The breathless pace of hardware-related AI developments at the top level continues amid a slew of collaborative announcements among nations and big tech companies. The unifying theme is a determination or desperation to be at the forefront of what is seen as the major frontier in ICT over the next decade, and also recognition that this requires heavy investment in semiconductor design and fabrication. All the principal nations or blocs, notably the USA, Japan, EU, China, India and South Korea, have unveiled major commitments or investments recently around semiconductor development increasingly slanted towards AI, mostly involving collaboration with big tech companies. This is happening against a background of onshoring semiconductor design and especially foundry capability, accelerated by the supply chain…