Chip Industry Week In Review

Semiconductor industry energy consumption grew 125% between 2015 and 2023, while direct greenhouse gas emissions rose 23% in the same period, according to the Europe think tank Interface, which analyzed corporate social responsibility reports from 28 global chip manufacturers.

CSIS‘ new report “Understanding U.S. Allies’ Current Legal Authority to Implement AI and Semiconductor Export Controls” offers recommendations to U.S. and allied policymakers for more effective semiconductor export controls. The U.S. think tank also published a podcast “Securing Full Stack U.S. Leadership in AI.”

SoftBank Group will acquire Ampere Computing, a designer of high-performance Arm-based processors for cloud native and AI workloads in environments ranging from edge deployments to hyperscale data centers. The $6.5 billion cash deal is expected to close in the second half of 2025.

At the Synopsys User Group (SNUG) meeting this week, CEO Sassine Ghazi highlighted AI’s future role in chip design, including agentic AI to augment engineering teams and accelerate innovation.

Fig. 1: Synopsys’ Ghazi shows a roadmap for process scaling at SNUG, including the timeframe for CFETs and 2D materials. So what comes after 2 angstroms? PicoFETs. Source: Semiconductor Engineering/imec data.

SEMI and the European Semiconductor Industry Association urged the European Commission to create a new semiconductor strategy and called for a follow-up to the 2023 European Chips Act that adds additional funding for semiconductor design and manufacturing, R&D, materials, and equipment capabilities.

NVIDIA’s GTC Conference was held this week, with the company announcing co-packaged optics networking switches to scale AI factories to millions of GPUs, developed with TSMC and others for an integrated silicon, optics process and supply chain. Numerous other NVIDIA announcements are here.

Other partner announcements at GTC 2025 include:

• Teradyne Robotics company Universal Robots debuted AI-Driven collaborative robotics, developed with NVIDIA AI acceleration.
• EDA companies, including Ansys, Cadence, Siemens, and Synopsys, are accelerating their simulation tools by up to 50x with the NVIDIA Blackwell platform.
• Cadence said computational fluid dynamics simulation time is reduced by up to 80X, helping simulate a complete aircraft during takeoff and landing.
• Synopsys said its Proteus tool is expected to accelerate computational lithography simulations by up to 20x.
• Ansys and NVIDIA demonstrated new in-silico cardio research.

Fig. 2: AI-enabled collaborative robotics. Source: Teradyne Robotics

Special Reports:

• The shift from planar SoCs to 3D-ICs and advanced packages requires much thinner wafers in order to improve performance and reduce power, reducing the distance that signals need to travel and the amount of energy needed to drive them.
• Also, two new protocols — UALink and Ultra Ethernet — aim to address deficits in current scale-up and scale-out communications.

Quick links to more news:

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

Markets and Money

Global foundry industry revenue increased 26% YoY and 9% QoQ in Q4 2024, driven by AI and flagship smartphone demand and continued recovery in China, according to Counterpoint Research. It also reported on global foundry market share.

The combined revenue of the global top 10 IC design houses reached about $249.8 billion in 2024 for a 49% YoY increase, reports TrendForce.

Arm and Silicon Catalyst opened this year’s Arm Silicon Startups Contest, which is open to early-stage startups SoC utilizing Arm processor technologies. 

Micron released its second quarter financials.

Google will acquire cloud security platform Wiz for $32 billion, following a stalled attempt last year.

Zero Point Motion emerged from stealth with £4 million (~$5.2M) in pre-Series A funding for its positioning and navigation inertial sensors, which combine silicon photonics with MEMS.

In-Depth

Semiconductor Engineering published its Manufacturing, Packaging & Materials newsletter this week, featuring these top stories:

• What Exactly Are Chiplets And Heterogeneous Integration?
• Many Options For EUV Photoresists, No Clear Winner
• Rise Of Thin Wafer Processing

More reporting this week:

• New Data Center Protocols Tackle AI
• Chip Failures: Prevention And Responses Over Time
• Tech Talk: Optimizing Data Movement In SoCs And Advanced Packages
• Tech Talk: Changes In Motor Control

Global

Europe:

• The National Manufacturing Institute Scotland will host an advanced packaging scale-up line for power semiconductors, backed by £9 million from Innovate UK.
• The FAMES Pilot Line issued an open-access call for companies and researchers interested in accessing its technologies, including pathfinding PDKs for FD-SOI advanced-node performance evaluation of devices, such as MCUs, MPUs, smart data-fusion processors, and RF.
• The European Commission formed the CHIPDIPLO consortium to support international diplomacy related to the semiconductor industry and enhance risk evaluation and information sharing among EU semiconductor stakeholders.
• The EU’s JUPITER AI Factory is being established at Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany, providing access to exascale supercomputer in Europe. Another AI Factory already has been established in Stuttgart, reports Silicon Saxony.

Asia:

• The South Korean government plans to create a cloud data center that uses domestic AI chips and establish a national AI computing center, reported the Korea Herald.
• Qatar Airways Cargo launched TechLift, a solution for specialized handling of all semiconductor and other tech shipments.

Security

Recent security research:

• Photonic Side-Channel Analyzer: Enabling Security-Aware Physical Design Methodology (UT Austin, et al.)
• SCAPEgoat: Side-channel Analysis Library (Worcester Polytechnic Institute)
• Quantum Computing and Cybersecurity Education: A Novel Curriculum for Enhancing Graduate STEM Learning (Penn State)
• Low-Cost Full Correlated-Power-Noise Generator to Counteract Side-Channel Attacks (U. de Sevilla, et al.)

Keysight expanded its Vision Network Packet Brokers with AI Insight Brokers to improve performance of AI-driven cybersecurity

TXOne Networks announced version 3.2 of its Stellar solution for endpoint protection, detection, and response in OT environments.

TUD Dresden and partners launched a joint project, AI.Auto-Immune, which was funded by the German government to defend against AI-based attacks on the internet.

DARPA’s Microsystems Technology invited engineers to participate in the MTO Spark Tank, July 24-25, 2025, in Aurora, Colorado. Focus areas include photonic, quantum, and organic circuits; differentiated microsystem manufacturing tools; dual-use design technologies that can strengthen national security and scale commercially.

DARPA also launched a new program, Securing Artificial Intelligence for Battlefield Effective Robustness (SABER), to help understand operational systems enabled by AI.

CISA warned of a supply chain compromise in a third-party GitHub action, tj-actions/changed-files. It also issued a number of alerts/advisories.

Product News

Accellera announced the IEEE 1801-2024 Unified Power Format 4.0 Standard, which specifies and verifies low-power intent, is available as part of the IEEE GET Program.

Advantest is partnering with Emerson on an AI-driven test ecosystem that combines Emerson’s semiconductor product analytics, algorithm development, and data management solutions with Advantest’s real-time data infrastructure.

Keysight launched Photonic Designer, featuring a holistic photonic IC design automation tool, advanced physics-based simulation, PDK customization, and real-world data integration.  The company also enabled dynamic test on a wide-bandgap power semiconductor bare chip, without soldering or probe needles, featuring parasitic power-loop inductance of less than 10nH for clean dynamic test waveforms.

Cadence launched the Conformal AI Studio, improving SoC designer productivity by 10X, and joined the Intel Foundry Accelerator Design Services Alliance.

Infineon:

• With RT-Labs, integrated six fieldbus and Ethernet-based protocols in the firmware of Infineon’s XMC7000 industrial MCU.
• Released E-version XDP hybrid flyback controller ICs for ultra-high power density designs, leveraging advanced asymmetrical half-bridge topology, aimed at AC/DC applications such as chargers, adapters, and power tools.
• Partnered with Enphase to boost energy efficiency and reduce MOSFET-related costs for solar inverter systems with 600 V CoolMOS 8.

Memory:

• Micron is shipping HBM3E 12H and LPDDR5X-based SOCAMM (small outline compression attached memory module) for AI servers in data centers, developed with NVIDIA.
• SK Hynix started shipping samples of its 12-layer HBM4, and displayed 12-high HBM3E and SOCAMM2 at GTC.
• Samsung released its 9100 PRO Series SSDs with PCIe 5.0

Research

UCSB‘s recent study demonstrated that the enhanced electrostatics of 3D GAA structured transistors, in conjunction with 2D semiconductors, could result in “ultimately scaled, few-nanometer channel length transistors with significantly boosted performance and energy efficiency,” according to the university’s news release.

EPFL and IBM Research co-developed a compact optical amplifier based on a photonic chip, claiming better efficiency and bandwidth than traditional optical amplifiers.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Pennsylvania State University created bacterial proteins that can separate rare earth minerals.

Researchers led by the University of Cambridge and the Eindhoven University of Technology created an organic semiconductor that forces electrons to move in a spiral pattern, which could improve the efficiency of OLED displays.

Automotive

BYD unveiled a super-fast charging system, Super E-Platform, which it said can add 250-mile range with a five-minute charge, reports CNN.

Nextchip licensed Arteris’ FlexNoC 5 interconnect IP with functional safety for its EFREET1 project for automotive vision.

GTC 2025 auto announcements: 

• NVIDIA released Halos, a safety system for autonomous vehicles, along with an open-source physical AI dataset for robotics and autonomous vehicle development.
• Ansys is integrating NVIDIA Omniverse for high-fidelity CFD and autonomous vehicle solutions, and used Blackwell GPUs to accelerate CFD simulations by 2.5x for a Volvo EV.
• General Motors will collaborate with NVIDIA on AI for next-gen vehicle experience and manufacturing; other companies also integrated NVIDIA tech.

Fig. 3: Volvo Cars using Ansys software and NVIDIA GPUs to boost CFD simulations. Source: Ansys

Quantum

Yole Group anticipates that the total quantum market will grow from US$954 million in 2024 to US$17.4 billion in 2035.

NVIDIA announced a new accelerated Quantum Research Center based in Boston.

Ansys and IonQ used quantum computing to simulate fluid interactions within medical devices as part of a hybrid workflow to optimize the design of blood pumps.

Singapore launched a hybrid quantum classical computing initiative backed by $24.5 million to support research in hybrid computing middleware, algorithms, and software tools.

Xanadu demonstrated how photonic qubits can be used to enact any quantum error correction code and could potentially reduce the number of qubits required to suppress errors.

Welinq introduced quantum memory that can link processors in quantum data centers and communication networks.

Q-CTRL, Oxford Quantum Circuits, and NVIDIA used GPU acceleration to cut the classical compute cost of quantum circuit layout ranking, a process involved in mapping a quantum algorithm onto real hardware.

Delft Circuits uncorked a High-Density Input/Output (HD I/O) system to connect control electronics to quantum processing units.

Events and Further Reading

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

Upcoming webinars are here.

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