Posts Tagged ‘Hewett Packard Enterprise’

Nvidia News Roundup

Wednesday, April 16th, 2025

A few pieces of Nvidia-specific news have popped since Monday’s piece, so let’s do a quick roundup:

  • In a comment on Monday’s post, I mentioned that production at TSMC’s new Arizona fab hadn’t started yet. In fact, Nvidia just announced that TSMC’s Arizona fab just started work on their chips.

    On Monday, Nvidia announced that it has started producing its Blackwell AI GPUs at TSMC’s plant in Phoenix, Arizona, while companies within the state package and test them.

    TSMC, or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., is the world’s biggest chipmaker and announced a $100 billion investment in US chipmaking last month. It began producing chips using the 4nm process at its Arizona factory in January and has plans to make chips with the more efficient 2nm technology by the end of the decade.

    Nvidia doesn’t say which Blackwell chips it has started producing at TSMC’s plant and whether it includes the latest Blackwell Ultra GB300 chip it revealed earlier this year. Blackwell chips use TSMC’s custom 4NP process, according to Nvidia’s website.

  • Nvidia has also announced a large expansion in Texas.

    The world’s leading manufacturer of graphics processing units (GPU) and advanced chips has announced it will build new plants in Texas, amid global economic shake-ups.

    Note: Plants, not fabs.

    NVIDIA has announced partnerships with Foxconn and Wistron to build “supercomputer manufacturing plants” in both Dallas and Houston. These global companies are “expanding their global footprint” and their international presence for the purposes of “hardening supply chain resilience” in their partnership with NVIDIA.

    “Manufacturing NVIDIA AI chips and supercomputers for American AI factories is expected to create hundreds of thousands of jobs and drive trillions of dollars in economic security over the coming decades,” the announcement states.

    The mass production of chips at these plants is expected to begin in the next 12 to 15 months. The $500 billion investment in AI infrastructure within the U.S. does not make mention of direct government subsidies or public financial incentives related to NVIDIA’s recent announcement.

    I’m quoting that summary because it demonstrates that it’s easy to misunderstand things about the industry if you aren’t familiar with it. The way it’s worded make you think the “plants” are the Texas facilities they’re going to be building in 12-15 months, but the actual Nvidia press release makes clear than TSMC is doing the fabbing:

    NVIDIA is working with its manufacturing partners to design and build factories that, for the first time, will produce NVIDIA AI supercomputers entirely in the U.S.

    Together with leading manufacturing partners, the company has commissioned more than a million square feet of manufacturing space to build and test NVIDIA Blackwell chips in Arizona and AI supercomputers in Texas.

    Note the more precise wording.

    NVIDIA Blackwell chips have started production at TSMC’s chip plants in Phoenix, Arizona. NVIDIA is building supercomputer manufacturing plants in Texas, with Foxconn in Houston and with Wistron in Dallas. Mass production at both plants is expected to ramp up in the next 12-15 months.

    The AI chip and supercomputer supply chain is complex and demands the most advanced manufacturing, packaging, assembly and test technologies. NVIDIA is partnering with Amkor and SPIL for packaging and testing operations in Arizona.

    Within the next four years, NVIDIA plans to produce up to half a trillion dollars of AI infrastructure in the United States through partnerships with TSMC, Foxconn, Wistron, Amkor and SPIL. These world-leading companies are deepening their partnership with NVIDIA, growing their businesses while expanding their global footprint and hardening supply chain resilience.

    Now, if that half trillion does get spent (no guarantee, since press releases aren’t legally binding; try to contain your shock), that would certainly buy a lot of cutting edge fabs. Nvidia is one of the few companies that has the financial resources to build their own cutting edge fabs (Apple is another), but I get the impression that they’re going to partner with TSMC. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they follow the Apple model, where they tell a company “Here’s X amount of money, go build a fab. You’ll give us the first 24 months of production at x-cost per chip, and after that the fab is yours free and clear.” This is one of the tools Apple used to become the dominate tech buyer, and what some call a monopsony.

    As far as building their own supercomputers, that’s great for Texas and not so great for Hewett Packard Enterprise, which finished their acquisition of Cray in 2021.

  • Finally, Nvidia’s AI chips are now banned from export to China.

    The Trump administration has effectively barred Nvidia (NVDA) from selling its custom artificial intelligence processors to customers in China. The move will force the AI chip leader to write off up to $5.5 billion in inventory and purchase commitments in its fiscal first quarter. Nvidia stock fell Wednesday.

    Late Tuesday, Nvidia disclosed in a regulatory filing that the U.S. government is now requiring it to get an export license to sell its H20 processor in China and other restricted countries. Nvidia said it was informed of the move on April 9, the same day NPR erroneously reported that the White House would not seek further restrictions on the chips Nvidia can sell in China.

    Your tax dollars at work.

    Nvidia said the U.S. government told it on Monday that the license requirement will be in effect for the indefinite future.

    Wall Street analysts say Nvidia’s write-off indicates that the company believes it won’t be granted licenses to sell H20 processors in China.

    The H20 was designed for the Chinese market to comply with Biden-era restrictions on selling advanced processors there. The H20 is less capable than the Blackwell series chips Nvidia sells in the U.S. and other markets.

    “With Nvidia writing off associated H20 inventory, it appears the company is taking the position that it will not be granted licenses to ship product to Chinese customers (with no other geography likely to take the governed silicon given the availability of more powerful standard Hopper or Blackwell SKUs),” Wedbush analyst Matt Bryson said in a client note Wednesday. SKU stands for “stock keeping unit,” a unique identifier for products used in inventory management.

    China represents a little over 10% of Nvidia’s revenue.

    The Trump Administrations believes (probably correctly) that AI is a key strategic industry and that we don’t need to give China any help there.

    • A half trillion dollars is a lot of cheddar, even for the (as of today) company with the third largest market cap in the world…

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    Posted in Economics, Media Watch, Texas | 7 Comments »

    Everybody In California Is Moving to Texas

    Thursday, December 17th, 2020

    Regular BattleSwarm readers already know about Tesla, Elon Musk and Joe Rogan moving from California to Texas. It looks like those were just the first pebbles of the avalanches of companies and people looking to get the hell out of the formerly golden state. Eager to enjoy such rarefied amenities as low taxes, sane government, a sane regulatory environment, open restaurants and regular access to electricity, other companies that have recently announced they’re moving their headquarters from Texas to California include:

  • Hewett Packard Enterprise is moving its headquarters from San Jose to Houston:

    HPE Inc. is moving its headquarters from San Jose to the Houston area, the enterprise information technology giant announced Tuesday, citing “business needs, opportunities for cost savings and team members’ preferences about the future of work.”

    The company’s new HQ will be at the new campus that has been under construction since the beginning of the year in Spring, Texas, just north of Houston. It’s the second time HPE has moved its headquarters in the last three years: In 2018, the company left Palo Alto for San Jose.

    CEO Antonio Neri and several other senior executives plan to relocate to Houston, HPE spokesman Adam Bauer told the Business Journal.

    The move will be a homecoming for Neri, who spent years as a Hewlett-Packard executive in Houston before the Palo Alto-based company split into HP Inc. and HPE.

    “We intend to maintain a robust presence in our historical birthplace of Silicon Valley, including housing the headquarters of Aruba at our San Jose campus that opened in 2019,” Neri said in a statement. “There are no layoffs associated with this move, and we are committed to both markets as key parts of our talent and real estate strategies in a post-pandemic world.”

    Some corporate roles will be given the option to relocate to Houston, but no one will be forced to move, Bauer said. One big cost-of-living lure for those who do decide to move to Houston: HPE won’t be lowering the salaries of employees who relocate.

    Note that Hewett Packard Enterprise is a separate company from Hewett Packard, from which it split from in 2015. HP makes desktop PCs and laser printers, while HPE provides enterprise equipment, services, high performance computing, etc. Both own buildings in the Houston area from HP acquiring Compaq in 2002.

  • Database giant Oracle, which announced it had moved its headquarters from Redwood Shores to Austin.

    “We believe these moves best position Oracle for growth and provide our personnel with more flexibility about where and how they work,” Oracle said in a statement.

    “Depending on their role, this means that many of our employees can choose their office location as well as continue to work from home part time or all the time.”

    “While some states are driving away businesses with high taxes and heavy-handed regulations, we continue to see a tidal wave of companies like Oracle moving to Texas thanks to our friendly business climate, low taxes, and the best workforce in the nation,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said.

    “Most important of all, these companies are looking for a home where they have the freedom to grow their business and better serve their employees and customers, and when it comes to economic prosperity, there is no place like the Lone Star State,” Abbott added.

    Texas has no personal or corporate income tax.

    Texas has ranked first for attracting California companies for more than 12 years, according to a report by Spectrum Location Solutions. Roughly 660 California companies moved 765 facilities out of state in 2018 and 2019.

    “California companies leave because the state’s business climate continues to worsen, particularly with the harsh employment, immigration and spending measures that Gov. Gavin Newsom has approved,” said Joseph Vranich, the author of the study. “I foresee more exits because California politicians have a level of contempt for business that has reached epic lows.”

    Unlike Musk, Oracle founder and CEO Larry Ellison won’t be moving to Texas, but will continue to work from his own private Hawaiian island. Can’t say I blame the guy.

  • Brokerage giant Charles Schwab is moving to Westlake in the Dallas metroplex area in January.

    • Conservative media pundit Ben Shapiro didn’t move his California company to Texas, he moved it to Nashville. But his reasons why apply just as well:

    This is the most beautiful state in the country. The climate is incredible. The scenery is amazing. The people generally are warm, and there’s an enormous amount to do.

    And we’re leaving.

    We’re leaving because all the benefits of California have eroded steadily — and then suddenly collapsed. Meanwhile, all the costs of California have increased steadily — and then suddenly skyrocketed. It can be difficult to spot the incremental encroachment of a terrible disease, but once the final ravages set in, it becomes obvious the illness is fatal. So, too, with California, where bad governance has turned a would-be paradise into a burgeoning dystopia.

    When my family moved to North Hollywood, I was 11. We lived in a safe, clean suburb. Yes, Los Angeles had serious crime and homelessness problems, but those were problems relegated to pockets of the city — problems that, with good governance, we thought eventually could be healed. Instead, the government allowed those problems to metastasize. As of 2011, Los Angeles County counted less than 40,000 homeless; as of 2020, that number had skyrocketed to 66,000. Suburban areas have become the sites of homeless encampments. Nearly every city underpass hosts a tent city; the city, in its kindness, has put out port-a-potties to reduce the possibility of COVID-19 spread.

    Police are forbidden in most cases from either moving transients or even moving their garbage. Nearly every public space in Los Angeles has become a repository for open waste, needles and trash. The most beautiful areas of Los Angeles, from Santa Monica beach to my suburb, have become wrecks. My children personally have witnessed drug use, public urination and public nudity. Looters were allowed free reign in the middle of the city during the Black Lives Matter riots; Rodeo Drive was closed at 1 p.m., and citizens were curfewed at 6 p.m.

    To combat these trends, local and state governments have gamed the statistics, reclassifying offenses and letting prisoners go free. Meanwhile, the police have become targets for public ire. In July, the city of Los Angeles slashed police funding, cutting the force to its lowest levels in more than 10 years.

    At the same time, taxes have risen. California’s top marginal income tax rate is now 13.3 percent; legislators want to raise it to 16.8 percent. California also is home to a 7.25 percent sales tax, a 50-cent gas tax and a bevy of other taxes that drain the wallet and burden business. California has the worst regulatory climate in America, according to CEO Magazine’s survey of 650 CEOs. The public-sector unions essentially make public policy, running up the debt while providing fewer and fewer actual services. California’s public education system is a massive failure, and even its once-great colleges now are burdened by the stupidities of political correctness, including an unwillingness to use standardized testing.

    Still, the state legislature is dominated by Democrats. California is not on a trajectory toward recovery; it is on a trajectory toward oblivion. Taxpayers are moving out — now including my family and my company. In 2019, before the pandemic and the widespread rioting and looting, outmigration jumped 38 percent, rising for the seventh straight year. That number will increase again this year.

    I want my kids to grow up safe. I want them to grow up in a community with a future, with more freedom and safety than I grew up with. California makes that impossible.

    What Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Chuck DeVore said of his own exodus from California remains true:

    As with most of the tens of thousands of Californians who have moved to the Lone Star State annually in recent years, we did so for opportunity borne of greater freedom: lower taxes, greater private property rights and less government to tell you what to do.

    Before the move, our household had also grown as we took in my wife’s parents. Lifelong New Yorkers, they were in declining health and clearly could no longer live on their own. With four adults and two children in an Irvine home designed for a smaller family, it was clear the arrangements could only be temporary.

    But the supply of housing had been constrained for so long in California that prices were simply out of reach. This was largely due to restrictive zoning, heavy environmental regulatory burdens and lawsuits. If we were going to take care of my in-laws, it was likely not going to be in California.

    Snip.

    So we sold our house in Southern California and moved to Texas, settling in the Hill Country about 25 miles southwest of Austin. Our new home was 70 percent larger (with 12 times the property) than our California home, and it had a swimming pool — all for $110,000 less. Most importantly, the ground floor had two extra bedrooms and a bathroom for my in-laws — not having to walk upstairs was a significant factor in our home search.

    We’ve found Texans to be a friendly, liberty-loving bunch. Though where we moved, it seems half the neighborhood hails from California, with the number of friends we have from the Golden State moving to the Lone Star State growing by the year.

    California still has great weather and a beautiful coastline, but the remaining advantages it had over Texas (dynamic high tech and entertainment industries, great restaurants, etc.) are all eroding away due to gross Democratic Party mismanagement.

    Let’s hope that Californians fleeing the state for Texas leave their dysfunctional politics behind.

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    Posted in Austin, Economics, Regulation, Texas | 23 Comments »