Chip Industry Week in Review

Global semiconductor sales hit $57 billion for the month of April 2025, a nearly 23% increase compared to April 2024 and a 2.5% increase versus March 2025, reports Semiconductor Industry Association. Here’s the regional breakdown of year-over-year sales, in $US billions:

Fig. 1: YoY semiconductor revenue and growth. Source: SIA

Meanwhile, global semiconductor equipment billings grew 21% year-over-year to US$32 billion in Q1 of 2025, reports SEMI. (See chart below)

Fig. 2: Semiconductor equipment billings by region, in $US billions. Source: SEMI and SEAJ.

The Trump administration is renegotiating semiconductor grants issued under the Biden-era CHIPS Act. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick stated in a Wednesday hearing [go to 1 hour 30 minutes in video] that some grants appeared “overly generous” and are being revised, with the possibility of canceling certain deals. Lutnick emphasized the administration’s commitment to enhancing the value of these deals and maintaining more than 50% of global AI computing capacity in the U.S., amid concerns over AI chip sales to foreign nations like the UAE.

GlobalFoundries announced a $16 billion investment to expand its semiconductor manufacturing and advanced packaging capabilities in New York and Vermont. The investment includes $13 billion for facility expansion and modernization, and an additional $3 billion dedicated to research and development in areas such as chip packaging, silicon photonics, and gallium nitride technologies.

Arm unveiled its AI-defined Zena Compute Subsystems (CSS) platform for faster automotive software and silicon development. The platform includes 16 Cortex-A720AE cores optimized for ADAS and IVI applications along with safety and security elements, CPU coherency and chip-to-chip connectivity, optional ISP, and the ability to integrate accelerators and partner-specific logic. Cadence, Siemens EDA, Synopsys, and others announced support for the platform.

Fig. 3: Zena CSS time-to-market improvements. Source: Arm 

Imec and Ghent University demonstrated the first fully integrated microwave photonics chip, combining modulators, filters, detectors, and lasers on a single silicon chip for high-frequency signal processing. At IITC, imec also unveiled  16nm-pitch ruthenium (Ru) interconnects with record-low resistance of 656Ω/µm, using a cost-effective semi-damascene flow optimized for A7 and beyond process nodes. The achievement advances Ru as a scalable alternative to copper for local interconnects, with future work exploring pillar-based FSAVs and epitaxial Ru films to further lower resistance.

MLCommons released its latest MLPerf training benchmark results.

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

Global

Americas:

• Mexico is positioning itself as a key player in the global semiconductor industry by leveraging its strategic location, abundant critical minerals, and a growing pool of STEM talent, reports the Milken Institute. President Sheinbaum’s “Plan México” aims to double semiconductor exports by 2030.
• Guatemala and Taiwan inked an agreement to boost Guatemala’s IC capabilities.
• Test and measurement company FormFactor purchased a $55 million manufacturing site in Texas.

Asia:

• China rejected accusations from Dutch Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans that it is intensifying espionage efforts targeting the semiconductor industry, asserting that its technological advancements are not the result of stolen intellectual property.
• SMIC divested its 14% stake in Ningbo Semiconductor, an RF and analog foundry.
• UMC developed an in-house robot to inspect fab equipment.
• China’s GigaDevice opened its global headquarters in Singapore.

Europe

• In-space materials maker Space Forge opened a new office in Portugal to be used as satellite return location, part of an expansion plan which includes development of European semiconductor manufacturing plants.

In-Depth

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

• Special Report: AR/VR Glasses Taking Shape With New Chips
• How Secure Are Analog Circuits?
• Mobile Chip Challenges In The AI Era

More reporting this week:

• Special Report: Co-Packaged Optics Reaches Power Efficiency Tipping Point
• Connecting AI Accelerators

Markets and Money

Earnings release this week: Broadcom.

Deals/Collaborations:

• AMD acquired Brium, a compiler and AI software startup that optimizes the AI inference stack for different hardware.
• ASMedia acquired Techpoint, a developer of HD video transmission chips, for $390 million.
• GCT Semiconductor inked a deal to integrate Iridium‘s NB-IoT technology into GCT’s chipset.
• TFI and Heisler Semi will jointly provide a integrated process from wafer production through TSV formation and final packaging.
• Siemens, Cadolto Datacenter, and Legrand Data Center Solutions designed a modular edge data center that supports basic workloads to high-density, AI-powered computing.
• In quantum: Pasqal acquired Aeponyx, and IonQ completed its acquisition of Lightsynq Technologies.

Funding:

• Speedata raised $44 million for its Analytics Processing Unit (APU) designed to accelerate data center and cloud-based database and big data analytic workloads.
• EdgeCortix received 3 billion yen (~$21M) to develop an energy-efficient edge AI chiplet designed for generative AI inference and on-device learning.
• AccelerComm raised $15 million for its 5G NR PHY IP that enables communication between phone handsets and space-based satellite networks.
• Infleqtion raised $100 million to scale its atom-based quantum platforms for computing, sensing, and precision timing.

Reports:

• Global DRAM revenue was $27 billion in Q1 2025, a drop of 5.5% quarter-over-quarter, according to Trendforce, which also expects DDR4 pricing to rise in the coming quarters.
• The market for electronic gases is forecast to reach $6.3B this year, up 4.8% YoY, according to TECHCET. The firm also projects a 10% increase in semiconductor plating chemicals for a total of $1.19 billion, largely driven by the use of Cu pillars, micro-bumps, RDL, and TSVs in advanced packaging.

Education and Training

SEMI is offering a ESD Alliance Master Class: Introduction to Chip Design and Electronic Design Automation on June 25th, highlighting the design of today’s complex chips with Electronic Design Automation tools.

The UK Electronics Skills Foundation (UKESF) launched the Semiconductor: Skills, Talent and Education Programme (STEP), backed by a £4.75 million government investment to address the UK’s semiconductor skills shortage.

Siemens is offering an Expedite – Skills for Industry” credential to prepare students for industry by connecting engineering theory with practical skills, covering key trends, business processes, and tech-based work environments.

Product News

Alphawave Semi taped out a UCIe IP subsystem supporting 36G die-to-die data rates and 11.8 Tbps/mm bandwidth density on TSMC’s N2 process.

Keysight and Synopsys introduced an AI-powered RF design migration flow to expedite migration from TSMC’s N6RF+ process to N4P technology.  Synopsys also will provide selected startups with access to its design tools and software licenses through a collaboration with Plug and Play.

Siemens and IBM released a web-based tool supporting the SysML v2 system modeling language, designed to improve collaboration among engineering teams involved in complex product development.

NVIDIA‘s Blackwell GPUs achieved record-breaking performance across all MLPerf Training v5.0 benchmarks, including the most demanding large language model (LLM) pretraining task. In collaboration with CoreWeave and IBM, NVIDIA utilized 2,496 Blackwell GPUs and 1,248 Grace CPUs to train Meta‘s Llama 3.1 405B model in just 27 minutes, more than doubling the speed compared to the previous generation.

Micron announced shipment of the world’s first 1-gamma (1γ) node-based LPDDR5X memory that achieves speeds up to 10.7 Gbps and offers up to 20% power savings compared to previous generations.

Xanadu demonstrated error-resistant photonic qubits on an integrated chip platform.

Vehicles

China’s export restrictions on rare earth materials could cause automakers in the U.S. to shut down production in the Midwest and South, The New York Times reported.

Meanwhile, the European Association of Automotive Suppliers called for urgent action to address the impact of China’s recent export restrictions on rare earth elements and magnets, citing the shutdown of several production lines and plants across Europe.

Infineon’s power MOSFET devices were selected by Reflex Drive, an Indian deep tech startup, for integration into its Electric Speed Controllers. Infineon also will collaborate with Typhoon HIL to provide automotive engineering teams with a fully-integrated, real-time development and test environment for key elements of xEV powertrain systems.

Hirano Tecseed used Siemens’ software to create digital twins of its battery coating machines to optimize coating processes. Also, Arc Boat Company has adopted the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio to manufacture electric boats.

Research

Materials:

• Oxford University researchers developed a new technique for finding the next generation of materials needed for large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computing called topological superconductors.
• Researchers from the University of Vienna and TU Wien embedded individual platinum atoms into an ultra-thin material and pinpointed their positions within the lattice with atomic precision for the first time.

Magnetization:

• MIT physicists demonstrated a new form of magnetism, termed “p-wave magnetism,” in the 2D material nickel iodide. This magnetic state combines features of ferromagnetism and antiferromagnetism, with electrons forming spiral spin patterns that can be electrically switched between mirror-image configurations.
• Researchers at the Institute of Science Tokyo demonstrated a new strategy for magnetization reversal in multi-ferroic materials using a parallel electric field, opening pathways to more energy-efficient electronics.

IBM research:

• Created an ML framework capturing “the impact of various wire-wire connectivity features within and across BEOL levels that are responsible for modulating the thermal transport.”
• Developed new ways to investigate the physics of topological lattices, using light to simulate and visualize their states and showcased a new platform for room-temperature analog simulations.

Find more chip industry research here.

Security

The move toward multi-die assemblies and the increasing value of sensor data at the edge are beginning to focus attention and raise questions about security in analog circuits.

Recent security research:

• HWREx: AI-enabled Hardware Weakness and Risk Exploration and Storytelling Framework with LLM-assisted Mitigation Suggestion (University of Arizona, Tucson, et al.)
• Advanced Hardware Security Methods for Modern Integrated Circuits (University of Rochester)
• Transformers for Secure Hardware Systems: Applications, Challenges, and Outlook (University of Arizona, Tucson et al.)

TXOne expanded a version of its SageOne OT Cybersecurity Governance Platform to deliver an enhanced novel capability for intelligent vulnerability mitigation.

CISA added five new vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation, in addition to a number of alerts/advisories.

People

Marilyn Wolf received the 2025 Marie R. Pistilli Women in Electronic Design Award for her efforts advancing engineering education and research spanning embedded computing, embedded video, computer vision, and VLSI design.

Events and Further Reading

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

Upcoming webinars are here, including these topics:

• GDDR Memory for High-Performance AI Inference
• AI / ML Algorithm Design and Testing Toward 6G
• EMX Planar Solver – Key New Features and Updates
• EUnlock Next-Gen Real-Time Processing with Synopsys ARC Processor IP

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