Readings from the other desks

6.1The other desks’ editions of this subject

Federation: each desk writes its own edition for the subjects in its remit. Until a desk releases, its edition shows its frame and the reading this edition printed for it.

6.2Three lenses

One edition, read by each steward. The lens of this site comes first.

6.3Standards, Academy and steward contributions

How the Nexus Standards drafts, the Risk Academy and the three stewards feed each quarterly edition for semiconductor and compute. The standards are a preparatory working draft (2026) and are cited as drafts, never as adopted standards.

6.4GCRI reading: the model card

GCRI’s reading of this edition is its model card: what the national model is, what it computes and where it stops. It is printed in full in Annex A, with the methods it belongs to. Annex A, methodology

6.5Global Risks Forum reading: editorial essays

Four signed essays by the Reports editorial team set out the positions this edition takes. They are interpretation, labelled as such; the evidence they draw on is in the findings register.

6.6Global Risks Alliance reading: 2027 semiconductor and compute readiness pack

The registers that open the 2027 global cycle. At baseline each is initialised from this edition.

Publication dispositions

• Publish
• Hold
• Needs evidence
• Restricted
• Superseded

6.7Nexus Standards reading: standards and regulatory watch

Instruments and published guidance that shape the systems in this edition, by status on the retrieval date. The edition assesses no one’s compliance.

• IN FORCE
• PUBLISHED
• DRAFT
• PUBLISHED · VOLUNTARY

6.8Risk Academy reading: literature and evidence review, science and assessments

The review behind this edition covers semiconductor and compute assessments, peer-reviewed science and the institutional reports that bind its findings. Systematic reviews for each agenda item begin in 2027.

Review protocol

Question

What does the published evidence establish about advanced semiconductors and AI compute as infrastructure and its couplings?

Sources searched

peer-reviewed journals and preprints; agencies and ministries; roadmaps and standards; market and energy analyses

Window

releases available at evidence close, 30 September 2026

Selection

sources that bind or contextualise a finding in this edition

Next step

systematic reviews for agenda items 01 to 05 in 2027

Notes

Numbers are the edition’s reference numbers, so a note reads the same in every chapter. The full list, with every source and its licence, is in Annex C. Annex C, references

1. 8Semiconductor Industry Association (ed.), Global Annual Semiconductor Sales Increase 25.6% to $791.7 Billion in 2025 (release; WSTS data; logic USD 301.9 billion; memory USD 223.1 billion; regional growth; about USD 1 trillion projected for 2026). Semiconductor Industry Association, Washington. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
2. 44United States Congress, CHIPS and Science Act, Public Law 117-167, enacted 9 August 2022 (text of section 102 on Congress.gov, first 100,000 characters read: the funding lines for sections 9902 and 9906 of Public Law 116-283 by fiscal year 2022 to 2026 sum to USD 39 billion for manufacturing incentives and USD 11 billion for research, USD 50 billion in all; the totals are sums of the listed amounts, not stated in the text). Observation year 2022. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
3. 15US Department of Energy (ed.), DOE Releases New Report Evaluating Increase in Electricity Demand from Data Centers, 20 December 2024 (176 TWh in 2023, about 4.4%; 325 to 580 TWh, about 6.7% to 12%, in 2028). US Department of Energy, Washington. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
4. 34UNVERIFIED, not opened: United States Congress, CHIPS and Science Act, Public Law 117-167, 2022, cited from memory. Observation year 2022. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
5. 33UNVERIFIED, not opened: European Union, Regulation (EU) 2023/1781 of 13 September 2023 establishing a framework of measures for strengthening Europe’s semiconductor ecosystem (Chips Act); the EUR-Lex fetch returned no text, cited from memory. Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
6. 12European Commission (ed.), European Chips Act policy page (entered into force 21 September 2023; three pillars; more than EUR 33 billion across 19 State aid decisions; second Chips Act proposed June 2026). Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Brussels. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
7. 13US Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security (ed.), home page and news items (May 2026 guidance on licences for advanced computing items to Country Group D:5 entities; 7 April 2026 extension of the authorised IC designer timeline to 31 December 2026; Section 232 investigation of semiconductor imports listed). BIS, Washington. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
8. 30UNVERIFIED, not opened: US Department of Commerce, Framework for Artificial Intelligence Diffusion, interim final rule, 90 Federal Register 4544, January 2025, cited from search summaries; the Federal Register page redirected. Federal Register, Washington. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
9. 31UNVERIFIED, not opened: law-firm client alerts on the rescission of the AI diffusion rule and related guidance, 12 and 13 May 2025, taken from search-result summaries; a formal notice date was not confirmed. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
10. 32UNVERIFIED, not opened: JEDEC (ed.), JESD270-4 HBM4 standard, April 2025 (about 2 TB/s per stack; 32 channels; up to 64 GB per stack), taken from search-result summaries; the JEDEC page returned an access error. JEDEC Solid State Technology Association, Arlington. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
11. 14IEEE (ed.), International Roadmap for Devices and Systems, programme page (successor to the ITRS; IEEE sponsorship since 2016; 2023 update the latest edition listed). Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, New York. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
12. 41UNVERIFIED, not opened: Government of the Netherlands and Government of Japan, export-control rules on advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment, 2023, cited from memory; no figure is used. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
13. 42UNVERIFIED, not opened: Government of India, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, India Semiconductor Mission, the programme site returned an access error; cited from memory without figures. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
14. 21The Register (ed.), Japan’s Rapidus lands $1.7B to chase 2nm chip production by 2027, 27 February 2026 (JPY 267.6 billion round; JPY 100 billion from a METI agency; JPY 167.6 billion from 32 companies); trade press, weak evidence. Situation Publishing, London. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
15. 43UNVERIFIED, not opened: METI and press coverage of the April 2026 addition of JPY 631.5 billion to Rapidus support, bringing research and development support to about JPY 2.354 trillion, taken from search-result summaries; totals differ by source. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
16. 10POST-CLOSE, context only: NIST (ed.), CHIPS for America program page (USD 50 billion; USD 39 billion manufacturing incentives; USD 11 billion research; award notices of 8 September, 16 September, 14 October and 22 October 2026). National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
17. 1Pilz, K.F., Sanders, J., Rahman, R. and Heim, L., Trends in AI Supercomputers, arXiv:2504.16026, submitted 22 April 2025 (abstract page: 500 systems from 2019 to 2025; performance doubling about every nine months; cost and power doubling about every year; one March 2025 system with about 200,000 chips, USD 7 billion and 300 MW; about 75% of performance in the United States). arXiv, Ithaca. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
18. 2Sevilla, J., Heim, L., Ho, A., Besiroglu, T., Hobbhahn, M. and Villalobos, P., Compute Trends Across Three Eras of Machine Learning, arXiv:2202.05924, 2022 (abstract page: doubling about every 20 months before 2010 and about every 6 months in the deep learning era). arXiv, Ithaca. Observation year 2022. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
19. 6Luccioni, A.S., Jernite, Y. and Strubell, E., Power Hungry Processing: Watts Driving the Cost of AI Deployment?, ACM FAccT 2024, arXiv:2311.16863 (abstract page: multi-purpose generative models orders of magnitude more costly per 1,000 inferences than task-specific models). ACM, New York. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
20. 7Patterson, D. and others, Carbon Emissions and Large Neural Network Training, arXiv:2104.10350, April 2021 (abstract page: sparse models under one tenth of the energy; location effect 5 to 10 times; choice of model, datacentre and processor 100 to 1000 times). arXiv, Ithaca. Observation year 2021. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
21. 35UNVERIFIED, not opened: Leiserson, C.E. and others, There’s plenty of room at the Top: What will drive computer performance after Moore’s law?, Science 368, eaam9744, 2020, taken from a reposted abstract in search results. Observation year 2020. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
22. 38UNVERIFIED, not opened: Koomey, J.G. and others, Implications of historical trends in the electrical efficiency of computing, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 33(3), 46 to 54, 2011, cited from memory. Observation year 2011. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
23. 39UNVERIFIED, not opened: Masanet, E. and others, Recalibrating global data centre energy-use estimates, Science 367, 984 to 986, 2020, cited from memory. Observation year 2020. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
24. 29UNVERIFIED, not opened: Khan, S.M. and Mann, A., AI Chips: What They Are and Why They Matter, Center for Security and Emerging Technology, April 2020; the file fetched returned only a notice that the report was updated, so no content was read. Center for Security and Emerging Technology, Washington. Observation year 2020. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
25. 36UNVERIFIED, not opened: Moore, G.E., Cramming more components onto integrated circuits, Electronics 38(8), 1965, cited from memory. Observation year 1965. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
26. 37UNVERIFIED, not opened: Dennard, R.H. and others, Design of ion-implanted MOSFET’s with very small physical dimensions, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits 9(5), 256 to 268, 1974, cited from memory. Observation year 1974. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
27. 3Sevilla, J. and others, Can AI scaling continue through 2030?, Epoch AI, 20 August 2024 (first 100,000 characters read: about 4 times a year; 1 to 5 GW campuses; about 2e29 FLOP feasible by 2030; power binds first). Epoch AI, San Francisco. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
28. 4POST-CLOSE, context only: Epoch AI (ed.), AI models data hub (page updated 3 November 2026; over 3,700 models; no growth rate stated on the page). Epoch AI, San Francisco. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
29. 5Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (ed.), The 2025 AI Index Report, key takeaways page (training compute doubling about every five months; hardware cost down about 30% a year; energy efficiency up about 40% a year; chips detail not given on the page). Stanford University, Stanford. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
30. 11NIST (ed.), CHIPS research and development programmes page (National Semiconductor Technology Center, National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program, Manufacturing USA institute; undated; no programme amounts). National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
31. 9Evertiq (ed.), Semiconductor equipment billings reached $135B in 2025, 9 April 2026, a trade report of a SEMI release (USD 135.06 billion in 2025 against USD 117.14 billion in 2024; regional table); the SEMI page itself returned an access error, so this is a secondary report and weak evidence. Evertiq, Munich. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
32. 16Shehabi, A. and others, 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, December 2024 (publication page abstract only; no figures on the page; the report PDF was not read). Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
33. 24UNVERIFIED, not opened: IEA (ed.), Energy and AI, April 2025 (about 415 TWh of global data centre electricity in 2024, about 1.5% of the total; about 945 TWh in 2030 in the base case; range of 700 to 1,700 TWh in 2035), taken from search-result summaries; the IEA pages returned an access error. International Energy Agency, Paris. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
34. 19Nvidia (ed.), Blackwell architecture product page (208 billion transistors per GPU; custom TSMC 4NP process; performance multiples are vendor claims and weak evidence). Nvidia, Santa Clara. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
35. 23AZFamily (ed.), TSMC Arizona expansion could make it Phoenix’s largest water customer, 22 July 2026 (total planned investment USD 265 billion; about 5,300 acre-feet a year for the first fab; 65% reclaimed; goal 90%); local news reporting company figures, weak evidence. Gray Media, Phoenix. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
36. 22Focus Taiwan, Central News Agency (ed.), report of 13 March 2026 on the largest foundry reaching almost 70% of the global foundry market in 2025 (headline and lead only; the rest is behind a paywall); press report, weak evidence. Central News Agency, Taipei. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
37. 25UNVERIFIED, not opened: USGS (ed.), Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, gallium chapter (reported in summaries as about 99% of primary low-purity gallium produced in China in 2025), taken from search-result summaries; the page returned an access error and no figure is used in the findings. US Geological Survey, Reston. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
38. 26UNVERIFIED, not opened: USGS (ed.), Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, germanium chapter, the page returned an access error; summaries differ on China shares and no figure is used. US Geological Survey, Reston. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back