Sunday, July 27, 2025

EUV Lithography -- July 27, 2025

You’re absolutely right — the Chinese RV32-WUJI chip, based on the open-source RISC-V architecture, does not require EUV lithography. 

Why It Doesn’t Require EUV EUV (Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography) is used for manufacturing advanced semiconductors at very small nodes (e.g., 7nm, 5nm, 3nm). It’s incredibly complex, expensive, and controlled tightly by export restrictions, especially regarding China. The RV32-WUJI chip, developed by China’s C-SKY (now part of Alibaba’s T-Head) and other Chinese institutions, is: 

Based on RISC-V, an open-source ISA that allows global design and implementation without U.S. licensing restrictions.

Built on older, mature nodes — likely 65nm, 55nm, or 28nm — which can be manufactured with DUV (Deep Ultraviolet) lithography, not EUV. 

Intended for IoT, embedded, education, and industrial use, where bleeding-edge performance isn’t necessary. These chips prioritize:

Simplicity and low power

Cost-effective domestic production

Reduced reliance on foreign IP and manufacturing 

What This Means for China • Strategic self-reliance: By avoiding EUV, China sidesteps critical bottlenecks in the semiconductor supply chain caused by export controls. 

RISC-V advantage: Open-source hardware allows customization and innovation without dependency on ARM or x86 licensing. 

Scaling education & adoption: Chips like RV32-WUJI are great platforms for teaching, prototyping, and building localized ecosystems. 

Bottom Line Yes — the RV32-WUJI chip is designed to be manufactured without EUV lithography. This aligns with China’s strategic goal of building a self-sufficient, EUV-independent semiconductor infrastructure, particularly for non-cutting-edge but high-volume applications.

Thursday, July 17, 2025

The US Supreme Court Docket -- From The New York Times -- Arrived In Mailbox -- July 17, 2025

 

The Supreme Court docket

Author Headshot

By Adam B. Kushner

I’m the editor of this newsletter.


Why has the Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration so often? In many cases, it won’t say.

My colleague Adam Liptak has a new story about a curious type of Supreme Court case. These aren’t the lawsuits about big constitutional questions. Those wind their way upward slowly through district and circuit courts. They yield rulings, reversals and reams of briefings along the way. At the end, justices interrogate lawyers during oral arguments and then exchange drafts of their views. The result, Adam writes, “is often a comprehensive set of opinions that can be as long as a short novel.”

The cases Adam writes about now are something else — emergency applications. These require a snap decision about whether a policy can go ahead or must wait while lower judges argue over its legality. Critics call this the “shadow docket,” and the court usually rules on the urgent cases within weeks. Trump has won almost all 18 of these petitions. And unlike normal rulings, justices often don’t explain their rationale. Some recent examples:

  • On Monday, the court said Trump could dismantle the Education Department. The unsigned order was a single paragraph about procedural mechanics. Adam called it “an exercise of power, not reason.”
  • In June, the court let the administration deport migrants to countries other than the ones they came from. Since the justices offered no rationale, the government had to ask for clarification about whether the ruling applied to men it had already sent to a U.S. base in Djibouti. (The answer was yes.)
  • In May, the court allowed Trump to enforce a ban on transgender troops serving in the U.S. military. Its ruling was brief and unsigned.

Fast thinking, fast work

None of these emergency decisions are final. In each, lawyers can fight the policy in lower courts. Perhaps the Supreme Court will eventually decide that the government can’t deport migrants from around the world to Sudan or unmake a federal agency without the say-so of Congress. But by then, critics of the shadow docket say, the work will already be done.

The justices themselves have battled over the propriety of emergency rulings. In a 2021 dissent, Elana Kagan rued a midnight ruling that effectively overturned Roe v. Wade in Texas. A month later, Samuel Alito returned fire in a speech:

The catchy and sinister term ‘shadow docket’ has been used to portray the court as having been captured by a dangerous cabal that resorts to sneaky and improper methods to get its ways. … You can’t expect the E.M.T.s and the emergency rooms to do the same thing that a team of physicians and nurses will do when they are handling a matter when time is not of the essence in the same way.

Some law professors have built a new database tracking the rise of the emergency docket. The first half of 2025 represented a record high, with 15 emergency applications accepted as of June 18. The next highest peak was 11, from the final year of the previous Trump administration.

Tuesday, July 15, 2025

GM -- Update -- Mid-Year 2025

GM: will invest $4 billion in US manufacturing plants. This is huge. The emphasis will be on high-margin, large, gasoline-guzzling SUVs and pick-up trucks.

Announced June 10, 2025:

Plants in Michigan, Kansas, and Tennessee will expand finished vehicle production of several of GM’s most popular vehicles:

  • Orion Assembly, Orion Township, Michigan: GM will begin production of gasoline-powered full-size SUVs and light duty pickup trucks at Orion in early 2027 to help meet continued strong demand. As a result, GM’s Factory ZERO in Detroit-Hamtramck, Michigan will be the dedicated assembly location for the Chevrolet Silverado EV, GMC Sierra EV, Cadillac ESCALADE IQ, and GMC HUMMER EV pickup and SUV.
  • Fairfax Assembly, Kansas City, Kansas: Fairfax Assembly will support production of the gasoline-powered Chevrolet Equinox beginning in mid-2027. Sales of the recently redesigned Equinox were up more than 30% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2025. Fairfax remains on track to begin building the 2027 Chevrolet Bolt EV by the end of this year. GM expects to make new future investments in Fairfax for GM’s next generation of affordable EVs.
  • Spring Hill Manufacturing, Spring Hill, Tennessee: GM will add production of the gasoline-powered Chevrolet Blazer at Spring Hill starting in 2027, alongside the Cadillac LYRIQ and VISTIQ EVs, and the Cadillac XT5.

July 15, 2025: update from GM via Reuters, just part of the entire press release:

General Motors said on Tuesday it will move production of the Cadillac Escalade to a Michigan assembly plant, while adding new capacity for gasoline-powered Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra light-duty pickups at the same facility.

The Escalade is currently produced in Arlington, Texas, alongside other large SUVs such as the GMC Yukon, Chevrolet Suburban and Chevy Tahoe. Production at Arlington is expected to remain consistent after the Escalade moves to Michigan.

The automaker will be adding production of the Silverado and Sierra trucks at its Orion Township, Michigan factory, in addition to existing production in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The gasoline-powered trucks and SUVs are among GM's biggest money makers.

GM told Reuters the moves would "help meet continued strong customer demand."

GM said it will begin manufacturing the SUVs and light-duty pickup trucks at its Orion Assembly plant in early 2027. Orion Assembly was previously slated to build electric trucks starting next year.

Monday, July 14, 2025

Core Scientific -- CoreWeave -- Denton, TX -- July 14, 2025

Locator: 10010COREWEAVE.

Link here.

CoreWeave Inc. is expanding a data center that is projected to double the electricity needs of a city near Dallas, another example of the strains that artificial intelligence workloads are placing on the US power supply.

Local officials have grappled with how to handle the increased stress on the electricity grid from the project, according to a late 2024 presentation and emails seen by Bloomberg.

The site is being developed by Core Scientific Inc. and will be used by OpenAI in Denton, Texas. Last week, CoreWeave announced it would acquire Core Scientific for about $9 billion, in part, to gain direct control of its data centers aimed at supplying AI work.

Denton, about 50 miles northwest of Dallas, has almost doubled its population in the last 25 years to about 166,000 residents. To meet the spike in AI-related power demand, the city is passing on any extra costs to the data center operator and constructing additional grid infrastructure.

Like some other large AI data center projects, the site in Denton was focused on cryptocurrency mining before pivoting to AI workloads in December. This transition means unrelenting power consumption — the site will no longer curtail operations when power prices are high — which will increase grid strain.

“Now you’re talking about a facility that has to have energy 24 hours a day, 365 days a year,” Puente said. That challenge will be mitigated by the addition of backup generators and batteries, he added.

Unlike many large projects, the Denton data center didn’t receive local tax exemptions. Officials expect more than $600 million in property and sales tax from the data center expansion, more than double the costs it plans to incur, according to an analysis document seen by Bloomberg. It also anticipates that 135 new jobs will be created.

The Denton site, which is already being rented by CoreWeave, is Core Scientific’s largest planned project at about 390 megawatts of power. It’s “utilizing the majority of extra system capacity” in the city, wrote a utility executive in a January email seen by Bloomberg. Any additional large power users will exacerbate overloads on the grid, the executive added.

That is significantly larger than a traditional data center, but still an order of magnitude smaller than some megaprojects such as Oracle Corp.’s Stargate in Abilene, Texas. “When fully built out, it will host one of the largest GPU clusters in North America,” Core Scientific Chief Executive Officer Adam Sullivan said of the site during a May call. “Denton is a flagship facility.”

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My Thoughts

My reply to the reader who sent me the Coreweave link above.

Thank you, I had not seen that.

In fact the story hits closer to home that I imagined.

The "city" they are referring to is Denton. Denton is where I took Arianna every weekend for water polo tournaments during her high school years. It's about a 40-minute drive, I suppose, just north of us. It's a huge city.

Claim to fame: the movie "Rocky Horror Picture Show" was set in Denton, TX -- a real cult classic.

Denton is just north of the I-35 / Texas State Highway 114 interchange where one of the biggest Buc-ee's is located and where the Texas Motor Speedway is located.

Today, 2025, the population geographical center in the DFW area is just north of Dallas (Frisco, McKinney, Plano where Dallas Cowboys have their headquarters) but in 2050 the Tx DOT says the DFW population center will move to Rhome, Texas, where the Texas Motor Speedway is located, as well as another airport, and where GE (or whoever?)  makes Burlington Northen locomotives.

Right now Texas' Silicon Valley is along I-35 north of Austin, that activity will gradually move to north Texas around Frisco (north Dalla), Southlake (US headquarters for Schwab located there near the I-35 / Texas State Highway 114; and Denton, north of Ft Worth.

Finally:
I-35: Mexico to Austin to DFW north to Oklahoma City to Kansas City and points north.

Texas State Highway 114 is being expanded and some places now is ten lanes across. the thoroughfare from Dallas to I-10 to Los Angeles.

That's how I keep the three major thoroughfares straight in my mind when I'm on the road.

121 south to where I live and south to Forth Worth
121 north to Frisco (Dallas Cowboys)

360 east to Dallas
360 west back to where we live and DFW airport

114 east to Dallas
114 west to Los Angeles

So that Denton story is a big, big story for us.

Lots and lots of jobs.

University of North Texas is located in Denton.
University of Texas Dallas is to the east and becoming a huge engineering (computer) center -- in the past six years.

Thank you for the story.

 

Sunday, July 6, 2025

From A Reader, Replying To My Recent Comments On China And, Unrelated, AI -- July 6, 2025

I have contacted you several times in the past on sundry matters. I am the  former ND guy who has lived in .................. I retired ....... five years ago from a technical position (........................). I had a couple of comments that I wanted to share with you.

I have been following the affairs in China for quite some time.  ...............  In the last year, Xi's status has diminished greatly and many of his appointees to positions  and supporters have been purged.  He has had significant health issues but the real status of his health have only been guessed at.  The supposition is that is to be a change in government at the end of summer into fall.  There are many blogs and podcasts on China, but the one I trust to not just follow rumors is:


Lei's Real Talk            https://www.youtube.com/c/LeisRealTalk

She does several videos per week touching on CCP matters and current status of China.   You may also be interested in past videos pertaining to China's population is no where near the stated number.  There is much evidence that their population is more in line with 700 to 900 million rather than state reported figure.  There are whole towns that have been razed since there were very few people living there.  The economic slowdown coupled with tariff threats has wreaked havoc with their manufactureing output. Many people are being paid a fraction of their normal wage since the companies they work for are in a cash crunch.

In another matter,  I had worked in AI since the middle 80's. One of my roles .....was to generate software for technical purposes such as analysis of technical data since there was no commercial software available at that time.  While there is great potential for AI to be used, much of the current applications are a lot of hype. The current versions of AI to generate applications is at best glorified pattern recognition. That is why it has been used for photo / image identification in security applications.  There is no intelligence in AI, it is just very good at recognizing patterns that are similar or have connections.  The current attempts to use information on the web to generate results is a problem in there is no check for any validity. The whole analysis is circular and problematic.  False information is given just as much weight as true information and the results are only based on frequency.  If 51% of the information used is false or not quite true, the result provided will be coming from the false information.  .......  I was working with several universities to generate new approaches to analyzing these types of data. When used properly, the techniques are quite powerful.

Thursday, July 3, 2025

Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill -- July 3, 2025

There will be a lot of articles asking the question, "who won, who lost?"

If I'm asked, my answer:

In the big scheme of things, if someone asks me who are the winners, who are the losers with this bill, this is my answer. It's very, very simple.

The big winner is the United States.

The big loser is the rest of the world.

Seriously. It's pretty easy.

Or another way to say the same thing: The big winners: those who support MAGA. -- those who want America to succeed, and widen the gap between capitalists and socialists.

The big losers: elitists and globalists. Those who hate to see America succeed at the "expense" of the rest of the world.

 ******************************
Thoughts

OBBB:

  • US debt: "it's a spending problem not a revenue problem"
    • it's been proven, without a doubt, that human behavior defaults to living beyond one's means
    • that is also true with many / most / all countries ever since the invention of the nation-state
  • in the past 100 years, the US federal government has had a budget surplus in 12 non-consecutive fiscal years.
    • the most recent year in which the US has a budgetary surplus: FY 2001
      • wow, that was almost 25 years ago -- ancient history
      • in CY 2000: Bill Clinton, Tom Daschle, Harry Reid
  • another truism: those who try to reduce government spending are portrayed as enemies of the people, or worse
  • the GOP should take a page from the Dems' playbook and worry about the US debt only in years when the government is led by the opposition party 
*************************
More

 l

Apparently these tax cuts are in the OBBB. There is still confusion. But VDH says these tax cuts are in the bill or there is talk about these tax cuts:

  • no federal income tax for the military -- being talked about
  • no federal income tax for first responders -- being talked about
  • no taxes on overtime -- in the bill?
  • no taxes on social security (and apparently no income limits yet) -- in the bill?
So, we'll have to wait and see. But it's amazing. Even after the all 980 pages of the tax bill were read out loud in the US Senate, we still -- apparently -- don't really know what's in the bill.