Technology (Page 79)

The launch of social media app Threads as a competitor to Twitter is a game-changer.

Meta, which also owns Facebook and Instagram, launched the new platform yesterday, ahead of schedule. Threads was welcomed almost immediately – especially by hordes of Twitter users that have watched in dismay as their beloved platform crumbles in the hands of Elon Musk.

In less than 24 hours, Threads attracted some 30 million users. And with Meta already having more than two billion Instagram users who can directly link their accounts to it, Threads’ user base will grow fast.

With its simple black and white feed, and features that let you reply, love, quote and comment on other people’s “threads”, the similarities between Threads and Twitter are obvious.

The question now is: will Threads be the one that finally unseats Twitter?

We’ve been here before

In October of last year, Twitter users looked on helplessly as Elon Musk became CEO. Mastodon was the first “escape plan.” But many found its decentralized servers difficult and confusing to use, with each one having very different content rules and communities.

Many Twitter fans created “back up” Mastodon accounts in case Twitter crashed, and waited to see what Musk would do next. The wait wasn’t long. Platform instability and outages became common as Musk started laying off Twitter staff (he has now fired about 80% of Twitter’s original workforce).

Shortly after, Musk horrified users and made headlines by upending Twitter’s verification system and forcing “blue tick” holders to pay for the privilege of authentication. This opened the door for account impersonations and the sharing of misinformation at scale. Some large corporate brands left the platform, taking their advertising dollars with them.

Musk also labeled trusted news organizations such as the BBC as “state-owned” media, until public backlash forced him to retreat. More recently, he started limiting how many tweets users can view and announced that TweetDeck (a management tool for scheduling tweets) would be limited to paid accounts.

Twitter users have tried several alternatives, including Spoutible and Post. Bluesky, which came from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, is gaining ground – but its growth has been limited due to its invitation-only registration process.

Nothing had quite captured the imagination of Twitter followers … until now.

Community is the key to success

Before Musk’s reign, Twitter enjoyed many years of success. It had long been a home for journalists, governments, academics and the public to share information on the key issues of the day. In emergencies, Twitter offered real-time support. During some of the worst disasters, users have shared information and made life-saving decisions.

While not without flaws – such as trolls, bots and online abuse – Twitter’s verification process and the ability to block and report inappropriate content was central to its success in building a thriving community.

This is also what sets Threads apart from competitors. By linking Threads to Instagram, Meta has given itself a significant head-start towards reaching the critical mass of users needed to establish itself as a leading platform (a privilege Mastodon didn’t enjoy).

Not only can Threads users retain their usernames, they can also bring their Instagram followers with them. The ability to retain community in an app that provides a similar experience to Twitter is what makes Threads the biggest threat yet.

My research shows that people crave authority, authenticity and community the most when they engage with online information. In our new book, my co-authors Donald O Case, Rebekah Willson and I explain how users search for information from sources they know and trust.

Twitter fans want an alternative platform with similar functionality, but most importantly they want to quickly find “their people.” They don’t want to have to rebuild their communities. This is likely why so many have stayed on Twitter, even as Musk has done so well to run it into the ground.

Challenges ahead

Of course, Twitter users may also be concerned about jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Signing up to yet another Meta app comes with its own concerns.

New Threads users who read the fine print will note that their information will be used to “personalize ads and other experiences” across both platforms. And users have pointed out you can only delete your Threads account if you delete your Instagram account.

This kind of entrenchment could be off-putting for some.

Moreover, Meta decided to not launch Threads anywhere in the European Union yesterday due to regulatory concerns. The EU’s new Digital Markets Act could raise challenges for Threads.

For example, the act sets out businesses can’t “track end users outside of [their] core platform service for the purpose of targeted advertising, without effective consent having been granted.” This may be in conflict with Threads’ privacy policy.

Meta has also announced plans to eventually move Threads towards a decentralized infrastructure.

In the app’s “How Threads Works” details, it says “future versions of Threads will work with the fediverse”, enabling “people to follow and interact with each other on different platforms, including Mastodon.”

This means people will be able to view and interact with Threads content from non-Meta accounts, without needing to sign up to Threads. Using the ActivityPub standard (which enables decentralized interoperability between platforms), Threads could then function the same way as WordPress, Mastodon and email servers – wherein users of one server can interact with others.

When and how Threads achieves this plan for decentralized engagement – and how this might impact users’ experience – is unclear.

Did Meta steal ‘trade secrets’?

As for Musk, he’s not going down without a fight. Just hours after Threads’ release, Twitter’s lawyer Alex Spiro released a letter accusing Meta of “systematic” and “unlawful misappropriation” of trade secrets.

The letter alleges former Twitter employees hired by Meta were “deliberately assigned” to “develop, in a matter of months, Meta’s copycat ‘Threads’ app.” Meta has disputed these claims, according to reports, but the rivalry between the two companies seems far from over.

Lisa M Given is Professor of Information Sciences & Director, Social Change Enabling Impact Platform, RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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TOKYO – Renesas, Japan’s top maker of automotive chips, has reached a 10-year supply agreement with America’s Wolfspeed, the world’s leading producer of the silicon carbide wafers used to make power semiconductors.

Both companies have ambitious plans to meet rapidly growing demand for electric vehicles (EVs) and charging infrastructure, renewable energy generation and storage, and industrial motor control and other power management.

A US$2 billion deposit from Renesas will support Wolfspeed’s capacity expansion plans in the state of North Carolina. Meanwhile, a guaranteed supply of Wolfspeed-made wafers will support Renesas’ power device manufacturing in Japan. The agreement was signed at Renesas’ headquarters in Tokyo on July 5.

Wolfspeed CEO Gregg Lowe said that “With the steepening demand for silicon carbide across the automotive, industrial and energy sectors, it’s critically important we have best-in-class power semiconductor customers like Renesas to help lead the global transition from silicon to silicon carbide.”

Renesas CEO Hidetoshi Shibata said, “The wafer supply agreement with Wolfspeed will provide Renesas with a stable, long-term supply base of high-quality silicon carbide wafers. This empowers Renesas to scale our power semiconductor offerings to better serve customers’ vast array of applications. We are now poised to elevate ourselves as a key player in the accelerating silicon carbide market.” 

Compared with silicon, silicon carbide offers greater energy efficiency and reliability through resistance to higher voltages, tolerance of a wider range of temperatures and vibration, and longer device lifetimes. As production volumes rise and prices fall, the use of silicon carbide should also lead to lower power management system costs.

Wolfspeed, formerly known as Cree, has been making silicon carbide wafers and power devices for more than 35 years. It also produces radio frequency devices and gallium nitride materials. Its products are used in communications infrastructure, satellite communications, aerospace and defense.

In April 2022, Wolfspeed opened the world’s first 200mm (8-inch) silicon carbide wafer factory in New York. In September 2022, the company announced plans to build a big new silicon carbide materials facility in North Carolina that aims to boost production by more than 10 times by 2030.

This is in line with market research organizations’ forecasts of the silicon carbide market’s potential.

Phase one of the North Carolina facility, estimated at $1.3 billion is scheduled for completion in 2024. Industry sources estimate Wolfspeed’s share of the silicon carbide wafer market at more than 60%.

200mm wafers are 1.7x larger than the 150mm (6-inch) wafers that were previously the silicon carbide industry standard. Larger wafers mean more chips per wafer and a lower cost per chip. Wolfspeed will supply Renesas first with 150mm wafers and then with 200mm wafers as its production capacity increases.

Renesas manufactures semiconductor products for automotive, industrial, infrastructure, internet of things (IoT) and other applications. It is a world leader in microcontrollers for the auto industry.

The Japanese company also possesses embedded processing, analog, power management, radio frequency, SoC (system-on-chip) and other semiconductor technologies.

In May 2022, Renesas announced plans to refurbish and reopen its old Kofu factory and start making power semiconductors on 300-mm (12-inch) silicon wafers there in 2024.

In 2025, the company plans to start mass production of silicon carbide devices with wafers procured from Wolfspeed at its factory in Takasaki. At present, the Takasaki factory makes silicon power devices.

Renesas has doubled its revenues over the past five years, with growth in the auto, industrial, infrastructure and IoT markets accelerated by six acquisitions, namely:

• Integrated Device Technology of the US, which makes mixed-signal semiconductors used in telecom, computing and consumer electronics
• Dialog Semiconductor of the UK, which produces power management, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and industrial computing chips
• Celeno Communications of Israel, which specializes in WiFi chipsets and software
• Reality Analytics of the US, which is involved in software combining signal processing, machine learning and anomaly detection on Renesas MCU/MPU cores
• Steradian Semiconductors of India, which is involved in 4D imaging radar for object recognition and power efficiency in Renesas Advanced Driver Assistance System SoCs
• Panthropics of Austria, which specializes in Near Field Communications semiconductor design

Leveraging these strategic acquisitions, Renesas now plans to become a big producer of both silicon and silicon carbide power devices.

Their synergy with the company’s existing products and strong market demand point toward substantial growth ahead. Investors certainly think so: Renesas’ share price is up 2.3 times so far this year.

In July 2022, less than a month before President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS Act, CEO Shibata told the press that Renesas does not plan to make semiconductors in the US.

“When it comes to front-end production [the manufacture of chips on wafers],” he said, “I don’t necessarily believe there are good supplies of ingredients in geographies like Europe or the US”

By “ingredients,” he seems to have meant high costs and shortage of skilled labor – the same issues chip-making giant TSMC has been complaining about in Arizona.

Buying silicon carbide wafers from Wolfspeed, on the other hand, apparently makes more commercial sense to Renesas than sourcing them from smaller and less experienced manufacturers in Japan.

These companies, including Showa Denko, Central Glass, Mipox and Oxide, are part of a silicon-carbide development project run by Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO). Despite handsome government support, they did not win the Renesas contract.

Rohm, one of Japan’s leading makers of power devices, relies on SiCrystal, a German company it acquired in 2010, for its silicon carbide wafers. SiCrystal also sells wafers to other companies.

On June 29, Rohm signed a long-term agreement to supply silicon carbide power semiconductors to Vitesco Technologies, a German maker of electrified vehicle drive systems. This deal, too, appears to be economic rather than political.

Follow this writer on Twitter: @ScottFo83517667

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