Infrastructure Weekly Briefing — April 19, 2024

Executive briefing: The week ending April 19, 2024 concentrated on semiconductor capacity planning and accelerator diversification. The U.S. Department of Commerce announced multi-billion-dollar CHIPS Act preliminary awards for TSMC and Samsung facilities, while Intel unveiled the Gaudi 3 accelerator to challenge NVIDIA in AI training and inference markets.

Week of April 15 developments

April 8 — TSMC Arizona funding. The Biden-Harris Administration announced up to $6.6 billion in direct funding plus $5 billion in loans so TSMC can complete three fabs in Phoenix, including 2 nanometre-class production by 2028.
April 9 — Intel Gaudi 3 reveal. At Intel Vision 2024 the company introduced Gaudi 3 with 64 GB of HBM2e per accelerator, 1.7 TB/s networking throughput, and claims of 40% better inference power efficiency versus NVIDIA H100 on key benchmarks.
April 15 — Samsung Taylor award. Commerce offered up to $6.4 billion to expand Samsung’s Taylor, Texas campus, enabling 4 nanometre production, advanced packaging, and a new R&D centre supporting trusted supply chains.

Capacity planning implications

Update sourcing scenarios that blend TSMC Arizona, Samsung Taylor, and Intel Foundry Services so regulated workloads can qualify for CHIPS guardrail compliance.
Model Gaudi 3 clusters for generative AI and analytics workloads that need Ethernet-based fabrics rather than InfiniBand dependencies.
Coordinate with finance teams on anticipated tax credits and loan guarantees tied to CHIPS Act incentives when drafting 2025–2027 capex plans.

Control alignment

NIST SP 800-161 Rev.1. Refresh supply-chain risk management plans with new domestic fabrication partners and packaging nodes.
ISO 22301:2019 8.4. Document continuity arrangements that leverage redundant U.S. fabs for critical semiconductor dependencies.
SOC 2 CC9.2. Capture evidence that new accelerator deployments maintain resiliency and capacity planning controls.

Enablement moves

Request updated roadmaps from hyperscalers on when Gaudi 3 instances will reach general availability and what ROCm/ONNX optimisations are supported.
Engage procurement teams on trusted supplier vetting aligned with CHIPS guardrails, export controls, and Buy American Act carve-outs.
Schedule facilities reviews covering power, cooling, and network spine upgrades needed to host higher-density Gaudi 3 or future Blackwell-class nodes.

Sources

Zeph Tech is aligning CHIPS Act compliance playbooks with data-center roadmap modelling so clients can blend domestic fabrication capacity with next-wave accelerator deployments.