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Chip Industry Week in Review


Qualcomm announced plans to buy Alphawave Semi for ~$2.4 billion in a deal expected to close in Q1 2026. Qualcomm plans to leverage Alphawave Semi's connectivity products, including chiplets, to develop high-performance, low-power solutions for AI inferencing and customized CPUs in data centers. Qualcomm's traditional targets were mobile phones and edge computing. [Updated 6/9.] Global semic... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


The U.S. Commerce Department is tightening controls on EDA software sold to China by imposing additional license requirements. EDA companies are assessing the impact. Details on how broad the restrictions will be are still pending. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will require Synopsys and Ansys to divest key software assets — including optical, photonic, and RTL power analysis tool... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


Podcast: imec's roadmap and a one-on-one interview with the European research house's chief strategy officer. China's Xiaomi debuted an in-house-designed 10-core mobile SoC built on a 3nm process. The company did not identify the foundry. It also announced plans to invest 50 billion yuan (~$7B) over the next decade to develop high-end smartphone chips, as part of a 200 billion yuan (~$28B) c... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


Check out the Inside Chips podcast for our behind-the-scenes analysis. Newly proposed U.S. legislation called the Chip Security Act would use location verification tracking as a tool to help combat chip smuggling. This follows a report by the Economist that showed Taiwan exports of advanced chips to Malaysia in the first quarter has nearly reached 2024 totals, heightening concerns that China... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


Check out the Inside Chips podcast for our behind-the-scenes analysis. The U.S. government is rescinding a Biden-era AI export rule that would have imposed complex restrictions on how U.S. chip and AI technology is sold abroad, a move welcomed by companies like Nvidia, reports Bloomberg. While new, simpler guidelines are expected in the coming months, the decision introduces short-term uncer... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


Check out the Inside Chips podcast for our behind-the-scenes analysis of changes at Intel Foundry. Intel rolled out its updated process technology roadmap this week, along with early process design kit (PDK) for its 14A gate-all-around process technology. That node will utilize high-NA EUV, and include direct contact power delivery, the second generation of its backside power delivery techno... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


To listen to the podcast version, click here. TSMC unveiled an unusually detailed roadmap at this week's North America Technology Symposium, including future architectures for 3D-ICs for high-performance computing and small, extremely low-power chips for AR/VR glasses, and two implementations of system-on-wafer. Fig. 1: TSMC's future packaging and stacking roadmap. Source: TSMC The ... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


[Podcast version is here.] TSMC said it will produce 30% of its leading-edge chips in Arizona when all six of its fabs are operational, a total investment of $165 billion, Axios reported. In its latest SEC filing, the foundry said it continues to add capacity in Taiwan, Arizona, Japan, and Germany. The Trump administration launched a Section 232 investigation into semiconductors and relat... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Don't have time to read this? Check out Semiconductor Engineering's Inside Chips podcast.  The U.S. Department of Commerce is investigating TSMC for potential export control violations involving Huawei chips, reports Reuters. The probe follows TechInsights' teardown of a Huawei AI accelerator chip last year. The foundry, meanwhile, maintains it has not shipped any chips to Huawei since 2020... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Check out our new Inside Chips podcast. President Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs were announced this week. The executive order stated that semiconductors and copper imports are not directly subject to the reciprocal tariff, although the exemption may be short-lived. Semiconductor equipment and tools were not mentioned, leaving the industry searching for clarification. Regardless, hig... » read more

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