Chip Industry Week In Review

M&A, Collaborations

• Keysight collaborated with 3dB Labs, expanding interoperability between RF signal monitoring HW and analysis SW, and with Salience Labs to develop an optical circuit switch testing environment.
• Qualcomm said it will acquire EdgeImpulse.
• Adeia entered a multi-year IP license agreement with AMD for hybrid bonding and other IC patents and resolved their outstanding litigation.
• Ayar Labs and Wiwynn will partner on co‑packaged optics for rack‑scale AI systems.
• CEA-Leti is collaborating with NcodiN to industrialize the latter’s optical interposer technology on a 300mm integrated photonics process.

More deals and funding

• Amber Semi raised $30M Series C for AI data center power delivery.
• Xscape Photonics raised an additional $37M for its fabric solutions.
• Femtum closed a $16M Series A for advanced fiber laser solutions.

Reports

• TrendForce said the top 10 global foundries generated nearly $46.3B in revenue in Q4 2025, up 2.6% sequentially. The report also showed Samsung gaining foundry share and returning to profitability, while Tower moved up in the rankings on stronger silicon photonics and SiGe demand tied to emerging server applications.
• Rising memory and CPU prices could push up mainstream notebook prices  by nearly 40%, according to TrendForce.
• Memory Price Surge Triggers Shifts in Smartphone BOM Structure (Counterpoint)
• Other reports: smartphone production, cellular IoT modules, and Wi-Fi 7.

Insights, Opinions

• Why HW, not SW, is eating the world (Economist)
• UK Semiconductors: Searching For the Next ARM (CEPA)
• US Data Center Build-Out Depends on GPU Imports (CSIS)
• 2 Approaches to Revitalize Japan’s IC Industry (Stanford)
• Quantum-Supercomputing Integration: US Leadership (CSIS)
• Advanced lithography’s path forward goes up and down (SPIE)
• The U.S. Can’t Afford to Lose the Biotech Race with China (Time)

Argonne scientists used aerosol jet printing and custom nanoparticle inks to build up layers to form electronic parts.

MIT and MITRE researchers developed a photonic device that enables the precise broadcasting of light from the chip into free space in a scalable way, using an array of microscopic structures that curl upward, resembling tiny, glowing ski jumps.

UC San Diego researchers developed a neuromorphic platform with memory and computation on the same chip, allowing components to interact collectively like neurons in the brain. It’s made of neodymium nickelate, a quantum material with unusual electronic properties.

In two studies, researchers from Stanford developed new approaches to LEDs and sensors, emitting longer wavelengths (4,000 to 5,000nm) that are good for sensing gas in the air and for medical applications.

imec detailed Si MOS quantum dot spin qubits, a multilinear quantum dot array enabled by EUV lithography for scaling up.

New papers:

• Researchers develop rapid PFAS detector (Sandia)
• Large area MoS₂ reduces energy loss in magnetic memory films (UoM)
• AI+HW 2035: Shaping the Next Decade (UIUC, UCLA, Stanford et al.)
• NW Design for Wafer-Scale Systems with WoW Hybrid Bonding (ETH Zurich)
• 2D crystalline hard masks for high-aspect-ratio nanofabrication (Penn State)
• Dynamic control of intrinsic optical chirality via MEMS-integrated photonic crystals (Harvard)
• New material for next-gen memory — with the surprising property of shrinking when heated (Science Tokyo)

Silvaco released the Mixel MIPI PHY IP portfolio and multi-standard SerDes IP, including MIPI C-PHY/D-PHY combo IP and LVDS/D-PHY combo.

OCP’s Ethernet for Scale-Up Networking (ESUN) initiative launched its first major specification for AI infrastructure, enabling highly reliable and lossless Ethernet and efficient multi-hop scale-up topologies.

Movellus’ clocking technology was included in Synopsys’ SLM and advanced clock generator IP, enabling power architects to dynamically adapt SoC profiles to environmental and workload changes, optimizing performance and power. The clocking technology will also be used in Quicklogic’s rad-hard FPGA program.

Keysight released a 220 GHz lightwave component analyzer; a scalable 1.6T Ethernet AI workload emulation platform to validate AI fabrics operating over 224G SerDes; and functional interconnect test solutions.

IBM released a reference architecture for quantum-centric supercomputing that lays out how quantum processors can be integrated with CPUs, GPUs, networking, and shared storage across on-premises systems and the cloud.

Memory

• Everspin launched a unified MRAM memory family.
• SK hynix successfully validated LPDDR6 based on its latest 1c DRAM process, achieving 33% faster speed and 20% improved power efficiency versus LPDDR5X, ideal for on-device AI.

Optical

• Marvell expanded its optical DSP platform and collaborated with Mojo Vision to develop high-density micro-LED connectivity.
• Kyocera developed a pluggable optoelectronic module to support PCIe 6.0, and announced mass production of its differential clock crystal oscillators.
• Lightmatter sampled its Passage CPO chiplet, achieving 6 Tbps throughput per fiber; expanded its photonic interconnect roadmap for near-package optics and on-board optics; and announced a detachable fiber array unit for CPO advanced packaging.
• Scintil Photonics launched an evaluation kit for its LEAF Light DWDM laser source, with broader availability planned for the second quarter of 2026. The release reflects growing interest in lower-power, higher-bandwidth optical interconnects as copper links become a bottleneck in large GPU systems.

• Infineon and Subaru are partnering on ADAS safety, with faster, more reliable processing of vehicle and sensor information.
• ST introduced an ultra-wideband solution for localizing and tracking devices, such as vehicle key fobs.
• GlobalFoundries‘ Auto Grade 1-ready eMRAM is now available on its FDX platform.
• MIPS and Green Hills will collaborate on a safety SW development kit, based on MIPS’ RISC-V MCU.
• BANF and Silicon Labs jointly developed intelligent tire monitoring systems.
• Qualcomm and Wayve will team up on an advanced ADAS/AD system.

Government actions

• DARPA announced a new X-76 plane with  “runway-independent, high-speed flight.”
• Joby will begin operating its air taxis in 10 states in 2026, as one of the partners under the federal eVTOL program.
• NHTSA announced a recall on certain batteries made by Webasto Thermo & Comfort due to the battery potentially failing and catching fire due to high voltage.

Vehicle technical papers

• Evaluation for Automotive Time-Series Anomaly Detection (Mercedes et al.)
• Fault detection and diagnosis approach for automotive SW validation (TU Clausthal)
• Rethinking the Foundations of Frontier AI Safety Cases
• High-Order Finite Element Simulations at Extreme Scale (Nvidia et al.)
• Graph-Based Semantic Encoder Decoder Framework for Task-Oriented Communications in Connected Autonomous Vehicles (INSA)

CSIS rings the alarm bell that weak or no encryption on commercial satellites puts citizens’ communications at risk. The think tank also analyzed the new US National Cyber Strategy, emphasizing that while the strategy does have intelligent declarations, the execution of those declarations will be difficult.

Interface takes a look at how the United Nations is tackling cybersecurity and how the UN’s first permanent Global Mechanism will shape international cybersecurity.

New security offerings:

• IonQ and ARLIS partnered on a zero trust security framework for mission-critical quantum architectures.
• Microchip extends its Trust Platform to comply with CRA and other cybersecurity standards.
• Fortanix announces new multi-sourced quantum entropy capability in its Data Security Manager to strengthen encryption keys against AI.
• PQShield released new major upgrades to its UltraPQ Suite in order to add new protections for devices against physical attacks.

CISA announced new additions to its Known Exploited Vulnerability catalog, including some from GitHub, SolarWinds, and Ivanti.

Recent security research:

• Targeted Bit-flip Attacks on LLM-based Agents (NUS, Tsinghua)
• Qubit Control in QC via HW Trojans in Multitone Generators (Rochester)
• RF Side-Channel Analysis of a Trapped-Ion QC (TU Wien)
• Cross-Privilege Branch Target Buffer Side-Channel Attacks at Instruction Granularity (Tsinghua)