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


Arm uncorked its first internally developed CPU chip this week, aimed squarely at the agentic AI data center market. Arm CEO Rene Haas (pictured) emphasized the CPU's power efficiency and performance/watt compared to other AI processor architectures. "We are obsessed with efficiency, and if you think about one of the biggest appeals that Arm has had over the years, it is power profile," he ... » read more

Annual Global IC Fabs And Facilities Report


Semiconductor companies announced a significant number of facilities in 2025 as global onshoring efforts continued across manufacturing, materials, packaging, design, and R&D. Investments came from both industry and government sources. Organizations worked together to solve current technology challenges, including soaring demand for AI chips and advanced memory, as well as complex applic... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


San Francisco-based Substrate raised more than $100 million to build a vertically integrated foundry that uses particle accelerators to produce "the world's brightest beams, enabling a new method of advanced X-ray lithography." The company claims its technology is comparable to ASML's high NA EUV, and notes it can extend well beyond 2nm. ASML has not publicly commented. The Nexperia chip sho... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


Intel reported flat year-over year revenue for Q2, exceeding Wall Street's pessimistic expectations. In a message to employees, CEO Lip-Bu Tan said the company will: Cut about 15% of its staff, ending the year with about 75,000 employees, down from a high of nearly 132,000 in 2022; Scrap projects in Poland and Germany, consolidate other sites in central America and Southeast Asia, and s... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


The U.S. government will grant licenses to NVIDIA and AMD to again sell some AI chips — NVIDIA's H20 GPU and AMD's MI308 — to Chinese companies. TrendForce projects that the availability of NVIDIA chips, in particular, will create a surge in demand from Chinese AI firms and cloud service providers, and boost high-bandwidth memory (HBM) consumption. The move could raise China’s share of... » read more

Global IC Fabs And Facilities Report: 2024


The chip industry made significant capital investments this year to build new fabs and facilities or expand existing premises. A number of sites were dedicated to SiC, GaN, DRAM, HBM, along with packaging and assembly by OSATs, and essential gases, chemicals, and other components. More than a dozen R&D centers were also established for 8-inch wafers, EUV, and advanced packaging. Investments... » read more

Chip Industry Technical Paper Roundup: June 25


New technical papers recently added to Semiconductor Engineering’s library. [table id=236 /] More ReadingTechnical Paper Library home » read more

Plasma Etching : Challenges And Options Going Forward (UMD, IBM, Lam Research, Intel, Samsung et al.)


A new technical paper titled "Future of plasma etching for microelectronics: Challenges and opportunities" was published by researchers from numerous academic institutions and companies, including University of Maryland, IBM, Arkema, UCLA, Lam Research, Intel Corporation, Samsung, Air Liquide, Sony, and many others. Abstract: "Plasma etching is an essential semiconductor manufacturing techn... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Rapidus and IBM are jointly developing mass production capabilities for chiplet-based advanced packages. The collaboration builds on an existing agreement to develop 2nm process technology. Vanguard and NXP will jointly establish VisionPower Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (VSMC) in Singapore to build a $7.8 billion, 12-inch wafer plant. This is part of a global supply chain shift “Out... » read more

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