Hardware

Source Financial Times article

Summary

Demand for artificial intelligence-enabled smartphones could help to protect parts of the semiconductor industry from a “vicious” downturn if investment in data centres slows, said the chief executive of the world’s largest provider of chip testing machines.

A fall-off “may not last long and then it may go right back up, but because of the concentration [of hyperscalers] right now in the market, any slowdown in the data centre buildout is going to have big reverberations in the supply chain”, said Lefever.

In contrast, demand for AI smartphones was “kind of slow” but could take off rapidly, Lefever said.

Summary

According to the Financial Times, citing Doug Lefever, the chief executive of Advantest, it takes three to four times longer to test Blackwell data center GPUs than Hopper data center GPUs because each unit has to be tested dozens of times on different tools before shipping.

Typically, as the transistor count grows, test complexity grows almost exponentially, as chips require more test patterns and longer test times. Test protocols must cover high-speed interconnects, stress conditions, thermal conditions (which, in the case of the B200, are extreme), and multiple operational modes (Blackwell adds FP4 support).

There's more to this. TSMC's CoWoS-L 2.5D packaging techniques introduce additional test steps (and sometimes multiple test phases) to ensure that each component in the package is functioning correctly and that interconnects are reliable.

Even if the ultra-feminine aesthetic isn’t your thing — and it’s not really mine — you have to hand it to the Barbie flip phone. From the box it comes in, to the interchangeable back plates, rhinestone stickers, and Barbie-fied interface, it’s a delight. The charger and battery are both pink, though they’re a lighter shade than Mattel’s trademarked Barbie Pink (Pantone 219). The phone says “Hi Barbie!” when you turn it on. It’s the definition of committing to the bit.

The breezy fun of the Barbie aesthetic, Pantone 219 or otherwise, is at odds with the actual experience of using the phone. It’s based on one of HMD’s feature phones, and it runs an operating system called KaiOS. The phone is designed for basic connectivity — texting, calling, emails — and even includes a web browser.