Chip Industry Week In Review


Don't have time to read this? Check out Semiconductor Engineering's Inside Chips podcast.  The U.S. Department of Commerce is investigating TSMC for potential export control violations involving Huawei chips, reports Reuters. The probe follows TechInsights' teardown of a Huawei AI accelerator chip last year. The foundry, meanwhile, maintains it has not shipped any chips to Huawei since 2020... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


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


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

HW Implementation Of An ONN Coupled By A ReRAM Crossbar Array (IBM, TU Eindhoven)


A new technical paper titled "Hardware Implementation of Ring Oscillator Networks Coupled by BEOL Integrated ReRAM for Associative Memory Tasks" was published by researchers at IBM Research Europe and Eindhoven University of Technology. Abstract "We demonstrate the first hardware implementation of an oscillatory neural network (ONN) utilizing resistive memory (ReRAM) for coupling elements. ... » read more

Sustainable AI Systems For Energy-Efficient Computing


By Pushkar Apte, Jim Sexton, and Melissa Grupen-Shemansky The world is abuzz with the new opportunities being created by artificial intelligence (AI), enabled by the availability of unprecedented amounts of data. AI runs on the semiconductor engine, and in turn, creates a rising demand for semiconductor chips. The semiconductor industry is predicted to reach $1 trillion in revenue by 2030 ... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


ASML and imec signed a five-year strategic partnership to advance semiconductor innovation and sustainable technology. The collaboration will leverage ASML’s full product portfolio, including high-NA EUV, DUV immersion, and advanced metrology tools, within imec’s pilot line for sub-2nm R&D. Supported by EU and national funding, it will also drive research in silicon photonics, memory, a... » read more

Reducing Voltage Guard Band


The 2025 International Solid State Circuits Conference was held in San Francisco from February 16th to 20th. IBM presented three papers[1,2,3] based on their Samsung 5nm Tellum II chip. These are interesting in terms of the technology and the specifics about the design and measures taken to improve energy efficiency and reduce power. My first remembrance of a company specializing in guard-ba... » read more

Chip Industry Technical Paper Roundup: Mar. 10


New technical papers recently added to Semiconductor Engineering’s library: [table id=412 /] Find more semiconductor research papers here. » read more

Thermally Aware Chiplet Placement Algorithm Based on Automatic Differentiation (MIT, IBM)


A new technical paper titled "DiffChip: Thermally Aware Chip Placement with Automatic Differentiation" was published by researchers at MIT and IBM. Abstract "Chiplets are modular integrated circuits that can be combined to form a larger system, offering flexibility and performance enhancements. However, their dense packing often leads to significant thermal management challenges, requiring ... » read more

Lines Blurring Between Supercomputing And HPC


Supercomputers and high-performance computers are becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate due to the proliferation of AI, which is driving huge performance increases in commercial and scientific applications and raising similar challenges for both. While the goals of supercomputing and high-performance computing (HPC) have always been similar — blazing fast processing — the mark... » read more

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