Chip Industry Week In Review


By Susan Rambo, Karen Heyman, and Liz Allan. Renesas plans to acquire Altium, maker of PCB design software, for $5.9 billion. In a conference call, Renesas CEO Hidetoshi Shibata cited Altium's PCB design software and digital twin virtual modeling as key components of its future strategy. "I believe it will generate transformational value for our combined customers and our stakeholders," Shib... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Jesse Allen, Linda Christensen, and Liz Allan.  The Biden administration plans to invest more than $5B  for semiconductor R&D and workforce support, including in the National Semiconductor Technology Center (NSTC), as part of the rollout of the CHIPS Act. Today's announcement included at least hundreds of millions for the NSTC workforce efforts, including creating a Workforce Cente... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Jesse Allen, Karen Heyman, and Liz Allan Renesas will acquire Transphorm, which designs and manufactures gallium nitride power devices, for about $339 million. GaN, which is a wide-bandgap technology, is used for high-voltage applications in a slew of markets, including EVs and EV fast chargers, as well as data centers and industrial applications. Cadence acquired Invecas, a provider o... » read more

Money Pours Into New Fabs And Facilities


Fabs, packaging, test and assembly, and R&D all drew major funding in 2023. Companies poured money into offshore locations, such as India and Malaysia, to access a larger workforce and lower costs, while also partnering with governments to secure domestic supply chains amid ongoing geopolitical turmoil. Looking ahead, artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, and data applications... » read more

Startup Funding: November 2023


November was a banner month for quantum computing startups, with two raising rounds of $100 million for their superconducting and silicon spin qubit technology. Another significant round went to a company developing photonic-based systems. Several other companies drew funding, including one applying quantum sensors to semiconductor inspection. Sizeable funding also went to an autonomous tran... » read more

Building Better Bridges In Advanced Packaging


The increasing challenges and rising cost of logic scaling, along with demands for an increasing number of features, are pushing more companies into advanced packaging. And while that opens up a slew of new options, it also is causing widespread confusion over what works best for different processes and technologies. At its core, advanced packaging depends on reliable interconnects, well-def... » read more

Week In Review: Semiconductor Manufacturing & Test


The Biden Administration’s export bans for semiconductor manufacturing equipment are delaying expansion plans for Chinese chipmakers, Nikkei Asia reports. Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) has halted work on its second memory plant near Wuhan, and ChangXin Memory Technologies (CMTX) says its second production facility, slated to open in 2023, will be delayed until 2024 or 2025. In an effo... » read more

Week In Review: Semiconductor Manufacturing, Test


Chips for consumer devices are down, but the overall chip industry is actively preparing for the next phase of growth. Worldwide silicon wafer shipments, which are an aggregate view of all the various semiconductor segments, hit an all-time high in 2022, increasing 4% to 14,713 million square inches (MSI). Wafer revenue, meanwhile, rose 9.5% to $13.8 billion over the same period, SEMI reported ... » read more

Week In Review: Semiconductor Manufacturing, Test


SEMI , SEMI Europe and European Commission representatives, in consultation with semiconductor industry stakeholders, proposed initiatives to overcome the skills shortage in Europe’s microelectronics industry: Create an industry image campaign to raise public awareness on how technology is shaping the future, and how workers can establish careers in the semiconductor industry. Remove ... » read more

Week In Review: Semiconductor Manufacturing, Test


Chinese memory chip maker YMTC and dozens of other Chinese entities are "at risk" of being added to a trade blacklist as soon as Dec. 6, a U.S. Commerce Department official said in prepared remarks seen by Reuters. SMIC co-CEO Zhao Haijun said on an earnings call that recent export controls from the United States will have an "adverse impact" on the company's production. The U.K. has rule... » read more

← Older posts