TSMC Tech Symposium 2026, By The Numbers


TSMC announced three new advanced process technologies at its North America Technology Symposium last week A13, A12 and N2U as part of its latest advanced technology roadmap. Compared to the roadmap presented at last year’s tech symposium, the new roadmap shows the three new process technologies in gold text. Figure 1: TSMC's Advanced Technology Roadmap. Source: TSMC To put these t... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Deals Marvell acquired Polariton Technologies, a Swiss developer of plasmonics-based silicon photonics devices. Onto Innovation is partnering with Rigaku, combining Onto’s analysis software with Rigaku’s CD-SAXS platform for advanced semiconductor process control. Onto also agreed to acquire a 27% stake in Rigaku for about $710M. Tesla plans to use Intel’s 14A process for its T... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Acquisitions and business pivots Teradyne acquired Israel-based TestInsight, a semiconductor test provider with pattern conversion, validation, and virtual test capabilities. Credo plans to acquire DustPhotonics, a developer of silicon photonics PICs for optical transceivers. Molex plans to acquire Teramount, a provider of detachable, passive-alignment fiber-to-chip connectivity solu... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Deals, Funding Intel will join Elon Musk’s Terafab chip manufacturing project alongside Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI. Intel described its role as helping refactor silicon fab technology for a project targeting production of 1 TW/year of compute for AI and robotics applications. Intel and Google are expanding a multi-year collaboration on AI and cloud infrastructure, with Intel Xeon processo... » read more

All AI Data Center Interconnects Will Be Optical Within 5 Years


I spent several days at OFC (Optical Fiber Communications Conference) 2026 in LA. The crowds were huge and the enthusiasm intense. Long-time attendees noted the shift from telecom to data center AI in just a few years. Nvidia GTC 2026 took place simultaneously in San Jose. OFC and GTC are entangled because data center AI needs optical interconnect to keep compute fed. Optical interconnect... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Deals IBM and Arm are collaborating on a new dual‑architecture hardware aimed at enterprise AI and data-intensive workloads, using virtualization to boost reliability, security, scalability, and software compatibility. The goal, according to an IBM spokesperson, is to deliver side-by-side deployments of S390x-Linux and Arm-Linux virtual machines in a single kernel-based hypervisor. Nv... » read more

2D Semiconductors Inch Forward


Key Takeaways: Diffusing oxygen into 2D materials can improve adhesion properties. Channel-last processes can preserve most of the traditional gate-all-around process flow. Dual-gate MoS2 FETs with graphene contacts take advantage of layer transfer methods. Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have come a long way since exfoliated flakes were the state of the art, but the... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Disruptions caused by the Iran conflict have taken about one third of the global helium supply off the market, an essential gas for semiconductor manufacturing, reports the World Economic Forum. Other potential impacts for the chip industry include bromine and other chemical shortages, logistical disruptions, and higher energy prices incurred by fabs in Asia. Top Deals IBM and Lam R... » read more

Enabling Seamless Monitoring, Test, And Repair In Multi-Die Designs


By Yervant Zorian and Sandeep Kumar Goel Anyone who follows the semiconductor industry knows that the accelerating performance, scale and energy efficiency demands of the AI revolution are outpacing the advances achievable by simply pushing the chip performance of monolithic, single-die designs. Multi-die design using 2.5D and 3D technologies has emerged as a necessity to keep the pace of in... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Think tank IAPS' report on AI integrity attacks contends that advanced AI systems must be protected from hidden tampering, backdoors, or unauthorized changes that could alter their behavior or outputs, especially when AI adoption is scaling rapidly, with over 60% of the federal workforce now using AI every day. Geopolitics The U.S. government has drafted new export rules that may give W... » read more

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