My Spotify playlists are undergoing a British invasion this week. Donald Trump announced this week that two US chipmakers would tithe 15% of their revenue from sales in China to the US government. Paying for the license to sell to Chinese customers represents an unprecedented deal. The chipmakers Nvidia and AMD have agreed to give the US government 15% of their revenue from advanced chips sold to China in return for export licences to the key market. The arrangement will lead to Nvidia giving 15% of its revenue from Chinese sales of its H20 chips, and AMD giving 15% of revenue from Chinese sales of its MI308 chips, according to reports citing US officials.

Steam's Game Recording function has come out of beta and is now available to everyone on Mac, PC and Steam Deck, Valve announced. It provides a native tool to record gaming sessions and also offers basic editing tools to trim clips. Users can either run it in the background or manually start or stop recording. On top of that, there's a replay option that lets you quickly review recent recordings. You can then add markers for key moments, and if the game supports Game Recording's Timeline feature, Steam will add its own markers.

The United States has introduced restrictions limiting technology company Nvidia Corp. and semiconductor company Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Inc. sales of advanced AI chips to China. The restrictions are a tactical foreign policy and national security move to safeguard the US advantage in the race to develop artificial intelligence technology. How will this regulatory shift affect the AI chip industry in the short term and the long term? These new restrictions do not completely cut off the flow of AI chips from US companies to China. Rather, they focus on advanced products with powerful computing capabilities, specifically the Nvidia's A100 and H100 GPUs.

The development of China's artificial intelligence sector is expected to be slowed in the coming few years by the United States' new ban on exports of several high-end chips made by Nvidia and AMD, say Chinese IT experts. Nvidia said last Friday it had been informed by the US government that it must stop exporting its graphics processing unit (GPU) chips, namely A100 and H100, to China and Russia. It said its DGX, an AI server, was also barred from being shipped to China if a unit contained the two chips. At the same time, media reports said the US had also restricted sales of AMD's MI250 Accelerator AI chip to China. China's Foreign Ministry said the US had typically exerted its "sci-tech hegemony" and violated the rules of the market economy with its latest chip-export restrictions.

The biggest U.S. chipmakers, including Intel Corp., Nvidia Corp., Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Qualcomm Inc., are starting off 2022 by unveiling products that push further into each other's main territories, signaling they're girding for tough competition as semiconductor demand increases across industries. Intel, clinging to its title of world's largest chipmaker by revenue, showed off graphics chips aimed at fighting Nvidia and AMD in their area of domination. Nvidia's latest chips are targeted at persuading more laptop owners to choose its highly specialized graphics capabilities, and AMD touted products meant to maintain its market share gains. Qualcomm, the biggest maker of mobile-phone chips, bolstered its push to win a chunk of the personal-computer market, leveraging its strength in smartphone technology. The flurry of announcements at the annual CES technology conference, based in Las Vegas but mostly taking place virtually, highlights the shifting competitive landscape for the group of companies whose technology rules the computer and mobile-phone industries.

Intel is facing a turning point in its nearly 50-year history. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich resigned yesterday, following an ongoing investigation into a past consensual relationship with an Intel employee that violated the company's non-fraternization policy. It's a surprise end for Krzanich, who first joined Intel more than 35 years ago and spent most of his time at the company on the operations side. Krzanich was appointed Intel CEO five years ago, and was left with the messy task of fleshing out Intel's mobile strategy and driving the company forward in new markets. Known for PCs and servers, Intel's business has been disrupted by smartphones and the cloud, and the company was caught seemingly unaware by the rise of AI and autonomous vehicles.