Nobody likes data centres and chips, chips, chips

{"text":[[{"start":15.001,"text":"Hope everyone’s autumn is off to a chilly good start. This is Yifan, sending this week’s #techAsia from Silicon Valley."}],[{"start":22.941,"text":"I just came back from a reporting trip to Indiana where I got to preview SK Hynix’s first advanced chip-packaging plant in the US, which will come online in late 2028 and assemble highly sought-after high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips."}],[{"start":38.08,"text":"I’ve visited a fair amount of plants and construction sites in recent years to document America’s effort to reshore manufacturing, but I was still surprised when I saw how close the SK Hynix chip plant is to the town houses and apartments right across the street."}],[{"start":53.231,"text":"While local residents have protested and even sued the South Korean memory chip giant for putting this massive chip facility near residential areas, SK Hynix said the noise and pollution from such an advanced manufacturing site will be minimal, while the economic benefits will be huge, with 7,000 jobs created in the area."}],[{"start":72.96,"text":"As Washington is determined to bring manufacturing, especially semiconductor production, back to America, local communities like the one in Indiana are caught in the conundrum of having more job opportunities but bearing the environmental cost of such projects."}],[{"start":89.68,"text":"While the energy consumption of artificial intelligence data centres and its impact on the environment have been making headlines for months, the environmental cost of manufacturing AI chips and servers is also too substantial to dismiss."}],[{"start":101.503,"text":"So far, Asia is bearing most of those costs, as chip manufacturing is heavily concentrated in the region. Now it’s time for the US to rise to the challenge of balancing a growing semiconductor industry with keeping a clean and sustainable homeland for generations to come."}],[{"start":117.925,"text":"Not in my back yard"}],[{"start":119.196,"text":"Data centre development across the Asia-Pacific has gathered pace since the 2010s, driven by cloud computing and video streaming. AI is adding another wave of demand. The region’s data centre demand stood at 28GW in 2025, or one-third of the global total — behind North America at 43 per cent — with capacity expected to triple by 2030, according to consultancy McKinsey & Co."}],[{"start":144.305,"text":"But unease over data centres and related infrastructure is also growing in the region as residents push back on such projects over concerns about rising electricity prices and potential pollution, Nikkei Asia’s Tsubasa Suruga, Shaun Turton and Ananta Agarwal report."}],[{"start":161.128,"text":"In Moss Vale, a small Australian town surrounded by rolling farmland about halfway between Sydney and Canberra, opposition to a gas-fired power plant intended to support data centres began in a WhatsApp chat group for pre-school parents."}],[{"start":174.88,"text":"Such grassroots movements against data centres can be seen across the Asia-Pacific and the US, providing increasing examples of how local opposition is prompting developers to pull back on projects or officials to make regulatory changes."}],[{"start":175.38,"text":"Dramatic changes"}],[{"start":191.07,"text":"Chinese actors and online influencers have a new rival: cost-effective advanced AI video generation programmes that are threatening millions of jobs in a once-vibrant area of China’s gig economy, write the FT’s Joe Leahy and Isaac Castella-McDonald."}],[{"start":205.776,"text":"The release of powerful new AI-powered video software, such as tech group ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 model, has allowed digital actors to replace humans, enabling the production of higher-quality original videos more quickly."}],[{"start":220.96,"text":"The digital takeover intensified after this year’s release of Seedance 2.0, said Greg Wollner, a short-drama actor and producer in Beijing. Before its release, he was shooting three different productions a week. “And after that, everything just went.” Many of Wollner’s friends “had to quit doing what they love and change to something else”, he said."}],[{"start":240.417,"text":"In May, 89 of the top 100 animated dramas on Douyin, ByteDance’s domestic Chinese version of TikTok, were AI productions according to DataEye, a marketing analytics company."}],[{"start":251.928,"text":"In the first quarter of 2026, about 128,000 short dramas were released in China, more than three times the entire previous year, and 95 per cent of them were AI generated, according to the China Netcasting Services Association."}],[{"start":265.6,"text":"The economic consequences could be dramatic. China’s short-drama industry employs 690,000 people directly, according to a 2026 report from the National School of Development at Peking University. About 15mn people cite live streaming as their primary profession, according to a 2024 report from the China Netcasting Services Association."}],[{"start":266.1,"text":"Faster and faster"}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":287.84,"text":"Google is accelerating its schedule for developing and rolling out its own customised chips, shifting from a two-year cycle for each generation to introducing two chips a year and eventually even more to stay ahead in the artificial intelligence race, Nikkei Asia’s Cheng Ting-Fang and Lauly Li report."}],[{"start":304.653,"text":"“We at Google went from releasing a TPU every two years or so to one TPU a year and to this past year, two TPUs a year,” Amin Vahdat, the company’s chief technologist and senior vice-president for AI infrastructure, said during an opening keynote at the Semicon Taiwan industry show this week."}],[{"start":323.008,"text":"TPUs, or tensor processing units, are Google’s own AI computing chips, performing AI-related tasks similar to what Nvidia’s GPUs, or graphics processing units, do. The accelerated product roadmap comes as capital expenditure for AI infrastructure surges across the industry, with Google itself planning to spend up to $205bn to build out AI capacity this year."}],[{"start":345.641,"text":"The latest generation includes the TPU 8t and TPU 8i, the first one for training AI models and the second for inference. Both were introduced this year. Google debuted its first TPU in 2015."}],[{"start":357.817,"text":"No downturn in sight"}],[{"start":359.486,"text":"The chief of South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix said the global memory chip shortage is expected to last until the end of 2030 and oversupply risk is low as memory chips are no longer “just commodities” in the AI era."}],[{"start":371.92,"text":"The memory chip giant officially broke ground in the state of Indiana last week on its first US advanced chip packaging plant, which aims to start volume production of next-generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips in the second half of 2029."}],[{"start":387.84,"text":"SK Hynix and other leading memory-chip makers have been racing to ramp up capacity, but the global shortage is expected to continue to the end of 2030, CEO Kwak Noh-Jung told Nikkei Asia’s Yifan Yu during a media briefing."}],[{"start":400.227,"text":"Despite concerns around a potential bubble in AI investment, Kwak said he sees “no signal” for oversupply risk or a memory chip downturn to come as demand from AI customers remains strong."}],[{"start":411.257,"text":"While memory chips used to be commodity-like, products such as HBM require more customisation to tailor them to the specific needs of customers in the AI era; thus, “we can more easily forecast the demand from the market,” Kwak said."}],[{"start":411.757,"text":"Suggested reads"}],[{"start":425.44,"text":"South Korea unveils record budget increase to cash in on AI boom (FT)"}],[{"start":432.8,"text":"China’s robot lawnmowers flock to Europe as US import curbs bite (Nikkei Asia)"}],[{"start":439.2,"text":"Humanoid robots will be useful, just not as we imagined (FT)"}],[{"start":442.881,"text":"China hits snag in race to beat US to moon’s south pole (Nikkei Asia)"}],[{"start":447.469,"text":"China bets on exports of cheap 3D-printed drone killers (FT)"}],[{"start":453.04,"text":"Baidu’s Hong Kong listing upgrade opens path to mainland capital (Nikkei Asia)"}],[{"start":458.24,"text":"Japanese play for SK Hynix chip plant faces South Korean policy hurdles (Nikkei Asia)"}],[{"start":463.537,"text":"BYD profits rise for first time in five quarters on export boost (FT)"}],[{"start":468.299,"text":"Fast-fashion retailer Shein falls flat after long-awaited Hong Kong IPO (Nikkei Asia)"}],[{"start":474.295,"text":"Vietnam telco Viettel expands into Dominican Republic in global push (Nikkei Asia)"}],[{"start":480.058,"text":"#techAsia is co-ordinated by Nikkei Asia’s Katherine Creel in Tokyo, with assistance from the FT tech desk in London."}],[{"start":487.415,"text":"Sign up here at Nikkei Asia to receive #techAsia each week. The editorial team can be reached at techasia@nex.nikkei.co.jp"}],[{"start":500.71,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1788749398_9585.mp3"}