Chip Industry Week in Review

Cadence plans to buy Hexagon AB’s design and engineering business to accelerate expansion in physical AI and system design and analysis. Cadence will pay ~US$3.1 billion in cash and issue stock, with the deal expected to close in early 2026.

PWC issued a 104-page in-depth analysis of semiconductor technology and markets, highlighting a broad swath of changes:

• $1T in annual revenue by 2030, fueled by 11.6% CAGR in servers and networking chips, 10.7% for automotive chips, as well as chips for smart homes, AR/VR, medtech, industrial, and defense applications;
• A surge in spending on future fabs, led by China, which is poised to take the No. 1 spot in global capacity by 2030, with Asia/Pacific to dominate manufacturing and packaging, and
• More and different kinds of robots, the rapid commercialization of quantum computing, and new technology fueled by brain-computer interfaces.

Synopsys and GlobalFoundries are jointly launching an educational ‘chip design to tapeout’ program for 40 universities worldwide, a pilot program giving students and professors hands-on access to chip design and manufacturing.

Resonac established a new consortium to develop materials, equipment, and design tools optimized for panel-level organic interposers. The 515 x 510mm prototype production line is expected to begin operation in 2026. The 27-member consortium includes Brewer Science, which will contribute expertise in high-performance polymer solutions, Lam Research, and Synopsys.

SK Hynix deployed ASML‘s high-NA EUV equipment to manufacture its next-generation DRAM in Icheon, South Korea.

The U.S. revoked TSMC’s validated end user status at the end of the year, requiring it to obtain individual licenses to place manufacturing equipment from American suppliers in its Nanjing, China, fab.

New industry data:

• SIA reports that global semiconductor sales were $62 billion in July, growing nearly 21% versus the prior year.
• Global semiconductor equipment billings hit US $33 billion in the second quarter, a 24% year-over-year increase, reports SEMI.
• Revenue of the top five wafer fab equipment manufacturers grew 20% YoY in Q2 2025, driven by strong HBM and advanced packaging demand, according to Counterpoint, which expects full-year revenue to grow 10% for 2025.
• Worldwide foundry revenue reached ~$42 billion in Q2 2025, up 14.6% QoQ, according to TrendForce, which expects utilization rates to rise next quarter.

Special Report: Governments and systems companies are fundamentally changing the rules around semiconductor security, forcing chipmakers and their suppliers to comply with tough new regulations that require resiliency in hardware. Unlike in the past, chips and systems deployed in these markets must be able to respond to threats rather than waiting for the next version of a chip or IP to address vulnerabilities. Penalties include substantial fines and reduced market opportunities.

Quick links to more news:

Global
In-Depth
Markets and Money
Education and Training
Product News
Research
Automotive and Batteries
Security
Events and Further Reading

Global

USA:

• Newly proposed Senate legislation wants U.S. customers to be prioritized in AI chips sales.
• The U.S. is establishing a National AI Research Resource Operations Center.
• Natcast reponded has canceled the 2025 NSTC Symposium.
• The Open Chiplet Economy invited stakeholders to help shape an open framework to accelerate front-end of the system-in-package design and development pipeline.

SEMICON India was held this week, spurring a number of announcements:

• • India’s locally made ‘Vikram’ 32-bit microprocessor was developed by ISRO. Also, three “Made in India” chips were announced.
  • The country’s first national 2D Innovation Hub is coming soon.
  • The Semiconductor Product Design Leadership Forum was launched to improve access to capital, EDA tools, IP, and design talent.
  • India and Singapore signed five MoUs, including setting up a national centre for advanced manufacturing, including ICs and more.
  • Tata Electronics inked a deal with Merck on materials, fab infrastructure and gases, and a deal with C-DAC to jointly build design capabilities.

In-Depth 

Semiconductor Engineering published its Automotive, Security and Enabling Technologies newsletter this week, featuring these top stories:

• Special Report: Security Requirements And Penalties Grow For Chipmakers
• 6G Line-Of-Sight Repeaters, Dots, And Reflections
• Cloud vs. Edge Gaming: Performance Gap Is Shrinking

Plus:

• AI’s Value In Chip Design Depends On Data Availability
• Videos:
  • Preparing For the Quantum Computing Age
  • Using AI For Fault Detection And Classification In Manufacturing
  • Challenges in Stacking HBM

Markets and Money

Acquisitions/Collaborations:

• ChipFoundry acquired the IP and technology assets of Efabless to strengthen its custom silicon offering.
• SMIC plans to buy out other investors’ stakes in its subsidiary foundry SMNC.
• Infineon and Delta Electronics will jointly develop high-density power modules capable of enabling vertical power delivery to AI processors in hyperscale data centers.

Fundings:

• Big week for quantum fundings: Quantinuum raised $600M, IQM raised over $300M and Maybell Quantum raised $40M.
• Tessolve secured $150 million in funding from TPG to expand advanced test labs and accelerate strategic acquisitions.
• Mojo Vision raised $75M for its high performance micro-LED platform.

 Reports:

• The advanced packaging market will reach $79B by 2030, Yole Group forecasts. driven by AI and high-performance demand.
• Silicon photonics and co-packaged optics will drive next-gen AI data center infrastructure, reports Yole. The 200G/channel will go mainstream, enabling 800G and 1600G transceivers to meet the requirements of AI workloads.
• Other reports this week: CMP consumables, sputtering target market, glass in the IC market, and AI governance in Asia.

Latest earnings report: Broadcom and Ambiq.

Trending video this week:

Challenges in Stacking HBM: What changes are needed to stack 24 layers of high-bandwidth memory

Product News

proteanTecs unveiled a VDD-core only Local Voltage and Thermal Sensor with a built-in fast over-temperature alert capability and ±1.0°C temperature and ±1.5% voltage accuracy for the 2nm process node.

Synopsys expanded the Synopsys.ai Copilot’s assistive and creative GenAI capabilities for EDA, boosting design quality and engineer productivity, speeding up customer workflows, and supporting more complex designs. The company also demonstrated a prototype of its AgentEngineer tool for chip design, which will complement the simulation and analysis offered by Ansys’ Engineering Copilot.

X-FAB is now offering gallium nitride-on-silicon (GaN-on-Si) foundry services for dMode HEMT devices at its 8-inch fab in Dresden, Germany.

Forge Nano introduced a 200mm single-wafer, thermal atomic layer deposition (ALD) platform for compound semiconductor manufacturing that can deposit oxide, nitride, or nanolaminates at up to 12nm per minute.

IonQ and Element Six developed high-quality, quantum-grade diamond films, allowing diamond-based devices to be made using standard semiconductor manufacturing techniques.

Data Patterns selected Siemens EDA‘s Teamcenter software for product lifecycle management and Polarion ALM software.

Security

Semiconductor Engineering’s Ed Sperling and Infineon’s Erik Wood discuss designing chips and systems to withstand brute-force attacks by quantum computers.

CISA and the NSA, along with 19 international partners, have released a Software Bill of Materials for cybersecurity guide.

Researchers at the University of Toronto found that a rowhammer attack, previously known to affect the memory in CPUs, is also effective against GPUs equipped with GDDR memory.

More security research:

• The Agentic Edge: LLMs in Hardware Security Verification (Univ. of Florida)
• 3D Technologies for HW Security: Opportunities and Challenges (UCSB, Columbia).
• Security Coprocessor-Integrated Platform for Autonomous UAV Security (Purdue)
• Neural Network Fault Tolerance Against Weight Attack (Carnegie Mellon)
• GPU Monitoring and Validation via Composable Side Channel Signals (Binghamton, UC Riverside)
• Operational Cybersecurity and Supply Chain Risks Across the AI Lifecycle (Sandia National Labs)

CISA issued new alerts/advisories.

Research

Researchers from Microsoft and the University of Cambridge introduced an analog optical computer that co-designs hardware and abstraction to efficiently accelerate both AI inference and combinatorial optimization, offering a scalable, energy-efficient alternative to digital systems.

Researchers from Nagoya University and its startup, Photoelectron Soul, developed a new semiconductor inspection and metrology platform in the form of a GaN-based electron beam that is set to begin validation in KIOXIA’s advanced production lines.

Caltech researchers created a DNA-based neural network that can learn.

Researchers from Harvard University and others published “Integrated lithium niobate photonic computing circuit based on efficient and high-speed electro-optic conversion.”

University of South Wales scientists tested Green Critical Minerals’ very high density graphite and found it delivers thermal expansion advantages over copper and aluminum, with commercial potential for AI data centers and semiconductors, per Mercury.

A team from IIT Gandhinagar and Penn State researchers shrunk 2D transistors with applications for diboride nanosheets.

Automotive and Batteries

Chinese EV makers have been slashing prices among fierce competition, while the companies continue to build out based on money from state-run banks, reaching a state of overcapacity. Last year, 129 brands in China were selling cars that ran mainly or entirely on electricity, but only 15 of them will be financially viable by 2030, reports NYT.

The NHTSA is proposing amendments to the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards for vehicles with automated driving systems.

Infineon expanded its OptiMOS 6 portfolio by introducing the Automotive 150 V MOSFET family to meet the demanding requirements of modern EVs and released a software portfolio designed for the latest AURIX TC4x  MCU family.

Research:

• University of Padova researchers presented a lidar-SLAM comparison framework, showing that despite differences in sensor design, both Ouster and Livox systems achieve similar trajectory accuracy.
• Researchers at KAIST and LG Energy Solution showed that pyran-based electrolytes with weakly Li-associating anions enable lithium metal batteries to achieve fast charging, high energy density, and long cycle life by promoting uniform lithium plating and stabilizing the solid–electrolyte interphase.

IDTechEx defines SDV performance using six levels.

Education and Training

University of Wisconsin-Madison launched its Ultra-Wide Bandgap Semiconductor Metal-Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD) laboratory.

University at Albany partnered with Ramaiah University of Applied Sciences in Bangalore to enable Indian students to enroll in the college’s remote graduate certificates in semiconductor manufacturing, patterning/processing, and metrology.

Tata Consulting Engineers signed an MoU with Arizona State University to strengthen collaboration in critical and emerging technologies by providing industry-focused training.

Events and Further Reading

Upcoming webinars are here, including:

• Benefits of CoolGaN in solar and energy storage system solutions (Sept.10)
• Gain Test Insights You Can Trust: Smart Bench Essentials Plus (Sept. 10)
• Microcontroller Tech Forum: Discover the future of automotive and industrial design (Sept.15)
• Powering Data Centers for the Future (Sept.16)
• Network Security at Terabit-per-second Rates with MACsec, IPsec and UEC (Sept. 17)

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

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