Chip Industry Week In Review

ASML and imec signed a five-year strategic partnership to advance semiconductor innovation and sustainable technology. The collaboration will leverage ASML’s full product portfolio, including high-NA EUV, DUV immersion, and advanced metrology tools, within imec’s pilot line for sub-2nm R&D. Supported by EU and national funding, it will also drive research in silicon photonics, memory, and advanced packaging, with a new focus on environmental and societal benefits.

Intel named Lip-Bu Tan as its new CEO, effective March 18, succeeding interim co-CEOs David Zinsner and Michelle Johnston Holthaus. Meanwhile, TSMC pitched NVIDIA, AMD, Broadcom, and Qualcomm on a joint venture to operate Intel Foundry, reports Reuters. While TSMC would manage operations, it would hold no more than a 50% stake, ensuring Intel remains U.S.-controlled. Negotiations continue, but internal resistance and differences in manufacturing processes pose challenges.

Representatives from nine European nations met in Brussels and jointly established a Semicon Coalition to strengthen advanced technology development in Europe.

Teradyne will acquire Quantifi Photonics to expand its photonic IC test solutions for high-performance computing and AI-driven workloads. The deal, expected to close next quarter, will enable scalable wafer-level and co-packaged optical module testing, addressing growing demand for high-speed optical interconnects.

TSMC and MediaTek jointly demonstrated the first silicon-proven power management unit and integrated power amplifier (iPA) on TSMC’s N6RF+ process.

TrendForce said the global foundry market grew nearly 10% QoQ in Q4 2024, reaching a record $38 billion, driven by strong demand for AI chips, flagship smart phone APs, and new PC platforms. TSMC maintained its dominance with ~$27 billion in revenue (67% market share), while Samsung Foundry ranked second.

Financial releases this week: Broadcom, Magnachip and TSMC.

Quick links to more news:

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

Global

Europe:

• Gradiant will design and build an ultrapure water (UPW) facility to support a semiconductor manufacturer in Dresden, Germany.
• The European Space Agency unveiled ESA Space HPC, offering new super/high-performance computing in Italy.

U.S:

• SpaceX was awarded $17.3 million for an expansion of their semiconductor R&D and advanced packaging facility in Bastrop, Texas.
• CSIS report: Winning the 5G Race While Building the United States’ Golden Dome.

Asia:

• ASML plans to open a new Reuse & Repair Center in Beijing, China.
• Opinions in  Taiwan are divided on the $100 billion TSMC investment in the U.S, with some arguing the country could lose its “silicon shield” that helped protect Taiwan from a Chinese takeover.

In-Depth

Semiconductor Engineering published its Test, Measurement & Analytics newsletter this week, featuring these top stories:

• Automation And AI Improve Failure Analysis
• Cutting IC Manufacturing Costs By Combining Data
• Failure To Launch
• Tech Talk: What’s Changing In Outlier Detection

The Low Power-High Performance newsletter also came out this week, featuring:

• 3D-IC For The Masses
• Chiplets Add New Power Issues
• Integrating Data From Design, Manufacturing, And The Field

Markets and Money

Acquisitions:

• Qualcomm plans to acquire Edge Impulse, which offers a platform for creating, deploying, and monitoring AI models on edge devices.
• PDF Solutions completed its acquisition of secureWISE from Telit IOT Solutions.
• Silvaco acquired Cadence’s Process Proximity Compensation product line, a suite of optical proximity correction tools.
• Allegro DVT acquired Vicuesoft, a provider of video codec analysis and compliance solutions.
• Parade Technologies, a provider of mixed-signal ICs for display and high-speed interface standards, plans to acquire Spectra7 Microsystems, a maker of analog chips for advanced active cables.
• Mycronic acquired Hprobe, a Grenoble-based company specializing in high-speed magnetic testing of MRAMs and magnetic sensors.

Fundraising:

• Celestial AI raised $250 million in Series C funding to commercialize its optical interconnect technology platform for networking AI compute from within processor packages to servers across multiple racks.
• ATLANT 3D raised over $15 million in a Series A+ round for its direct atomic layer processing technology for semiconductors and other advanced manufacturing.
• QuamCore emerged from stealth with $9 million in seed funding for its superconducting quantum processor architecture that enables the integration of 1 million qubits into a single cryostat.

Cadence‘s latest data center report showed 86% of decision-makers believe that failing to innovate in their data centers would lead to serious or moderate consequences; 74% say data centers are under increased pressure from AI-driven demands; 26% say they would never use liquid cooling.

Education and Training

SEMI’s Europe Chips Diversity Alliance will host a full-day diversity event on March 27 at Dublin City University to address the talent shortage in the semiconductor industry.

CSIS is hosting an event, “Building the I-90 Semiconductor Workforce: Leveraging Existing Assets to Support Growth and Create New Opportunities,” on March 20, 10:00 am – 1:55 pm EDT at Syracuse University. Pre-register to join.

The Arizona State University-led NSF Southwest Sustainability Innovation Engine announced $1.5 million in its inaugural round of startup Innovation Grants. One winner was Crystal Sonic, whose technology harnesses acoustic energy to separate devices from substrates, allowing the material to be reused for additional device manufacturing.

Convexity Electronics won Georgia Tech’s 2025 InVenture Prize for an electronics 3D printer for manufacturing 3D-printed PCBs at scale.

The University of South Florida announced a $40 million gift to establish the Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Computing.

Vanderbilt University received a $25 million gift to its College of Connected Computing.

Quacquarelli Symonds published its World University Rankings.  The top 5 engineering and technology schools were: MIT, University of Oxford, Stanford, University of Cambridge, and ETH Zurich.

Security

Rambus introduced its next-gen CryptoManager security IP solutions, including Root of Trust, Hub, and Core families, delivering higher levels of functional integration and security.

ST announced new post-quantum cryptographic algorithms for embedded systems, including general-purpose, secure, and automotive MCUs.

NIST chose a new algorithm for post-quantum encryption called HQC that is based on different math than ML-KEM. It will serve as a backup in case a weakness is discovered in ML-KEM.

Recent security research:

• Garblet: Multi-party Computation for Protecting Chiplet-based Systems (Worcester Polytechnic Institute)
• CRAFT: Characterizing and Root-Causing Fault Injection Threats at Pre-Silicon (North Carolina State U.)
• Chronus: Understanding and Securing the Cutting-Edge Industry Solutions to DRAM Read Disturbance (ETH Zurich, et al.)
• ROBoost: A Study of FPGA Logic-Based Power-Wasting Primitives (EPFL)

DARPA invited researchers and engineers from the Midwest to help pioneer new capabilities for U.S. warfighters at an event on April 23-24 in Chicago. Topics include sensing, computation and processing, and energy and access.

CISA issued a number of alerts/advisories.

Product News

Fraunhofer IIS developed a neuromorphic AI chip for processing spiking neural networks (SNNs). The edge inference accelerator consists of 1,024 artificial neurons on a chip area of less than 11 mm² and a response time down to 20 nanoseconds.

Fig. 1: SENNA, a neuromorphic SNN chip for ultra-fast and energy-efficient processing of low-dimensional time series data. Source: Fraunhofer IIS

Ainos partnered with ASE to deploy its AI Nose technology for real-time airborne chemical monitoring in ASE’s semiconductor manufacturing facilities. Originally developed for medical diagnostics, AI Nose can detect VOCs and air composition changes to enhance process efficiency, predictive maintenance, and ESG compliance.

 Infineon announced several data center/AI developments:

• Extended XDP digital protection with new 48 V hot swap controllers optimized for AI servers.
• Next-gen high-density power modules for vertical power delivery in AI data centers.
• A roadmap for next-level battery backup unit solutions for uninterrupted operations of AI data centers.
• Support for NVIDIA TAO models on the PSOC Edge MCU family, aimed at advancing Edge AI computing.

Synaptics extended its AI-Native platform with the SR-Series high-performance adaptive MCUs for scalable context-aware Edge AI, and launched ultra-low-power Wi-Fi 2.4/5/6 GHz, Bluetooth 6.0, Bluetooth Low Energy, and IEEE 802.15.4 SoCs for embedded Edge AI IoT.

BluGlass demonstrated a record 1250 mW single-spatial mode gallium nitride (GaN) laser, surpassing its previous 750 mW benchmark by 67%.

AMD introduced the latest generation of its x86 embedded processors for compute-intensive systems.

Silicon Labs debuted a new family of wireless SoCs for Bluetooth Low Energy applications such as connected health devices.

SiMa.ai announced a system-on-module for multi-modal and generative AI use cases at the embedded edge.

The Si2 Compact Model Coalition released four new versions of their standardized device models used in SPICE circuit simulation tools.

Meta has begun testing its first custom AI training chip at TSMC, aiming to reduce reliance on NVIDIA and lower infrastructure costs, reports Reuters. The chip is part of the Meta Training and Inference Accelerator (MTIA) series and could scale up if testing succeeds.

Automotive

In a next step towards SDVs, BMW Group unveiled a digital nervous system for all drivetrain variants and vehicle segments, with four superbrains.

Cadence and Dream Chip launched an advanced Tensilica Vision 341 auto-grade single DSP for multi-modal embedded vision, radar, lidar, and AI processing.

Imagination announced its auto-grade IMG B-Series GPU is powering the next-gen Renesas R-Car Gen 5 SoC, delivering power-efficient and flexible parallel processing.

Infineon released Drive Core, a scalable software bundle portfolio for AURIX, TRAVEO, and PSOC that enables a rapid start into automotive software development.

Synopsys:

• Launched Virtualizer Native Execution on Arm-based hardware, accelerating virtual prototype execution for software-defined products in auto, HPC, and IoT.
• Teamed up with Vector Informatik to advance software-defined vehicle development by integrating electronics digital twins and automated software validation tools.

Siemens:

• Extended its PAVE360 technology for software-defined vehicle development to AMD GPUs running on Microsoft Azure cloud.
• Announced that sustainability specialist OPmobility and space infrastructure builder Axiom Space each adopted Siemens Teamcenter X cloud-enabled PLM software.

BOS Semiconductors signed a development contract with a European OEM to create an ADAS chiplet-based SoC for next-generation automotive systems.

Trendforce reported that EV solid-state battery validation sped up in the U.S. and Europe, with mass production expected to slowly begin by 2026.

Quantum

IBM and the Basque Government will deploy Europe’s first IBM Quantum System Two at the IBM-Euskadi Quantum Computational Center in San Sebastian, Spain, by late 2025. Powered by IBM’s Heron quantum processor, the system will support quantum algorithm development, workforce training, and materials research as part of the Basque Country’s IKUR 2030 initiative. The installation aims to position the region as a global quantum computing hub, fostering scientific and economic growth.

Innovate UK funded 10 projects with £12 million (~$15.5M) to drive the commercialization of quantum computing and quantum networks.

Quantum Brilliance, Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre, and NVIDIA demonstrated a hybrid workflow that combines GPU, CPU, and quantum processing capabilities using the same language.

D-Wave used its quantum annealer to perform complex magnetic materials simulation problems, claiming it outperformed classical supercomputers. Other researchers disputed that.

Alice & Bob found that compressing the quantum state of its superconducting cat qubits improves bit-flip error protection by 160 times.

Infleqtion received a $6.2 million grant from ARPA-E to develop quantum-enhanced solutions for energy grid optimization.

Penn State and Université Paris-Saclay researchers found that “nanodot” control could fine-tune light for sharper displays or quantum computing.

Research

University of Illinois alum Professor Russell Dupuis won the Japan Prize for developing metal-organic chemical vapor deposition for compound semiconductors and contributing to its large-scale commercialization.

A University of Tokyo researcher is pioneering a groundbreaking method for synthesizing nanomaterials. 

Optical developments:

• University of Twente and City University of Hong Kong researchers successfully demonstrated a programmable, multifunctional microwave photonics circuit enabling a tunable microwave photonic notch filter with up to 60 dB rejection, ultra-high dynamic range filtering, and improved RF signal clarity.
• IIT Delhi researchers developed a self-powered metal-semiconductor-insulator-metal (MSIM) photodetector that offers ultra-fast response and high sensitivity across visible to near-infrared light for next-gen optical communication.
• EPFL researchers announced an ultra-broadband photonic-chip-based parametric amplifier that achieves 35 dB gain and extends optical amplification beyond the erbium window, covering a 140nm bandwidth.
• TU/e engineer David De Vocht developed a method to guide light through an optical chip, allowing for more accurate measurements of air quality.
• TU/e engineer Antonio Barion combined mathematics with optical engineering to provide a new way to improve the performance of optical systems.

Robotics: 

• MIT and NVIDIA researchers developed a framework to correct a robot’s behavior with simple interactions.
• Princeton engineers found that simulated robots could learn to explore without feedback.

Events and Further Reading

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

Upcoming webinars are here.

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