(00:00:00) Vera CPU Benchmarks, TSMC Price Surge & China's Silicon Moment | Jun 2-5
(00:01:12) NVIDIA Vera CPU Benchmarks Drop
(00:02:13) China's Custom Silicon Moment
(00:03:11) Semiconductor Rally Validates AI Thesis
(00:03:34) Key Watchpoints Heading Forward

Jensen Huang, Lisa Su, and Lip-Bu Tan are all in Taipei this week — and that convergence tells you everything about where the semiconductor industry stands. COMPUTEX 2026 is the backdrop for a week packed with hard data and structural signals that matter well beyond the trade-show floor.

Nvidia's Vera CPU, built on 88 Olympus ARM cores, posted a 63% performance gain over Grace in Phoronix benchmarks, running 10% faster than AMD's EPYC 9575F and 55% faster than Intel's Xeon 6980P. Nvidia is targeting $20 billion in CPU revenue for 2026 — a number that explains why AMD is accelerating its Venice EPYC ramp on TSMC 2nm and why Intel faces pressure from two directions at once.

AMD announced a $10 billion Taiwan ecosystem investment, including 2.5D packaging deals with ASE and Powertech and substrate commitments with Unimicron and Nan Ya. Meanwhile, TSMC is raising 3nm wafer prices 15% in H2 2026, pushing costs above $23,000 per wafer, with 2nm expected to exceed $30,000. Demand is running at roughly three times supply — the real constraint on the entire AI buildout.

In China, Xiaomi's XRING O1 is a 3nm chip now shipping at over one million units, matching Snapdragon 8 Elite in multi-core benchmarks. BYD is running Level 2+ autonomy on in-house silicon, and Nio's NX9031 is generating external licensing revenue. Export controls may have accelerated captive chip design far beyond the data-centre layer.

Markets responded: Micron surged 17%, AMD gained 5.7%, Intel rose 1.7%.

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