Chip Industry Week In Review

The chip industry is well on its way to hit $1 trillion in revenue by the end of its decade. Several analyst firms released 2024 annual results and 2025 predictions:

• Worldwide semiconductor revenue reached $626 billion in 2024, an 18% increase versus 2023, according to preliminary Gartner report. Memory revenue grew about 70%  2024 versus 2023. The firm forecasts that HBM will make up 19% of DRAM revenue in 2025.
• Deloitte, meanwhile, predicts semiconductor industry sales of $697 billion in 2025, with the market for generative AI chips alone reaching $150 billion.
• Counterpoint forecasts that the foundry industry will achieve around 20% revenue growth in 2025, with a high utilization rate for leading-edge nodes. 2024 saw 22% growth year-over-year. The firm also reported on Intel’s competitive challenges.

CSIS reported on the dual disruption of Trump 2.0 and DeepSeek; Cisco published a blog about DeepSeek’s security risks; and several countries banned it for government and/or general use, including South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, and Italy.

Goldman Sachs estimates data center power demands could increase by as much as 165% globally by 2030. That estimate comes despite the recent shockwaves sent off by DeepSeek, with the investment bank saying too many questions remain about the model’s training and infrastructure.

The Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) emphasized the need for EU-U.S. collaboration to fight the chip war against China and offered ideas for a joint strategy.

Accelera’s board approved the Universal Verification Methodology for Mixed-Signal 1.0 standard for immediate fee-free release. UVM-MS 1.0 allows for enhanced verification of mixed-signal circuits and systems, and includes the MS Bridge SystemVerilog module.

Teradyne will acquire part of Infineon’s automated test equipment team as part of a strategic partnership to advance power semiconductor test.

Earnings reports this week: Arm, AMD Alpha Omega Semi, FormFactor, Kulicke & Soffa,  Infineon Technologies, Nordic Semi,  NXP, Onto Innovation Qualcomm, Rambus, Renesas, Siltronic, Soitec, Synaptics and Tokyo Electron.

Quick links to more news:

Global
In-Depth
Markets and Money
People
Security
Product News
Automotive
Research
Events, Jobs and Further Reading

In-Depth

Semiconductor Engineering published its Auto, Security & Pervasive Computing newsletter this week, featuring these top stories:

• Automotive Outlook 2025: Ecosystem Pivots Around SDV
• Med Tech Morphs Into Consumer Wearables
• Automotive Security Shifts To The System Level

More reporting this week:

• Universities Augment Engineering Curricula To Boost Employability
• AI In Data Management Has Limits
• Using AI In Semiconductor Inspection
• PCIe Over Optics

Global

APAC:

• The South Korea government announced plans for a National AI Computing Center.
• In South Korea, SurplusGLOBAL launched “SemiMarket,” an AI-powered global platform aimed at connecting buyers and sellers in the legacy semiconductor
• Japan’s Tokyo Electron is building a new production building at its Miyagi plant to meet rising demand.

Europe:

• Fujifilm will invest 4 billon yen ($US 26 million) in new facilities in Belgium for CMP slurries and photolithography materials.
• The European Semiconductor Industry Association commented on the EU Commission’s Competitiveness Compass.
• In Germany, the state of Saxony is helping fund Fraunhofer’s microelectronics and chiplets research with €38 million as part of the EU Chips Act.

Mexico launched the “Kutsari” project, establishing a National Semiconductor Design Center and other hubs in Puebla, Jalisco, and Sonora that will collaborate with academic institutions.

Markets and Money

Acquisitions:

• Nova completed its $60 million acquisition of Sentronics Metrology, a provider of backend wafer metrology tools for a variety of critical dimension applications.
• Accuron Technologies, a precision engineering and technology group, acquired a majority stake in Trymax Semiconductor Equipment, a specialist in plasma-based and UV-based process equipment and solutions for semiconductor manufacturers.
• Teledyne completed its $710 million acquisition of select aerospace and defense electronics businesses from Excelitas Technologies.

3M joined the US-JOINT Consortium, a strategic partnership of 12 leading semiconductor suppliers, with a Silicon Valley R&D facility to be unveiled later this year.

Yole Group anticipates the high-end performance packaging market will reach $28 billion by 2029, a 37% CAGR.

TrendForce reports that DeepSeek’s low-cost AI model will create demand for optical communication; optical transceiver shipments are expected to grow by 56.5% in 2025.

People

GlobalFoundries appointed COO Tim Breen as its next CEO, succeeding Thomas Caulfield, who will become executive chairman.

Philip Brace was appointed president and CEO of analog mixed signal company Skyworks Solutions.

Synaptics announced that President and CEO Michael Hurlston stepped down to become CEO of Lumentum, a photonics company. Ken Rizvi, CFO and senior vice president, was appointed Synaptics interim CEO.

Security

Vulnerability alerts:

• The Google Security team identified a security vulnerability related to improper signature verification in some AMD Zen-based CPUs, and AMD provided a fix.
• Taiwanese router maker Zyxel Networks issued a no-patch advisory on these older routers, recommending the devices are replaced with newer-gen models due to a post-authentication command injection vulnerability (see CVE-2024-40891).

Recent security research:

• When Everyday Devices Become Weapons: A Closer Look at the Pager and Walkie-talkie Attacks ( U. of Florida)
• A Highly Reliable Dual-Mode RRAM PUF With Key Concealment Scheme (Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Queen’s University Belfast, et al.)
• The Impact of Logic Locking on Confidentiality: An Automated Evaluation (RWTH Aachen University, et al.)
• The Nonlinear Filter Model of Stream Cipher Redivivus (University of Paris, et al.)
• Gotta Hash ‘Em All! Speeding Up Hash Functions for Zero-Knowledge Proof Applications (UC San Diego, ASU)
• REDACTOR: eFPGA Redaction for DNN Accelerator Security (Cal State Long Beach)
• Automating Asset Identification in SystemVerilog Hardware Designs ( Univ. Of Calgary thesis)

Congresswoman Nancy Mace (R-SC) reintroduced the Federal Contractor Cybersecurity Vulnerability Reduction Act of 2025, aimed at closing a loophole in federal cybersecurity standards.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a number of alerts/advisories.

Product News

Bruker launched a new high-end Fourier-Transform Infrared (FTIR) instrument with broad spectral range detection and vacuum ATR measurements for academic and industrial semiconductor research, catalytic investigations, and battery material development.

Axiomise launched footprint, its new tool for optimizing PPA. The solution, powered by the company’s Axiomiser platform, enables users to find redundant gates and registers in complex SoCs.

Ansys unveiled the 2025 version of its R1 tool, which is equipped with advanced physics solvers. Those includes a comprehensive structural analysis suite, the ability to produce high-fidelity models, and ability to solve 1,000 variations in 10 minutes.

Keysight teamed up with Alea to validate a 3GPP Evolved Univesal Terrestrial Radio Access test case. The validation used Keysight’s S8704A Protocol Conformance Toolset, which supports MCX protocol conformance test requirements.

Rambus released a product brief describing its TRNG-IP-77 FIPS-certified true random generators. The generators are meant to integrate easily with ASICs and SoCs, and the brief lays out all the features and configurations available for designers.

Framework officially released its RISC-V Mainboard for laptops for sale. In a blog post, the company acknowledged the RISC-V board isn’t yet competitive with its Intel and AMD-powered products, but hailed the product as a great tool for developers and hobbyists.

Automotive

Infineon expanded its OPTIREG PMIC family with an integrated multi-rail power supply solution for automotive functional safety applications, including the chassis, powertrain, domain control, and transmission.

Honda is investing more than $1 billion in its Ohio plant to build ICE, hybrid, and EV models on the same production line.

Toyota formed a strategic partnership with the Shanghai government focused on carbon neutrality and established a China-based company to develop and produce BEVs and batteries.

Researchers from Delft University of Technology, Audi, Porsche Digital, and Freie Universität Berlin published a Quantum Internet Use Case Analysis for the Automotive Industry.

Battery research:

• Why your headphone battery doesn’t last (Brookhaven National Lab.)
• Material properties for more efficient solid-state batteries (Lawrence Livermore National Lab.)
• Recycling lithium-ion batteries delivers significant environmental benefits (Stanford U.)

Research

SLAC researchers stabilized nickelates at room pressure by using thin-film growth techniques.

Caltech researchers developed printable molecule-selective nanoparticles that could enable mass production of wearable biosensors.

Quantum:

• ORNL researchers developed a novel quantum gate that operates between two photonic degrees of freedom, polarization, and frequency.
• DARPA seeks to break the quantum noise limit with its Intensity-Squeezed Photonic Integration for Revolutionary Detectors (INSPIRED) program.

Events, Jobs and Further Reading

Advantest opened registration for its VOICE Developer Conference May 12-14 in Austin, Texas.

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

Upcoming webinars are here.

Looking for a job in the semiconductor industry?  Here’s a global jobs board.

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