Chip Industry Week in Review

The U.S. is considering annual approvals for Samsung and SK hynix to export chipmaking tools and materials to their factories in China, replacing perpetual waivers granted under the validated end user system, reports Bloomberg. The proposal, presented by the U.S. Commerce Department to South Korean officials, would require the companies to reapply each year for specific quantities of restricted equipment.

Natcast, the nonprofit set up to operate the CHIPS Act’s National Semiconductor Technology Center, is laying off most of its staff and shutting down after the Commerce Department halted $7.4B in funding, reports IEEE Spectrum. 

ASML is investing $1.5 billion in the French AI start-up Mistral AI. The deal marks progress in Europe’s ability to grow its own tech economy. The long-term collaboration agreement encompasses exploration of AI models across ASML’s product portfolio, as well as R&D and operations.

AI data centers:

• Oracle and OpenAI inked a $300B deal to construct data centers.
• Meanwhile, residents living near proposed energy-hungry data centers in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, among others, are pushing back on data centers due to environmental impacts, water consumption, and traffic concerns. Some are winning. 
• The Atlantic writer Rogé Karma warns that the whole U.S. economy is pouring too many resources into the promise of AI productivity gains, with the AI bubble potentially dragging the economy into a recession. The Economist said many people could lose their shirts with the $3 trillion AI investment boom.

Critical mineral updates:

• The U.S. government plans to launch an initiative to secure a domestic gallium supply, which is critical for semiconductor and other sectors.
• Copper producers Anglo American and Canadian Teck Resources are planning a $53B merger to become the newly named Anglo Teck, headquartered in Vancouver.
• Think tank PIIE contends the draft 2025 Critical Minerals list is still too long and narrowly focused on U.S. GDP, undervaluing non-economic impacts like health, environmental and security.

New manufacturing and test technology:

• Onto Innovation announced a new OCD metrology platform designed for enhanced precision for GAA logic and HBM devices. The  new optical system enables more precise measurements of nanowires and DRAM cell blocks as dimensions shrink.
• Advantest launched its next-gen CD-SEM system aimed at 2nm mask metrology, claiming 20% improvement in CD reproducibility and new support for curvilinear mask patterns. 
• Lam Research launched a new deposition tool to address the manufacturing challenges of 3D stacking and advanced packaging for AI and HPC chips. The VECTOR TEOS 3D system enables void-free dielectric films up to 60 microns thick on bowed wafers, aiming to improve yield, reliability, and throughput in chiplet integration.

Fig.1: VECTOR TEOS 3D wafer handling.  Source: Lam Research.

proteanTecs raised $51 million in a Series D round led by IAG Capital Partners, with new backing from Samsung Catalyst Fund, Arm, and Siemens. The company said the funding will support expansion of its chip telemetry and lifecycle monitoring technology across automotive, consumer electronics, and telecommunications markets. 

AI is all about data movement — lots of it. The key is to move data as little as possible, and when it is moved, to do it efficiently, securely, and blindingly fast. Semiconductor Engineering talks with Arteris CEO Charlie Janac in this one-on-one discussion about the impact of AI on networks on chip and what will change going forward.

Financial updates this week: Synopsys, TSMC (August revenue). 

Quick links to more news:

Global
In-Depth
Reports, Deals and Money
Product News
Trending Video
People
Research
Automotive and Batteries
Security
Education and Training
Events and Further Reading

Global

Americas

• CSIS recommends the U.S. work to gain faster access to Brazil’s vast copper reserves through strategic financing, supply chain integration, and targeted tariff exemptions.
• Natcast provided an overview of the mission of the NSTC — to advance U.S. semiconductor innovation, develop a skilled workforce, and strengthen economic and national security.

Europe

• The European Commission asked stakeholders to evaluate and review the Chips Act.
• British compound semiconductor manufacturer IQE is exploring a sale.
• Germany’s JUPITER supercomputer is the first European system to achieve the exascale threshold, performance comparable to the aggregate computing capabilities of one million modern smartphones. 

Asia: 

• Tokyo Electron is opening an R&D site in Bengaluru, India.
• KIST will open a South Korean photonics-based quantum fab in October. 
• The ITIF reported on China’s dominance over chip-grade polysilicon and its impact on the global supply.

In-Depth 

Semiconductor Engineering published its Low Power – High Performance newsletter this week, featuring these top stories:

• Balancing Workloads In AI Processor Designs
• Coloring Optical Signals For More Bandwidth In Data Centers
• The Demise Of Static Timing Verification?

The Test, Measurement and Analytics newsletter also came out this week, featuring:

• Making The Most of Test Resources
• The Hidden Cost Of Contact Resistance
• Infusing Trust Into The Supply Chain

And:

• Opinion: What Do LLMs Want from Hardware
• Opinion: IBM Power Processor, This One Goes to 11
• Video: The Evolution of DRAM

Reports, Deals and Money

Deals/Collaborations 

• Nitto Denko will collaborate with IBM Research on new classes of polymeric materials for advanced packaging processes.
• Deca and Microchip are teaming up, combining Deca’s fan-out and adaptive patterning technologies with Microchip’s embedded flash for a bundled NVM chiplet solution. 
• Tata Consultancy Services launched chiplet-based system engineering services aimed at helping semiconductor companies design heterogeneous multi-chip products. 
• A joint offering of Ayar Labs’ co-packaged optics technology and AIchip’s advanced packaging aims to equip hyperscalers with a scalable AI accelerator and platform. 

Reports: 

• IDC predicts global semiconductor revenue will reach $800B in 2025, about 18% higher than last year, and expects the industry to become a trillion-dollar market by 2028. 
• MLCommons announced new results for its industry-standard MLPerf Inference v5.1 benchmark suite, which is designed to measure how quickly systems can run AI models across a variety of workloads. MLPerf Inference v5.1 benchmark results include data center and edge pages.
• Other Reports: Metal chemicals, display driver shipments, and graphene.

Fundings/Debt Restructure: 

• Investors are increasingly flocking to quantum: PSIQuantum raised $1B for its commercial fault-tolerant quantum computer. Also, an investment from NVIDIA’s venture arm expanded QuEra’s $230M Series B financing round for its neutral-atom quantum computer. Infleqtion plans to go public through a merger arrangement. 
• Scintil Photonics raised $58M to scale its integrated photonics for AI factories.
• Opticore raised an additional $7.5M for its energy-efficient photonics chip. 
• Canada-based Astrus raised $8M for its physics-based chip design. 
• Wolfspeed received court approval for its reorg plan and expects to emerge from Chapter 11 protection within weeks. 
• Chinese humanoid robot startup X Square Robot secured $100M. 

Trending Video This Week

Steve Woo, distinguished inventor and fellow at Rambus, talks about the evolution of DRAM and how/why this tried-and-true memory is changing. 

Product News

Design/Power/IP:

• Arm launched Lumex Compute Subsystem, a new platform optimizing real-time on-device AI for smartphones and PCs. The platform features scalable matrix extension CPUs and next-gen ray tracing GPUs, with optimized physical implementations for 3nm. 
• Cadence expanded its Reality digital twin platform with NVIDIA’s DGX SuperPOD and GB200 model to fast-track AI data center deployment and operations. 
• Infineon unveiled a 12 kW reference design for high-performance power supply units.
• Keysight unveiled two new mmWave frequency extender modules and precision calibration kit 0.5 mm.
• NVIDIA’s new Rubin CPX GPU was announced this week, a new class of GPU designed for massive-context inferencing. 
• Axelera AI added a new AI processor unit, designed for AI inferencing at the edge.
• SiFive rolled out five new RISC-V IP products for AI workload acceleration. 

Photonics:

• Lightmatter shared details of its 3D photonic interconnect hardware, highlighting a turning point for scalable silicon photonics. 
• Sarcina Technology detailed new UCIe-A and UCIe-S interconnects.

Manufacturing/Test:

• SK hynix finished development and preparation of HBM4 for mass production. The company also began supplying mobile NAND solution ZUFS 4.1.
• Wolfspeed announced the commercial launch of its 200mm SiC wafers and epitaxy, with expanded availability.
• EV Group released a new HVM die-to-wafer overlay metrology tool for hybrid bonding. 

The new iPhone Air was engineered with Apple silicon and A19 Pro, N1, and C1X chips, making it the most power-efficient iPhone ever produced. The A19 Pro features a new 6-core CPU and a 5-core GPU with upgraded architecture, delivering next-level mobile gaming.

Security

CISA released a new roadmap, CISA Strategic Focus: CVE Quality for a Cyber Secure Future, revealing new priorities, community partnerships, modernization and data quality improvements.

CWE Version 4.18 is now available. The updates are related to the 2025 Most Important Hardware Weaknesses and a new AI-related weakness.

TXOne introduced asset-vulnerability management and other expanded capabilities for its Edge network security solution, which creates an end-to-end solution for reliability, safety and availability of industrial processes and infrastructure.

A cyberattack on Jaguar Land Rover has compromised data. The investigation is ongoing as authorities attempt to pinpoint what type of data was affected.

Security research:

• Branch Privilege Injection: Compromising Spectre v2 HW Mitigations by Exploiting Branch Predictor Race Conditions (ETH Zurich)
• On the Thermal Vulnerability of 3D-Stacked High-Bandwidth Memory Architectures (NC A&T State et al)
• Schrodinger’s Toolbox: Exploring the Quantum Rowhammer Attack (Columbia Univ.)
• AmphiKey: A Dual-Mode Secure Authenticated Key Encapsulation Protocol for Smart Grid (Kansas State, Florida Atlantic Univ.)
• Spatial Monitoring of I/O Interconnection Nets in Flip-Chip Packages (Ariel Univ.)

CISA issued new alerts/advisories.

People

Intel announced leadership changes. Newly hired Kevork Kechichian will head the Data Center Group, Jim Johnson is now head of the Client Computing Group, Srini Iyengar will lead the newly formed Central Engineering Group, and Naga Chandrasekaran will expand his role to include Foundry Services. Michelle Johnston Holthaus, chief executive of Intel Products, will leave. 

Baya Systems formed a technical advisory board, naming Ty Garibay, Phanindra Mannava, and Kurt Shuler as its first members. 

Teradyne named Jean-Pierre “JP” Hathout as President of the Teradyne Robotics Group. 

SEMI introduced the annual Silicon Medal, with the first award to be presented to AMD CEO Lisa Su at SEMICON West 2025 in Phoenix. The honor recognizes industry leaders for innovation and impact, highlighting Su’s role in advancing high-performance and adaptive computing. 

Research

Stanford researchers propose a fundamental shift in memory hierarchy design, changing the focus from raw capacity to locality, bandwidth and energy efficiency, in The Future of Memory: Limits and Opportunities. 

NIST-led researchers highlight the critical polymer-based “soft” materials used in advanced packaging.

Fig.2: Polymer-based materials used in advanced packaging. (a) An overmolded flip chip package. (b) A lidded flip chip package. Source: NIST.

Artificial Intelligence:

• OpenAI explains that AI model hallucinations originate from next-word prediction.
• Agentic AI consists of software agents that show proactive behavior, while physical AI refers to embodied systems that interact with the physical world, according to imec’s Agentic and physical AI will change everything.

Quantum/Photonics:

• International researchers demonstrated that “quantum processors can provide key insights into the thus-far largely unexplored landscape of highly entangled non-equilibrium phases of matter” (TU Munich, Google, Princeton et al.). 
• Univ. of Michigan researchers demonstrated the first transistor-like switch to control excitons — chargeless quantum quasiparticles — at room temperature. 
• Researchers from Univ. of Stuttgart and Max Planck found that the integration of a quantum emitter-embedded metasurface with a MEMS system actuated cavity enables ångstrom-level wavelength tuning and dynamic polarization-resolved emission.
• Univ. of Florida, UCLA and other researchers discovered a photonic joint transform correlator that accelerates convolution operations with drastically reduced complexity and high energy efficiency, achieving near-digital accuracy and showing strong potential for next-gen AI hardware.
• KAIST developed a new framework that can efficiently explore the design space of millions of multicomponent porous materials using quantum computers.

Researchers from Penn State developed a novel wearable sensor capable of continuously monitoring low rates of perspiration for the presence of lactate, which is a potential sign of organ failure or sepsis.

Automotive and Batteries

EVs:

• Infineon and Lingji Innovation, a subsidiary of Ninebot, signed a MoU to further drive GaN technology in LEVs.
• Tesla’s AI5 and AI6 chips are under development and are expected to support the company’s AI and autonomous driving training. The chips are expected to enter mass production by the end of 2026.
• China’s August sales of EVs and hybrids grew at the slowest pace in 18 months.

Batteries:

• Argonne researchers are using  atomic layer deposition to coat sulfide-based solid electrolytes with a protective layer in solid-state batteries.
• Exxon Mobil acquired Superior Graphite. This deal, which includes a production facility and research center, will aid Exxon in producing materials needed for EV batteries.
• Rimac Technology released its latest portfolio of advanced battery and powertrain technologies, including next-generation solid-state solutions.

Reports:

• A CLEPA study found that European automotive suppliers face a cost disadvantage of 15% to 35%, compared to countries like China and the U.S., mainly driven by high energy and labor costs, regulatory burdens, and fragmented frameworks.
• IDTechEx released its “Passenger Car ADAS Market 2025-2045: Technology, Market Analysis, and Forecasts” report, which provides the latest developments on automotive radar technology.
• A BSG analysis describes changes and projections in the global EV market, including a downshift on the EV transition in the U.S. and mass adoption of battery EVs in leading countries such as China, Germany and the UK.

Siemens was selected by the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile as “Official Digital Twin Sponsor.” The organization, which governs motor sport, is expanding its use of Siemens software.

Education and Training

UC San Diego received a $300K grant from the NSF to launch a pilot program to address the shortage of skilled U.S. workers going into the semiconductor industry, by offering hands-on semiconductor fabrication training.

UMass Lowell will receive two NSF grants totaling ~$797K to advance power electronics using gallium oxide, aimed at high-voltage devices for space and terrestrial applications. One project will develop thicker gallium oxide films and new device fabrication techniques; the other focuses on integrating diamond layers to improve heat dissipation and radiation tolerance in gallium oxide diodes. 

Sardar Patel University has entered an agreement with Quad Quantum to create grants, programs and internships to support semiconductor science.

Events and Further Reading

Upcoming webinars are here, including:

• Microcontroller Tech Forum (Sept.15)
• Powering Data Centers for the Future (Sept.16)
• Network Security at Terabit-per-second Rates with MACsec, IPsec and UEC (Sept. 17)
• Optimizing antenna performance (Sept. 18)

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

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