become more significant in flight, to removing the capsule from its Atlas V rocket and taking it back to a hangar for repairs. Theoretically, the former option could permit a launch attempt as soon as next week. The latter alternative could delay the launch until at least late summer. "The team has been in meetings for two consecutive days, assessing flight rationale, system performance, and redundancy," NASA said in a statement Tuesday night. "There is still forward work in these areas, and the next possible launch opportunity is still being discussed. NASA will share more details once we have a clearer path forward."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

TSMC's Roadmap at a Glance: N3X, N2P, A16 Coming in 2025/2026

✇AnandTech
22 mai 2024 à 21:30

As announced last week by TSMC, later this year the company is set to start high-volume manufacturing on its N3P fabrication process, and this will be the company's most advanced node for a while. Next year things will get a bit more interesting as TSMC will have two process technologies that could actually compete against each other when they enter high-volume manufacturing (HVM) in the second half of 2025.

Advertised PPA Improvements of New Process Technologies
Data announced during conference calls, events, press briefings and press releases
Compiled
by
AnandTech		 TSMC
N3
vs
N5		 N3E
vs
N5		 N3P
vs
N3E		 N3X
vs
N3P		 N2
vs
N3E		 N2P
vs
N3E		 N2P
vs
N2		 A16
vs
N2P
Power -25%
-30%		 -34% -5%
-10%		 -7%*** -25%
-30%		 -30%
-40%		 -5%
-10%		 -15%
-20%
Performance +10%
+15%		 +18% +5% +5%
Fmax @1.2V**		 +10%
+15%		 +15%
+20%		 +5
+10%		 +8%
+10%
Density* ? 1.3x 1.04x 1.10x*** 1.15x 1.15x ? 1.07x
1.10x
HVM Q4
2022		 Q4
2023		 H2
2024		 H2
2025		 H2
2025		 H2
2026		 H2
2026		 H2
2026

*Chip density published by TSMC reflects 'mixed' chip density consisting of 50% logic, 30% SRAM, and 20% analog.
**At the same area. 
***At the same speed.

The production nodes are N3X (3nm-class, extreme performance-focused) as well as N2 (2nm-class). TSMC says that when compared to N3P, chips made on N3X can either lower power consumption by 7% at the same frequency by lowering Vdd from 1.0V to 0.9V, increase performance by 5% at the same area, or increase transistor density by around 10% at the same frequency. Meanwhile, the key advantage of N3X compared to predecessors is its maximum voltage of 1.2V, which is important for ultra-high-performance applications, such as desktop or datacenter GPUs.

TSMC's N2 will be TSMC's first production node to use gate-all-around (GAA) nanosheet transistors and this will significantly enhance its performance, power, and area (PPA) characteristics. When compared to N3E, semiconductors produced on N3 can cut their power consumption by 25% - 30% (at the same transistor count and frequency), increase their performance by 10% - 15% (at the same transistor count and power), and increase transistor density by 15% (at the same speed and power). 

While N2 will certainly be TSMC's undisputed champ when it comes to power consumption and transistor density, N3X could possibly challenge it when it comes to performance, especially at high voltages. For many customers N3X will also have a benefit of using proven FinFET transistors, so N2 will not be automatically the best of TSMC's nodes in the second half of 2025.

2026: N2P and A16

In the following year TSMC will again offer two nodes that are set to target generally similar smartphone and high-performance computing applications: N2P (performance-enhanced 2nm-class) and A16 (1.6nm-class with backside power delivery).

N2P is expected to deliver a 5% - 10% lower power (at the same speed and transistor count) or a 5% - 10% higher performance (at the same power and transistor count) compared to the original N2. Meanwhile, A16 is set to offer an up to 20% lower power (at the same speed and transistors), up to 10% higher performance (at the same power and transistors), and up to 10% higher transistor density compared to N2P. 

Keeping in mind that A16 features enhanced backside power delivery network, it will likely be the node of choice for performance-minded chip designers. But of course, it will be more expensive to use A16 because of the backside power delivery, which requires additional process steps.

People With Commonly Autocorrected Names Call For Tech Firms To Fix Problem

✇Slashdot
Par : BeauHD
22 mai 2024 à 22:02
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: People whose names get mangled by autocorrect have urged technology companies to fix the problem faster, with one person whose name gets switched to "Satan" saying: "I am tired of it." People with Irish, Indian and Welsh names are among those calling for improvements to the systems that operate on phones and computers as part of the "I am not a typo" campaign. "It is important that technology becomes more inclusive," said Savan-Chandni Gandecha, 34, a British Indian content creator whose name, which means monsoon moonlight, has been autocorrected to Satan. "My name has also been corrected to Savant," he said. "It is sometimes corrected to Savan, or the hyphen is not accepted by online forms and that irks me," he said. "Even in India my name gets corrected to "Sawan", and it's not just an English issue. It's a multi-language thing." The campaign has estimated that four out of 10 names of babies born in England and Wales in 2021 were deemed "wrong" or "not accepted" when tested on Microsoft's English dictionary. Dhruti Shah, a journalist, has backed the campaign after seeing her name autocorrected to "Dirty" and "Dorito". She said: "My first name isn't even that long -- only six characters -- but yet when it comes up as an error or it's mangled and considered an unknown entity, it's like saying that it's not just your name that's wrong, but you are." The campaign group -- established by a group of people working in the creative industries in London -- wrote an open letter to technology companies, which pointed out that between 2017 and 2021, 2,328 people named Esmae were born, compared with 36 Nigels. Esmae gets autocorrected to Admar, while Nigel is unchanged. "There are so many diverse names in the global majority but autocorrect is western- and white-focused," said Gandecha. Rashmi Dyal-Chand, a professor at Northeastern University in the US whose name is sometimes corrected to Sashimi, is supporting the latest campaign and said: "For people with names like mine, autocorrect is not convenient and helpful. It is unhelpful. And yes -- it is harmful." "We all increasingly rely on smartphones, tablets, word processors, and apps that use autocorrect. Yet autocorrect incorporates a set of defaults -- including dictionaries -- that help some of its users to communicate seamlessly at the expense of others who cannot." Karen Fox, whose children are called Eoin and Niamh, said of autocorrect: "The red line bothers me -- I didn't choose the 'wrong' name for my child. Tech companies update dictionaries with slang all the time and I think it should be an easy thing to do and definitely a priority."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nvidia Reports a 262% Jump In Sales, 10-1 Stock Split

✇Slashdot
Par : BeauHD
22 mai 2024 à 21:25
Nvidia reported fiscal first-quarter earnings surpassing expectations with strong forecasts, indicating sustained demand for its AI chips. Following the news, the company's stock rose over 6% in extended trading. Nvidia also said it was splitting its stock 10 to 1. CNBC reports: Nvidia said it expected sales of $28 billion in the current quarter. Wall Street was expecting earnings per share of $5.95 on sales of $26.61 billion, according to LSEG. Nvidia reported net income for the quarter of $14.88 billion, or $5.98 per share, compared with $2.04 billion, or 82 cents, in the year-ago period. [...] Nvidia said its data center category rose 427% from the year-ago quarter to $22.6 billion in revenue. Nvidia CFO Colette Kress said in a statement that it was due to shipments of the company's "Hopper" graphics processors, which include the company's H100 GPU. Nvidia also highlighted strong sales of its networking parts, which are increasingly important as companies build clusters of tens of thousands of chips that need to be connected. Nvidia said that it had $3.2 billion in networking revenue, primarily its Infiniband products, which was over three times higher than last year's sales. Nvidia, before it became the top supplier to big companies building AI, was known primarily as a company making hardware for 3D gaming. The company's gaming revenue was up 18% during the quarter to $2.65 billion, which Nvidia attributed to strong demand. The company also sells chips for cars and chips for advanced graphics workstations, which remain much smaller than its data center business. The company reported $427 million in professional visualization sales, and $329 million in automotive sales. Nvidia said it bought back $7.7 billion worth of its shares and paid $98 million in dividends during the quarter. Nvidia also said that it's increasing its quarterly cash dividend from 4 cents per share to 10 cents on a pre-split basis. After the split, the dividend will be a penny a share.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mozilla Says It's Concerned About Windows Recall

✇Slashdot
Par : msmash
22 mai 2024 à 20:41
Microsoft's Windows Recall feature is attracting controversy before even venturing out of preview. From a report: The principle is simple. Windows takes a snapshot of a user's active screen every few seconds and dumps it to disk. The user can then scroll through the snapshots and, when something is selected, the user is given options to interact with the content. Mozilla's Chief Product Officer, Steve Teixeira, told The Register: "Mozilla is concerned about Windows Recall. From a browser perspective, some data should be saved, and some shouldn't. Recall stores not just browser history, but also data that users type into the browser with only very coarse control over what gets stored. While the data is stored in encrypted format, this stored data represents a new vector of attack for cybercriminals and a new privacy worry for shared computers. "Microsoft is also once again playing gatekeeper and picking which browsers get to win and lose on Windows -- favoring, of course, Microsoft Edge. Microsoft's Edge allows users to block specific websites and private browsing activity from being seen by Recall. Other Chromium-based browsers can filter out private browsing activity but lose the ability to block sensitive websites (such as financial sites) from Recall. "Right now, there's no documentation on how a non-Chromium based, third-party browser, such as Firefox, can protect user privacy from Recall. Microsoft did not engage our cooperation on Recall, but we would have loved for that to be the case, which would have enabled us to partner on giving users true agency over their privacy, regardless of the browser they choose."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Spyware Found on US Hotel Check-in Computers

✇Slashdot
Par : msmash
22 mai 2024 à 20:01
A consumer-grade spyware app has been found running on the check-in systems of at least three Wyndham hotels across the United States, TechCrunch reported Wednesday. From the report: The app, called pcTattletale, stealthily and continually captured screenshots of the hotel booking systems, which contained guest details and customer information. Thanks to a security flaw in the spyware, these screenshots are available to anyone on the internet, not just the spyware's intended users. This is the most recent example of consumer-grade spyware exposing sensitive information because of a security flaw in the spyware itself. It's also the second known time that pcTattletale has exposed screenshots of the devices that the app is installed on. Several other spyware apps in recent years had security bugs or misconfigurations that exposed the private and personal data of unwitting device owners, in some cases prompting action by government regulators. pcTattletale allows whomever controls it to remotely view the target's Android or Windows device and its data, from anywhere in the world. pcTattletale's website says the app "runs invisibly in the background on their workstations and can not be detected."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CFPB Says Buy Now, Pay Later Firms Must Comply With US Credit Card Laws

✇Slashdot
Par : msmash
22 mai 2024 à 19:21
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau declared on Wednesday that customers of the burgeoning buy now, pay later industry have the same federal protections as users of credit cards. From a report: The agency unveiled what it called an "interpretive rule" that deemed BNPL lenders essentially the same as traditional credit card providers under the decades-old Truth in Lending Act. That means the industry -- currently dominated by fintech firms like Affirm, Klarna and PayPal -- must make refunds for returned products or canceled services, must investigate merchant disputes and pause payments during those probes, and must provide bills with fee disclosures. "Regardless of whether a shopper swipes a credit card or uses Buy Now, Pay Later, they are entitled to important consumer protections under long-standing laws and regulations already on the books," CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said in a release. The CFPB, which last week was handed a crucial victory by the Supreme Court, has pushed hard against the U.S. financial industry, issuing rules that slashed credit card late fees and overdraft penalties. The agency, formed in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, began investigating the BNPL industry in late 2021.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

[Bon plan] PNY GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER VERTO OC à 579,99 €

✇Hardware & Co - Actualités
Par : contact@hardwareand.co (David S.)
22 mai 2024 à 18:40

Un nouveau cap vient d'être franchi au niveau du meilleur prix en France sur une NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER : seulement 579,99 € ce qui commence à devenir très intéressant sur un tel modèle. La carte dont nous parlons est donc la PNY GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER VERTO OC. Il s'agit clairement d'un modè...

TSMC Offers a Peek at 'Global Gigafab' Process Replication Program

✇AnandTech
22 mai 2024 à 19:00

At its European Technology Symposium last week TSMC revealed some of the details about its Global Gigafab Manufacturing program, the company's strategy to replicate its manufacturing processes across its multiple gigafab sites.

The need for large-scale multi-national fabs to have a process in place to replicate their facilities is well-documented at this point. As scaling-up at at the gigafab size means scaling-out instead, chip makers need to be able to quickly get new and updated manufacturing processes ported to other facilities in order to hit their necessary throughput – and to avoid a multi-quarter bottlenecks that come from having to freshly-tune a fab.

Intel, for their part, has a well-known Copy Exactly program, which is one of the company's major competitive advantages, allowing it to share process recipes across its fabs around the world to maximize yields and reduce performance variability. Meanwhile, as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is building additional capacity in different parts of the world, it has reached the point where it needs a similar program in order to quickly maximize its yields and productivity at its new fabs in Japan and the U.S. And in some respects, TSMC's program goes even further than Intel's, with an additional focus on sustainability and social responsibility.

"As mentioned at last year's symposium, [Global Gigafab manufacturing] is a powerful global manufacturing and management platform," said Y.L. Wang, Vice President of Fab Operations TSMC. "We realise one fab management to ensure our Gigafab to achieve consistent operation efficiency as well as production quality on a global scale. Moreover, we also pursue sustainability across our global footprint covering green manufacturing, global talent development, supply chain localization, as well as social responsibility."

TSMC's Global GigaFab Manufacturing
Data by TSMC (Compiled by AnandTech)
Manufacturing Excellence Sustainability
Global One Fab Manufacturing Green Manufacturing
ML-based Process Control Global Talent Development
Manufacturing Agility and Quality Supply Chain Localization
Maximum Productivity Social Responsibility

When it comes to improvements of process technology, there are two main mechanisms: the continuous process improvements (CPI) to improve yields, as well as statistical process control (SPC) reduce performance variations. To do so, the company has multiple internal techniques that rely on machine learning-based process control, constant quality measuring, and various productivity improving methods. With Global Gigafab manufacturing TSMC can use CPI and SPC to improve yields and performance on the global scale by sharing knowledge between different sites.

"When we port a technology from Taiwan to Arizona, the fab set up, the process control system, everything is actually a copy from Taiwan," said Kevin Zhang, Senior Vice President, Business Development and Overseas Operations Office, and Deputy Co-COO at TSMC.

TSMC yet has to start making chips at its fabs in Germany, Japan, and the United States, so it remains to be seen how fast the foundry will increase yields to Taiwanese levels at its Fab 23 (in Kumamoto, Japan) and Fab 21 (in Arizona) when they begin operations in 2024 and 2025, but with Global Gigafab Manufacturing program in place, this is likely set to happen rather sooner than later.

❌
❌