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Straits Times
22-07-2025
- Business
- Straits Times
Japan PM Ishiba to decide his future after assessing tariff talks progress, Yomiuri says
Find out what's new on ST website and app. FILE PHOTO: Japan's Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba attends a press conference at the headquarters of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Tokyo on July 21, 2025, the day after the prime minister's coalition lost its upper house majority. PHILIP FONG/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo TOKYO - Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba is planning to decide on his future after assessing progress in tariff negotiations with the United States, Yomiuri newspaper reported on Wednesday. Ishiba is facing growing opposition from within his own Liberal Democratic Party for his vow to stay in power, despite the ruling coalition's bruising defeat in Sunday's upper house election. The prime minister is planning to hold a press conference to announce his decision once the tariff negotiations' outcome becomes clear, the newspaper reported without citing its sources. Japan's top tariff negotiator Ryosei Akazawa is in the U.S. for his eighth round of talks. Japan's Asahi newspaper reported Akazawa met with President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday. REUTERS
Sinar Daily
09-07-2025
- Health
- Sinar Daily
Japan's whooping cough cases hit weekly record of over 3,300
The highly contagious acute respiratory tract infection, also known as pertussis, may lead to other complications like pneumonia or encephalopathy, which could be fatal, especially for infants up to six months old. 09 Jul 2025 03:16pm People wearing facemasks amid concerns over the spread of the Covid-19 walk across the Shibuya Crossing in Tokyo on May 26, 2020. - (Photo by BEHROUZ MEHRI / AFP) TOKYO - Whooping cough cases in Japan hit a new weekly record of 3,353 cases, the highest since the current survey method began in 2018, according to the Japan Institute for Health Security, reported Xinhua. Preliminary data from the national health research institute showed that the latest figure reported by medical institutions across the country in the week through June 29 went up 142 from the previous week. The country logged 39,672 cases of the infectious bacterial disease, characterised by spasmodic coughing attacks, from the start of the year, a significant increase from the roughly 4,000 reported for all of 2024, the institute said. Passengers wearing facemasks travel on a tramway in Setagaya district in Tokyo on June 6, 2020.- (Photo by PHILIP FONG / AFP) Since early April, the number of patients reported across the country has been exceeding 1,000 a week, the data showed. The highly contagious acute respiratory tract infection, also known as pertussis, may lead to other complications like pneumonia or encephalopathy, which could be fatal, especially for infants up to six months old. There have been reports this season of infants dying or becoming seriously ill. Up to the end of June, four infants aged between less than one and four months were confirmed dead in four prefectures, local media said. - BERNAMA
Toronto Sun
09-05-2025
- Business
- Toronto Sun
Japanese tech company Panasonic slashes 10,000 people as profits falter
The job cuts amount to about 4% of its 230,000 workers Published May 09, 2025 • Last updated 5 minutes ago • 1 minute read The logo of Japanese electronics giant Panasonic is seen outside the Panasonic Centre in Tokyo on February 2, 2023. Photo by PHILIP FONG / AFP TOKYO — Panasonic will slash its global workforce by 10,000 people, half in Japan and half overseas, to become a more efficient, 'lean' company, the Japanese manufacturer said Friday. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account The job cuts, amounting to about 4% of its 230,000 workers, will include early retirement offers in Japan and closures and consolidation of various operations, according to the Osaka-based maker of home appliances, such as washing machines and refrigerators. Panasonic also makes solar panels, delivery robots, facial recognition technology, fuel cells for homes and EV batteries for Tesla cars. Also Friday, Panasonic reported a 17.5% drop in profit for the fiscal year through March at 366 billion yen ($2.5 billion), down from 443 billion yen in the previous fiscal year. It sales totaled 8.46 trillion yen ($58 billion), down 0.5% year-on-year. The company said the slowing global economy and weaker demand for electric vehicles were a factor behind its weak results. But sales of air-conditioners and consumer electronics products held up in Japan, it said. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. The company's chief executive, Yuki Kusumi, told reporters his heart felt heavy in announcing the job cuts. Panasonic did not mention U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff policies as a factor behind its drop in profit. Panasonic forecast that its profit will improve by at least 150 billion yen ($1 billion) by the fiscal year through March 2027, and by 300 billion yen ($2.1 billion) by the fiscal year through March 2029. That will be achieved through management reform, closure of unprofitable businesses and building a system that's more responsive to changes in the business environment, officials told reporters. But the turnaround will take time and profit will slip further in this fiscal year. For the fiscal year through March 2026, Panasonic is projecting a 310 billion yen ($2.1 billion) profit on 7.8 trillion yen ($54 billion) sales. Panasonic said it remains bullish about EV batteries and plans to supply Japanese automakers Mazda Motor Corp. and Subaru Corp. in new strategic partnerships. Canada Sunshine Girls Sunshine Girls Sunshine Girls Toronto Maple Leafs
Forbes
21-03-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Softbank Is Acquiring Ampere: What Are The Implications?
Softbank's planned acquisition of Ampere raises some interesting questions about the market for ... More hyperscaler and custom CPUs. (Photo by PHILIP FONG/AFP via Getty Images) The semiconductor market got a bit of a surprise this week as holding company Softbank announced its intent to acquire Arm CPU vendor Ampere Computing for $6.5 billion in cash. If approved, the deal is expected to close later in 2025. The news, a few quarters after Softbank acquired AI chip startup Graphcore, was unexpected but not wholly surprising. The question is why Softbank, which still owns a significant amount of Arm, would make this investment. I want to dig into this a little more and explore potential outcomes. Ampere was founded in 2017 by Renée James, an ex-Intel executive. The company's goal seemed quite simple: develop the first commercially successful Arm-based server CPU to compete with Intel's Xeon and the newly launched EPYC line from AMD. While there had been many attempts in previous years by companies such as Calxeda, Cavium (now part of Marvell) and even AMD (remember the Seattle project?) to drive the adoption of Arm in the datacenter, the ecosystem and tools still lagged. Ampere's timing was spot-on. AWS and its broad deployment of Arm-based Graviton chips, combined with Arm's release of its Neoverse architecture, brought acceptance and support from the ISV ecosystem. Supporting Arm was no longer an afterthought — it was given the same priority as x86 in the Linux and open source communities. The first Ampere Altra CPU launched in 2020, with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure as its first customer. (Oracle has about a 30% stake in Ampere.) In 2022, Ampere landed Microsoft Azure as cloud customer number two and secured a design win with HPE (for the ProLiant RL300). The company landed deals with Google Cloud and several Chinese cloud providers in the following years. AWS's Graviton has been somewhat of a blessing and a curse for Ampere. On the plus side, its success validated Arm and accelerated ecosystem support. This in turn motivated other CSPs and hyperscalers to experiment with and deploy Arm-based designs. In these cases, Ampere was the dominant player. However, what these hyperscalers learned next from Graviton changed the dynamic: It was more cost-effective to develop Arm-based server chips in-house than it was to buy them commercially. Even if the up-front capital investment was more expensive, the benefits of developing very tailored silicon that fit within a hyperscaler's power-performance envelope delivered longer-term profitability. This is not a knock against the very fine commercial CPUs that Ampere designs and builds. In fact, it's the same challenge CSPs have with x86 vendors. A CPU built to a general specification will never deliver the same environment-specific power-to-performance profile as a CPU explicitly designed for that environment. If CSPs like Azure can turn the knobs on a CPU design to deliver, say, 2% more efficiency per CPU, that adds up to significant cost savings across the millions of CPUs deployed. In this context, Arm's Neoverse architecture and its program for custom silicon solutions considerably lowered the barrier to designing chips in-house. This turn toward custom silicon — sometimes in-house and sometimes through third parties like Broadcom and Marvell — has created a challenge for Ampere. Frankly, it has designed chips that would deliver great value in the enterprise (like Xeon and EPYC do), but it doesn't have an enterprise market ready to adopt them. Likewise, it builds chips that could be an excellent value for CSPs — except that the economics point those potential customers to in-house design. (For that matter, it is certain that if x86 licensing weren't what it is, we would see the same dynamic playing out there: Xeon and EPYC would have no market with the CSP and hyperscale communities.) This pattern has continued beyond AWS. Over the last several quarters, Azure launched its in-house Arm-based Cobalt CPU (and Maia accelerator), Google Cloud launched its custom Axion chip, Chinese giant Ali Cloud launched its Aliyun CPU and the list goes on. With all of this market movement, it has been difficult for Ampere to maintain its footing. This took the company from exploring the potential for an IPO in 2022 to this week's news that it's being acquired by Softbank. One last note on this front: Softbank is getting a steal in Ampere. It is a world-class design shop with a strong executive team and a well-established go-to-market operation — all of the elements critical to success in its segment. So, why does Softbank acquire a company like Ampere with a great product, IP and people — but no significant addressable market at the moment? I believe that in the short term, Softbank sees an opportunity in the custom silicon space, specifically around CPUs and accelerators. Combining the roughly 1,000 people who make up the design staff for Ampere with the approximately 500 people who make up Graphcore is a good start. If Softbank can make a couple of other strategic acquisitions to cover interconnects and networking, and the company will have the IP, people and go-to-market muscle memory to compete effectively in relatively short order. In the long term, Softbank has the central pieces in place to pivot to a commercial market quickly, should it evolve. That could be a market where Arm servers are deployed around the enterprise — or it could be a commercial market where Arm CPUs, XPUs and other silicon enable 'black box' solutions like AI factories (or some other technology factory) with very specific performance characteristics. There is some speculation about whether this acquisition is lining up to support the recently announced Stargate Project, of which both Softbank and Oracle are a part. I don't believe Softbank would make a $6.5 billion investment in CPUs that will play some yet-to-be-defined role in the project. Frankly, wouldn't Oracle be the better suitor in that case? Larry Ellison and his team could use Ampere for vertical integration in both Stargate and OCI. If in fact Stargate is one of the purchase drivers for Softbank, I think we are still looking at a custom silicon design to support what will be another hyperscale environment in Stargate. This would enable Softbank/Ampere to gain leverage and credibility with other potential customers. Meanwhile, is there still opportunity for Ampere in the cloud? Or, maybe more appropriately, in the hyperscaler market? Undoubtedly yes. While AWS, Azure and a few others are designing their own CPUs and accelerators, other hyperscalers want very bespoke compute platform but can't or don't want to hire entire teams to design the chips and manage their manufacture. The bigger question I have is whether Softbank (or any company) is able to acquire and assemble all of the pieces effectively to satisfy these potential customers. Buying the technology is actually the easy part. Bringing disparate teams and organizational cultures together is the more challenging part. The cloud and AI have been two significant disruptors in the market in so many different ways. Semiconductors are one of the affected segments where I am not sure anybody could have predicted that we would be where we are today. I can certainly say I never imagined I would be writing an article where I described designing a CPU as relatively easy. The acquisition of Ampere by Softbank is certainly not being made for charity or whimsical purposes. There is a reason for this acquisition, and I suspect it is tied to the custom silicon opportunity. New workloads in different operating environments require custom silicon — CPUs, DPUs, training and inference accelerators — to deliver the best performance possible. By bringing Ampere and Graphcore together, Softbank has the beginnings of that custom IP shop. Whether Stargate is the first customer or not is another question.
