Chip Industry Week in Review

By The SE Staff - 13 Jun, 2025 - Comments: 0

The Chinese Academy of Sciences unveiled a fully automated processor chip design system, claiming the potential to accelerate semiconductor development and replace human programmers. Micron Technology plans to expand its U.S. investments to approximately $150 billion in domestic memory manufacturing and $50 billion in R&D, which is $30 billion higher than previously reported. AMD laun... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review

By The SE Staff - 06 Jun, 2025 - Comments: 0

Qualcomm announced plans to buy Alphawave Semi for ~$2.4 billion in a deal expected to close in Q1 2026. Qualcomm plans to leverage Alphawave Semi's connectivity products, including chiplets, to develop high-performance, low-power solutions for AI inferencing and customized CPUs in data centers. Qualcomm's traditional targets were mobile phones and edge computing. [Updated 6/9.] Global semic... » read more

Accelerating Scalable Computing

By Shivi Arora - 02 Jun, 2025 - Comments: 0

By Shivi Arora and Sue Hung Fung As computing demands for HPC, AI/ML, and cloud infrastructure grow, modular architectures are replacing traditional monolithic System-on-Chip (SoC) designs. These legacy designs are increasingly expensive and difficult to scale due to ever-increasing silicon complexity. In response, the industry is embracing chiplet-based System-in-Package (SiP) solutions,... » read more

Optimizing Data Movement

By Ann Mutschler - 29 May, 2025 - Comments: 1

Demand for new and better AI models is creating an insatiable demand for more processing power and much better data throughput, but it's also creating a slew of new challenges for which there are not always good solutions. The key here is figuring out where bottlenecks might crop up in complex chips and advanced packages. This involves a clear understanding of how much bandwidth is required ... » read more

Optical Interconnectivity At 224 Gbps

By Ed Sperling - 28 May, 2025 - Comments: 0

AI is generating so much traffic that traditional copper-based approaches for moving data inside a chip, between chips, and between systems, are running out of steam. Just adding more channels is no longer viable. It requires more power to drive signals, and the distance those signals can travel without excessive loss is shrinking. Mike Klempa, product marketing specialist at Alphawave Semi, di... » read more

More Data, More Redundant Interconnects

By Ed Sperling - 19 May, 2025 - Comments: 0

The proliferation of AI dramatically increases the amount of data that needs to be processed, stored, and moved, accelerating the aging of signal paths through which that data travels and forcing chipmakers to build more redundancy into the interconnects. In the past, nearly all redundant data paths were contained within a planar chip using a relatively thick silicon substrate. But as chipma... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review

By The SE Staff - 25 Apr, 2025 - Comments: 0

To listen to the podcast version, click here. TSMC unveiled an unusually detailed roadmap at this week's North America Technology Symposium, including future architectures for 3D-ICs for high-performance computing and small, extremely low-power chips for AR/VR glasses, and two implementations of system-on-wafer. Fig. 1: TSMC's future packaging and stacking roadmap. Source: TSMC The ... » read more

What’s Changing In SerDes

By Ed Sperling - 16 Apr, 2025 - Comments: 0

SerDes is all about pushing data through the smallest number of physical channels. But when it comes to AI, more data needs to be moved, and it has to be moved more quickly. Todd Bermensolo, product marketing manager at Alphawave Semi, talks about the impact of faster data movement on the transmitter (more power) and on the receiver (gain and advanced equalization), how to ensure signal inte... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review

By The SE Staff - 04 Apr, 2025 - Comments: 0

Check out our new Inside Chips podcast. President Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs were announced this week. The executive order stated that semiconductors and copper imports are not directly subject to the reciprocal tariff, although the exemption may be short-lived. Semiconductor equipment and tools were not mentioned, leaving the industry searching for clarification. Regardless, hig... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review

By The SE Staff - 28 Mar, 2025 - Comments: 0

McKinsey issued a new report on the state of the chemical supply chain for semiconductors in the U.S., citing potential shortages of high-purity materials such as tungsten, aluminum and copper, lack of access to CMP slurries and photoresists for EUV, and rising competition for high-k precursors that can fetch higher prices outside of the U.S. CSIS weighed in on the U.S. goverment's recent ... » read more

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