Chip Industry Week in Review

Advanced nodes and capacity

• The US Commerce Dept. told IC equipment makers to stop shipments to Hua Hong Group, China’s No. 2 chipmaker, in order to protect America’s lead, according to Reuters.
• Global AI competition is causing wafer and packaging shortages, but capacity increases are expected to come online later this year and in 2027 to ease the crunch, according to TrendForce. Leading-edge foundry access is becoming a gatekeeper for chip competition, pushing smaller companies toward chiplets, mature nodes, and advanced packaging to stay competitive.
• US chip strategy has strengthened domestic fab capacity, but the Harvard Business Review finds it still falls short due to underinvesting in back-end processes such as advanced packaging, assembly, and testing, which are mostly in Asia. “Chip buyers tell their suppliers they want sourcing plans that are ‘NCNT,’ which stands for “No China, No Taiwan.” Also, a talent shortage was cited as a bottleneck for every company interviewed.
• Meanwhile, TSMC forecasts its 2nm chip capacity will grow at a 70% annual growth from 2026 to 2028, reports Taipei Times.

M&A and funds

• Denso abandoned the potential purchase of semiconductor Japan chipmaker Rohm, but will continue to partner together.
• Liquid Instruments raised $50M, co-led by Keysight, for its SW-defined test and measurement.
• OpenLight raised $50M for its custom photonic ASICs and PDK built on a III-V heterogeneous integration platform.
• Altair completed its spinoff from Sony and secured $50M in funding.

Asia challenges

• An ex-employee of Tokyo Electron was sentenced to 10 years in prison over TSMC trade secret violations.
• Threats of a looming 18-day general labor strike later this month are not cooling down at Samsung, with the union demanding  7% hike on base salaries and a higher bonus structure, closer to what SK hynix offers its workforce.

Memory

• Samsung says the supply-demand gap for memory will only “widen further in 2027.” Also, the company’s first HBM4E samples will ship this quarter.
• JEDEC published a new DDR5MDB02 multiplexed rank data buffer standard for higher bandwidth scaling, and it issued progress reports on other pending memory standards.

Reports

• SEMI reported global Q126 wafer shipments were 13% higher vs. Q125.
• Financials: Advantest, Amkor, ASE, Cadence, Cohu, JCET, Rambus, NXP, Qualcomm, Samsung, Teradyne, UMC.
• Also revealed in recent earnings releases: Amazon’s custom silicon now exceeds $20B (annual revenue run rate), and Google will now directly sell its TPUs to select customers’ own data centers, outside of Google Cloud.

People

• Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan joined PsiQuantum’s board.
• The ESD Alliance appointed Julie Rogers as executive director.

Quick links to more news:

Global
In-Depth
Reports and Deals
New Technologies
Security
Vehicles, Batteries
Workforce, Education
Research
Events and Webinars

Global

Americas

• IBM and MIT launched a new research lab for AI, algorithms, and quantum computing.
• 26 Microelectronics Commons projects will be awarded a combined $200M by the US.
• Applied Optoelectronics will receive a $20.9M Texas grant to expand its manufacturing facility.
• OECD dives into the semiconductor ecosystem of Costa Rica.

 Europe

• SEMI Europe’s position paper on Europe’s Chips Act 2.0 calls on policymakers to address “structural challenges” and emphasizes that success “will depend on its capacity to strengthen capabilities across the entire semiconductor value chain—from design and materials to equipment, as well as front-end and back-end manufacturing.”
• The UK’s technology secretary argued for a “decisive move” towards developing an AI HW plan.
• The Netherlands is investing in neuromorphic technologies, led by the Univ. of Groningen.

Asia

• India introduced indigenous silicon photonics tools from IIT Madras.
• Air Products will open new S. Korean facilities to supply IC industrial gases to Samsung.

Reports and Deals

More deals, launches

• Atomera and Synopsys extended their collaboration on GaN device modeling for RF and power semiconductor applications.
• Kopin and Fabric.AI are teaming up to develop a microLED-based optical interconnect for GPUs.
• Swinburne University and Siemens are jointly researching how quantum-enhanced timing can help increase energy grid stability.
• The Open Compute Project announced a number of projects focused on open data center infrastructure.
• Park Systems acquired Rocky Mountain Nano, maker of AFM probes.

Fundings

• Wiliot raised $75M for its battery-free Bluetooth sensors that harvest energy from ambient radio signals.
• Optical computing company Lightelligence went public on the HK Stock Exchange.
• Quantum Art added $40M for its 1,000-qubit multi-core trapped-ion quantum system.
• Point2 Technology added $31M to deploy its RF-based interconnect solutions.
• Cnuic raised $3M for a photolithography device that uses the wave properties of light to enable rapid, reconfigurable production of photonic chips.

Reports/Opinions

• Are CCD Memories Coming Back? (J. Handy)
• Rare Earth Export Restrictions 1 Year Later (CSIS)
• Semiconductors in EU–Taiwan Relations (Institut Montaigne)
• AI export controls are not the best bargaining chip (Chatham House)
• Quantum Tech Monitor: A commercial tipping point (McKinsey)
• Hormuz Hit to Helium: critical input for chipmaking/AI (FP)
• AI is confronting a supply-chain crunch: HW-makers are failing to invest enough (Economist)

New Technologies

Arm released a free performance analysis toolkit for agentic development workflows to optimize applications running on Arm-based cloud platforms.

Fig.1: Arm’s Performix, a performance analysis toolkit for agentic development workflows

Toilet maker Toto‘s sales of ceramic components for semiconductor manufacturing equipment are booming, including electrostatic chucks and aerosol deposition films, driving a larger share of the company’s profit.

Murata introduced the Bulk Case, a new type of packaging for multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs).

Kyocera now offers a multilayer ceramic core substrate for advanced semiconductor packages, designed for high-density wiring with less warpage.

Fujifilm developed a fluorine-free negative ArF immersion photoresist for advanced nodes.

MIPI Alliance announced the formation of the Physical AI Birds of a Feather group to examine how MIPI specifications can support the humanoid robot space.

Lumai unveiled an optical computing server capable of running billion-parameter LLM inference.

Cisco designed a prototype switch to connect quantum systems from different vendors and in all major encoding modalities at room temperature over standard telecom fiber.

Workforce, Education

Intel made a multimillion-dollar donation of AI accelerator chips to Arizona State University, and is also supporting a new research and cleanroom training program at New Mexico State University.

Micron is promoting registered semiconductor apprenticeships as a “fundamentally different on-ramp” to solving workforce shortages, saying four-year degrees are not sufficient.

ETH Zurich professor Onur Mutlu posted his full set of 2025 digital design and computer architecture lectures.

Research

KAIST researchers discovered an energy-efficient liquid cooling method for advanced semiconductor packaging with a coefficient of performance over 100,000.

A Harvard-led team showed off a “micron-scale photonic device that generates two orders of magnitude more UV light on a chip than previous comparable approaches,” using sidewall poled lithium niobate.

MIT and IBM researchers developed a fast tool for estimating power consumption for AI workloads or an AI accelerator chip.

BASF created a non-toxic stripping agent for eliminating photoresists from wafers in about 90 minutes.

DARPA is asking researchers for help with a new class of robotics materials that are capable of intermixed sensing, adapting, and acting in real time without relying on continuous external computation or communications links.

Find more chip industry research news in SE’s technical paper library.

Security

Dresden’s Barkhausen Institut introduced Masur25, a research chip for universities and partners to test hardware modules for security, with a successor chip coming soon.

CISA and other federal agencies published a joint guide for applying Zero Trust principles to operational technology systems.

Citing Anthropic Mythos as an example, IAPS argues that frontier AI developers should formally document and mitigate risks before deploying advanced models internally and provides a guide suitable for regulatory frameworks.

Microchip introduced a PQC-ready root of trust controller and secure boot controller.

Vulnerabilities and attacks

• University of  Michigan and Lafayette College researchers provide a workload characterization of software-based Oblivious RAM (ORAM) — a “class of algorithms that mitigate memory side channels by obfuscating a program’s memory access patterns, in the context of secure enclave environments,” reports U-M’s Todd Austin.
• An SMS blaster device caused thousands of mobile phones in Toronto to connect to it instead of a real network, sending fraudulent texts impersonating banks and other trusted organizations.
• Nvidia issued a critical security bulletin for its NVFlare Dashboard.
• A joint advisory was issued to defend against China-nexus covert networks of compromised devices.
• CISA added new vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog.

Security deals and funding

• ASE inked a deal with Taiwan’s National Institute for Cybersecurity to share resources and intelligence to strengthen cybersecurity defenses for the chip industry.
• Cybord AI raised an additional $7M for its visual AI platform for electronic component hardware security.

HW security research

• RowHammer Mitigation Architecture Exploiting Per-victim-row Counting
• Thermally Assisted RowPress-RowHammer Synergy for Cross-Row Bit Flips
• Optically reconfigurable PUF based on 2D MoS₂ ring-oscillator arrays for attack-resistant HW authentication

Vehicles, Batteries

Infineon is teaming up with Valeo on a short-distance ground projection module that integrates laser beam scanning. This collaboration incorporates Infineon’s 2D MEMS mirror into Valeo’s high-definition ground projection module for improved contrast, brightness, and resolution.

Fig. 2: Infineon’s 2D MEMS mirror and its controller enable Valeo’s high-definition ground projection module

IBM and Dallara are collaborating on the use of physics-based AI models and quantum computing in the design workflow for high-performance vehicles.

As the “AI everywhere” mantra extends to vehicles, there is increasing pressure on in-vehicle networks to move more data, and to do it faster. This is especially true with SDVs, which demand more bandwidth, increased determinism, and better security than legacy protocols were designed to deliver. Automotive Ethernet is emerging as the clear successor, but deeply embedded, low‑cost standards like CAN and LIN are not going away anytime soon.

Autonomous

• Bosch introduced ultrasonic chipsets for close-range perception in vehicles.
• POLYN taped out its new analog neuromorphic automotive chip.
• WeRide claims that its L2++ end-to-end ADAS has achieved multi-chip compatibility across platforms.
• Waymo will soon expand its robotaxi service to Portland, Oregon.
• Meanwhile, China suspended new licenses for Baidu AVs after its robotaxis disrupted traffic last month.
• Worldwide sales of robotaxi vehicles are forecasted to hit $54B by 2035, says Counterpoint.
• GM shared the most recent data from its semi-autonomous driving technology, stating that customers have driven 1 billion hands-free miles with the Super Cruise system.

EVs and batteries

• The average EV keeps 97% of its range after 3 years and 95% after 5 years, said Recurrent in its latest EV market report.
• The onsemi–NIO partnership now includes the carmaker’s transition to next-gen 900V EV platforms.
• VW introduced an all-electric Polo with a price tag of ~€25,000, with a 454 km range and DC quick charging.
• Joby Aviation‘s air taxis started demo flights, shuttling passengers from JFK airport to Manhattan in less than 10 minutes.
• UL Solutions‘ new test technique analyzes how battery energy storage system (BESS) fires can spread.

Vehicle research

• Real-Time, Pedestrian and AV Interaction Using Shared VR (Ohio St.)
• Security Verification of Automotive NW Architectures (Leipzig, M.Benz)
• 6th Error Type for Cyberattack Detection & Defense in CAN Protocol (Dankook U.)
• Zero-Trust SDVs: a Security Paradigm for the Automotive Cloud-Edge Continuum (Messina, CINI)

Trending Video

• Why Proof Convergence Matters: Leveraging patterns in formal verification to reach sign-off faster.

Events and Webinars

Upcoming webinars are here, including:

• Unique Detector Technology is Driving Modern Crystallography, May 6
• RedHawk-SC: From EMIR Signoff to IR-Aware Design Closure, May 6
• Accelerating Custom IC Development with SOS, May 7

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

• EVENTS	Date	Location
  Display Week	May 3 – 8	Los Angeles
  IEEE International Symposium on Hardware Oriented Security and Trust (HOST)	May 4 – 7	Washington D.C.
  SEMICON Southeast Asia 2026	May 5 – 7	Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  CadenceCONNECT: Tech Days Europe 2026	May 6	Munich
  IEEE International Memory Workshop	May 10 – 13	Leuven, Belgium
  ASMC: Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Conference	May 11 – 14	Albany, New York
  Embedded Vision Summit	May 11 – 13	Santa Clara, CA
  Siemens User2User Europe	May 12	Munich, Germany
  CadenceCONNECT: Tech Days Europe 2026	May 12	Edinburgh
  VOICE 2026 Developer Conference	May 18 -20	Scottsdale, Arizona
  Surface Preparation and Cleaning Conference (SPCC)	May 18 – 20	Chandler, AZ
  Electronic Components and Technology Conference (ECTC)	May 26 – 29	Orlando, Florida
  Hardwear.io Security Trainings and Conference USA 2026	May 26 – 30	Santa Clara, CA
  Find all events here.