Chip Industry Week in Review

Check out the Inside Chips podcast for our behind-the-scenes analysis of changes at Intel Foundry.

Intel rolled out its updated process technology roadmap this week, along with early process design kit (PDK) for its 14A gate-all-around process technology. That node will utilize high-NA EUV, and include direct contact power delivery, the second generation of its backside power delivery technology. Intel also introduced boosted cell technology, which allows designers to mix higher-performing and more power-efficient cells within a design block.

Additionally, Intel said its 18A process is now in risk production, with volume manufacturing expected later this year. Two new variants on the process, 18A-P with a focus on performance and 18A-PT for performance and power efficiency, also were announced. On the packaging front, introduced a new variant of its embedded multi-die interconnect bridging, EMIB-T, targeted at future high-bandwidth memory. Intel also is partnering with Amkor Technology on advanced packaging.

Fig.1: Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan. Source: Intel

EDA and IP companies announced support for Intel processes, including:

• Ansys power integrity signoff platforms and electromagnetic simulation software for 18A, along with a thermal and multi-physics signoff flow for EMIB and EMIB-T;
• Cadence digital and analog/custom design solutions and design IP for 18A, along with a reference flow for EMIB and EMIB-T;
• Keysight system-level chiplet design and die-to-die design solution for EMIB-T;
• Siemens physical verification and circuit verification software for 18A, along with a reference flow for EMIB-T, and
• Synopsys digital and analog flows, along with a reference flow for EMIB-T.

In addition, Arteris joined the Intel Foundry Accelerator Ecosystem Alliance Program, and QuickLogic announced that it had optimized its eFPGA hard IP for 18A.

The European Court of Auditors released a report on the EU Chips Act, warning that the current strategy makes it unlikely that the EU will achieve its target of having a 20% share of the global semiconductor market value chain by 2030 and urging the European Commission to start preparing a new approach.

The EU Chips Design Platform, a consortium coordinated by imec, will facilitate access to advanced semiconductor design infrastructure, training, and capital for fabless semiconductor startups, small and medium enterprises, and research organizations. Also in Europe, the University of Southampton opened an e-beam lithography facility.

SEMI‘s recent reports:

• Global semiconductor materials market revenue increased ~4% to $67 billion in 2024. Wafer fabrication materials revenue increased over 3% to ~$43 billion in 2024, while packaging materials revenue grew ~5% to ~$25 billion last year.
• Worldwide silicon wafer shipments increased  2% year-on-year in Q1 2025 to 2,896 million square inches, according to SEMI. 300mm wafers saw a 6% growth, while 200mm and smaller sizes declined.

Earning reports this week:  Amkor, ASE, ASM, Cohu, FormFactor, JCET, NXP, Samsung, Qualcomm, Teradyne, Western Digital.

Quick links to more news:

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

Global

Americas:

• CSIS makes the case for the U.S. to continue to support RISC-V, in its new report “Sustaining Standards Leadership: The U.S. Cannot Disengage from RISC-V.”
• Natcast announced 19 inaugural members of the NSTC Technical Advisory Board, who will focus on advancing U.S. semiconductor research and innovation.
• In this week’s earnings call, CEO Tim Cook said Apple plans to source over 19 billion chips from the U.S. for its devices.
• IBM plans to spend more than $30 billion over the next five years for R&D and manufacturing of mainframe and quantum computers, part of $150 billion the company plans to spend in the Americas.
• The Northeast Microelectronics Coalition Hub launched a $10 million grant initiative to help academic and commercial organizations purchase equipment for microelectronics projects.

Europe:

• The UK government published a UK Semiconductor Workforce Study, identifying “acute challenges and opportunities for sustaining and growing the UK’s semiconductor talent pipeline.”
• BASF is expanding production capacity for semiconductor-grade sulfuric acid in Germany, with operation expected to begin in 2027.

Asia:

• India-based Zoho shelved its plan to build a $700 million semiconductor fab.
• LG Innotek showed off its new fully-automated factory for production of flip-chip ball grid arrays (FC-BGAs) in Gumi, South Korea.

In-Depth

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

• Extra Safety Measures Needed For Aerospace ICs
• Cyber Threats Multiply With Commercial Chiplets
• Smarter Cars, Higher Stakes

More reporting this week:

• From Tool Agents To Flow Agents
• Security Power Requirements Are Growing

Markets and Money

McKinsey stressed the need for more semiconductor companies in all industry sectors to find more AI-driven opportunities, in “Silicon squeeze: AI’s impact on the semiconductor industry.”

M&A and Spinoffs

• Siemens Digital Industries Software intends to acquire electronics publication Wevolver to boost its Supplyframe market intelligence and supply chain platform.
• Advanced Glass Industries acquired Glass Fab Inc. and will begin operating as EvolvOptic to supply precision-machined and molded optical blanks for the semiconductor and other industries.
• DuPont’s electronics materials spin-off will be called Qnity Electronics.

ASIC and SoC design services company Sondrel rebranded as Aion Silicon.

Fundings:

• Vsora raised $46 million for the production of its high-performance AI inference chip for data centers.
• Forge Nano raised $40 million for its single-wafer semiconductor ALD coating tool and li-ion battery manufacturing.
• Tau Systems raised $20 million to build a laser-plasma accelerator facility for radiation testing of space electronics.
• QNu Labs raised INR 60 Cr (~$7M) for hardware-based quantum-safe cybersecurity solutions.
• Astrape Networks raised €7.9 million to develop optical networks for AI, high-frequency trading, and data-intensive applications.
• Mivium raised $5 million to produce high-purity gallium nitride (GaN) substrates.

Security

Recent security research:

• Hardware Design and Security Needs Attention: From Survey to Path Forward (U. of Arizona et al.)
• Rethinking System-on-Chip Verification for Secure Cross-layer Interactions (U. of Florida et al.)
• On-Chiplet Framework for Verifying Physical Security and Integrity of Adjacent Chiplets (Worcester Polytechnic Institute)
• The Implementation of the Physical Unclonable Function in a Field-Programmable Gate Array for Enhancing Hardware Security (National Formosa University)

The commercialization of chiplets will significantly boost the potential for attacks on hardware, requiring a much broader set of security measures and processes at every level of the supply chain, including traceability from initial design to end of life.

CISA issued a number of new alerts/advisories.

Product News

The Open Compute Project Foundation and Ultra Accelerator Link Consortium are teaming up to integrate UALink’s scale-up AI interconnect technology into OCP Community-delivered AI clusters.

Synaptics unveiled its first Wi-Fi 7 SoCs tailored for the IoT, an extension of its Veros wireless portfolio.

Movellus unveiled an on-chip sensor for power delivery network (PDN) characterization and monitoring that combines transistor-level voltage telemetry with trigger and trace capabilities to provide visibility across the silicon lifecycle.

Brewer Science announced a smart warehouse monitor system to improve pick line efficiency in industrial and warehouse settings.

Promex Industries expanded its manufacturing line, adding UV laser depaneling and automated solder paste inspection systems to support higher-density assemblies, flex substrates, and chiplet architectures.

Infineon and Geomorphing Detection developed a system that uses radar sensors to continuously monitor streams and rock movements in the Alps. Infineon also inked a deal with LITEON, which makes power management solutions, to use Infineon’s 600 V CoolMOS 8 high-voltage superjunction MOSFET product family.

Keysight was awarded a contract with NATO’s Naval Forces Sensor and Weapons Accuracy Check Sites to modernize its testing capabilities for critical radar and electronic support measures systems.

Aidentyx introduced an AI framework for managing fab equipment, sub-fab systems, and production processes.

xMEMS Labs debuted an in-module MEMS fan-on-a-chip for 400G, 800G, and 1.6T optical transceivers in AI data centers.

Fraunhofer IIS introduced an intelligent Hall sensor that enables position, angle, and current measurements with a single chip by combining four 3D Hall sensors with signal processing and a RISC-V microcontroller.

People

NXP CEO Kurt Sievers will retire at the end of 2025. Rafael Sotomayor, previously general manager of NXP’s Secure Connected Edge segment, will take on the roles of president and CEO.

Automotive, Aerospace

Fail-safe operations and boot load memory are essential for ensuring pricey resources aren’t lost in space. While losing a few images during an Earth-bound observation may not matter, losing a satellite can be a major setback. And absolutely nobody wants to lose a jet or a rocket.

The U.S. House of Representatives voted to ban California’s electric vehicle plan, which ended gas-only vehicles by 2035.

Artificial intelligence is turbocharging automotive innovation, but it’s also unleashing a tangle of high stakes risks that engineers and security experts are scrambling to contain.

Infineon launched its CoolSiC MOSFET 750 V G2 with ultra-low RDS(on) for automotive, designed to deliver improved system efficiency and increased power density in automotive and industrial power conversion applications.

Synaptics and Murata Manufacturing are partnering to develop a wireless connectivity module for automotive Tier 1 suppliers and OEMs.

Asahi Kasei Microdevices and Silicon Austria Labs completed a proof of concept for integrating a current sensor into a power module to be used in automotive applications.

Ford has killed a program to develop next-generation electrical architecture, the “brain of modern cars,” due to ballooning costs.

Education and Research

Queen Mary Univ. of London, Univ. of Nottingham, and Univ. of Glasgow researchers received a £6 million grant to develop and prototype atomically-thin semiconductors.

University of Sheffield won a £7 million award to purchase molecular beam epitaxy equipment for semiconductor materials discovery.

The UK government launched a £4.75 (~$6M) million package for semiconductor skills training.

Siemens EDA collaborated with Sony to hold its first Immersive Design Challenge with 900 student participants, who learned how sustainable design principles can be combined with immersive engineering technology to imagine the future.

Find more semiconductor research here, including these topics:

• 5nm SRAM minimum supply voltage;
• particle-induced mask diffraction on EUV lithography;
• chiplet placement and routing optimization considering signal integrity
• HW-based heterogeneous memory management for LLM inference;
• real-world HW security attacks;
• controlled shared memory isolation;
• digital twins for vehicular prototyping.

Events and Further Reading

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

Upcoming webinars are here.

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