Chip Industry Week In Review

[Podcast version is here.]

TSMC said it will produce 30% of its leading-edge chips in Arizona when all six of its fabs are operational, a total investment of $165 billion, Axios reported. In its latest SEC filing, the foundry said it continues to add capacity in Taiwan, Arizona, Japan, and Germany.

The Trump administration launched a Section 232 investigation into semiconductors and related equipment to determine if tariffs or other measures are needed to protect national security. The administration also clarified late last week that, at least for now, smartphones, computers and other devices are excluded from reciprocal tariffs.

The latest U.S. export license requirements now include Nvidia’s H20 products and AMD‘s MI308 products, leading both companies to issue SEC filings with Nvidia forecasting $5.5 billion in charges and AMD projecting up to $800 million in related costs.

CSIS weighed in on semiconductor export restrictions’ chances of success in its recent commentary, The Limits of Chip Export Controls in Meeting the China Challenge.

China’s recent export restrictions on seven rare earth elements and magnets has a significant impact to national security, according to CSIS. Those elements are used in defense technologies, radar, EVs, wireless technology, and more. China currently has an effective monopoly over the supply.

Latest financial updates:

• TSMC posted +US$25 billion in Q1 revenue, up ~35% (in USD) compared with last year. The company maintained an upbeat 2025 full-year forecast despite the trade war, and refuted rumors about a joint venture with Intel.
• ASML issued its Q1 earnings announcement this week, which was in line with guidance, but CEO Christophe Fouquet noted that “the recent tariff announcements have increased uncertainty in the macro environment and the situation will remain dynamic for a while.”
• Find the latest chip industry stock results here.

AMD taped out its Venice processor, manufactured using TSMC’s 2nm (N2) process technology.

Nvidia is designing and plans to build up to $500 billion of U.S. AI supercomputing factories over the next four years through partnerships with TSMC, Foxconn, Wistron, Amkor and SPIL.

Deals:

• Cadence will acquire Arm’s Artisan foundation IP business, consisting of standard cell libraries, memory compilers, and general-purpose I/Os optimized for advanced process nodes. The deal, which brings foundation IP into Cadence’s broader IP portfolio, is expected to close in Q3 2025.
• Intel will sell 51% of Altera to investment firm Silver Lake in a deal that values the FPGA maker at $8.75 billion. Intel will retain the remaining 49% stake. Intel acquired Altera in 2015 for $16.7 billion. Raghib Hussain, previously president of products and technologies at Marvell, will take over as Altera’s new CEO. The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2025.

JEDEC published the latest high-bandwidth memory (HBM) standard. HBM4 increases transfer speeds up to 8 Gb/s across a 2,048-bit interface, boosting total bandwidth up to 2 TB/s. It also doubles the number of independent channels per stack to provide access flexibility. Cadence, meanwhile, announced HBM4 12.8Gbps memory IP, compatible with the new JEDEC spec, with 20% greater power efficiency per bit, 50% better area efficiency, and twice as many I/Os.

Semiconductor Engineering’s latest eBook, Advanced Packaging Fundamentals, is available free for download. The 68-page report is an in-depth reference for engineers.

Quick links to more news:

Global
In-Depth
Markets and Money
Security
Product News
Auto, Aero, Defense
Research
Quantum
Events and Further Reading

Global

Americas

• Intel is keeping its Hawthorn Farm campus in Hillsboro, Oregon, after saying that it may be sold.
• Finland based Nokia plans to build a +82k square foot photonic semiconductor manufacturing center in San Jose, Ca.
• Western Digital, Microsoft and others are teaming up in a rare earth elements (REE) recovery and recycling program of hard disk drives.

Asia:

• South Korea announced a ~US$23 billion support package for its chip industry, subsidizing power and water infrastructure, training and research.

In-Depth

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

• Special Report: Backside Power Delivery Nears Production
• Can Chiplets Serve Cost-Conscious Apps?
• Packaging With Fewer People And Better Results

More reporting this week:

• AI Agents Need Goals
• What’s Changing In SerDes

Markets and Money

More Deals and M&A:

• Onsemi abandoned its attempt to acquire Allegro MicroSystems.
• Applied Materials purchased 9% of the outstanding shares of BE Semiconductor, becoming the largest shareholder of the assembly process/equipment maker. The companies have previously collaborated on hybrid bonding technology.
• WWPS merged with Cumming Group to form what it claims is the largest pure-play service provider for U.S. semiconductor fab construction.
• Spirit Electronics acquired Smart Microsystems, a microelectronics assembly provider.

Reports:

• Due to pre-tariff stockpiling, memory prices for DRAM and NAND Flash are expected to rise 3% to 8% in Q2, predicts TrendForce.
• Infosys’ recently published 24-page Semiconductor Industry Outlook 2025 report projects 11% year growth in 2025, citing advanced packaging, new materials (SiC, GaN, graphene, III-V), and AI-enabled manufacturing and design as the key technologies.
• EDA industry revenue increased 11% year-over-year to $4.9 billion in Q4 2024, according to the latest ESD Alliance report. The four-quarter moving average rose 12.8%. All product categories except IP saw double-digit increases.

Fundings:

• nEye Systems raised $58 million in Series B for its wafer-scale optical circuit switch for HPC and AI/ML systems.
• Auradine raised $153 million in Series C for its Bitcoin mining silicon and AI data center networking fabric products.
• Dolphin Semiconductor, a provider of mixed-signal IP, received a €10 million investment from Vertex Growth.
• Ottometric raised $10 million in Series A for its ADAS development and validation platform.

Product News

Synaptics released its S3930 series next-gen touch controllers for foldable OLED mobile device displays, delivering extra responsiveness, accuracy, and energy efficiency for thin, larger panels.

Synopsys debuted new ARC VPX6 DSP IP with 1,024-bit vector SIMD processing and a direct memory access engine for real-time, high-performance signal processing applications.

Infineon introduced gallium nitride (GaN) power transistors with integrated Schottky diode for industrial use, as part of its medium-voltage CoolGaN Transistors G5 family, boosting the performance of power systems by reducing dead-time losses. It also simplifies the power stage design and reduces BOM cost.

iNGage spun out of CEA-Leti to commercialize MEMS inertial measurement units and pressure sensors that use piezo-resistive nano gauges to improve sensitivity.

HARTING reduced industrial connector design time using Siemens’ Xcelerator tools and Azure AI. Its devices are used in EV charging stations, datacenters, and more.

Security

Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) published a podcast, “Root Cause Mapping and the CWE Top 25.”

Recent security research:

• Impact of temperature fluctuations on SRAM-based physically unclonable functions (Hanbat, et al.)
• Implementing Homomorphic Encryption-Based Logic Locking in System-On-Chip Designs (Univ. of Tokyo)
• BoolE: Exact Symbolic Reasoning via Boolean Equality Saturation (Univ. of Maryland)
• An Efficient and Unified RTL Accelerator Design for HQC-128, HQC-192, and HQC-256 (Politecnico di Milano)

NIST published its initial draft of Privacy Framework 1.1, which aims to help organizations manage privacy risks related to personal data flowing through complex IT systems.

Georgia Tech students won NSA‘s codebreaker challenge for a fourth consecutive year. The goal of the competition is to prevent unfriendly nations from targeting military vehicle software via Defense Industrial Base contractors.

Japanese hardware security vendor Secafy adopted Siemens’ full IC design flow to develop next-gen hardware security large-scale integration (LSI) devices.

CISA released guidance on credential risks related to legacy Oracle Cloud and issued a number of alerts/advisories.

Auto, Aero, Defense

Automotive:

• Infineon launched new energy-efficient EV chips, including the EDT3 (electric drive train, gen 3) chips for 400 V and 800 V systems, and the RC-IGBT (reverse conducting insulated gate bipolar transistor) specifically for 800 V systems.
• Texas Instruments introduced auto lidar, clock, and radar chips to assist vehicle safety by bringing more autonomous features to a wider range of cars.
• Programmierbare Logik & Systeme (PLS) in Germany added support for the RISC-V open instruction set architecture to test and debug Infineon’s virtual automotive Aurix MCU.

PsiQuantum announced a $10.8M contract with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory to supply its high-performance Barium Titanate (BTO) electro-optic phase shifters and integrate BTO into AFRL-designed optical circuits.

L3Harris Technologies completed a $125 million expansion at its 95,000 square-foot space manufacturing facility in Fort Wayne to support the U.S. Department of Defense’s need for on-orbit technology for the “Golden Dome” missile defense program.

Canada’s Bombardier, which specializes in business jets and specialized mission platforms, adopted Siemens’ Xcelerator portfolio for aircraft development.

Satellites:

• Time Magazine made a case for a U.S.-led military alliance in space, citing the threat of geosynchronous satellites designed to carry a nuclear payload, and anti-satellite weapons (ASATs) that could affect GPS, weather forecasting, geospatial intelligence, and more.
• Safran Defense & Space inaugurated an advanced manufacturing and engineering hub in Colorado, aimed at producing satellite electric propulsion systems for the DoD and commercial customers.
• IonQ signed an MoU with South Korea’s Intellian Technologies to explore how secure quantum networking can transform satellite communications.

Researchers at U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories and partners are using super-sensitive detectors to search for low-mass dark matter as part of the project TESSERACT, (transition-edge sensors, with sub-EV resolution and cryogenic targets).

Fig. 1: TESSERACT uses special transition-edge sensors, the thin strips visible on square silicon chips. Image by Marilyn Sargent/ Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Source: Argonne National Laboratory 

NASA is seeking innovative business models and approaches to solving complex Earth science problems using unconventional computing methods such as quantum computing, quantum machine learning, neuromorphic computing, and in-memory computing.

Research

Lam Research donated its multi-chamber semiconductor etching system to the Marvell Nanofabrication Laboratory at UC Berkeley.

Harvard University physicists created a compact mid-infrared pulse generator, packing the performance of larger photonic devices onto a single chip. Also at Harvard, a Robo-Bee got new legs for soft touchdowns.

University of Western Australia researchers published: The road to commercial success for neuromorphic technologies.

Quantum

The UK government will spend £121 million (~$159M) to boost the commercialization of quantum technologies.

QpiAI launched India’s first full-stack quantum computing system with 25 superconducting qubits as part of the country’s National Quantum Mission. 

IonQ signed an MoU with a division of Japan’s public research organization, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), to advance quantum computing technologies in Japan.

Events and Further Reading

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

Upcoming webinars are here.

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