Chip Industry Week In Review


Big Deals and Fundings Rapidus secured US$1.7B in a new funding round from the Japanese government and the private sector to ramp 2nm production by next year. Open AI announced a $110B in new funding, with $30B from Nvidia, $30B from Softbank and $50B from Amazon. In a $100B multi-year deal, Meta will power its AI infrastructure with up to 6GW of AMD's GPUs. SambaNova and Intel ar... » read more

AI Starting To Simplify Design Of Programmable Logic


Key Takeaways AI/ML and agentic tools are getting better at helping design and compile FPGAs, but downstream programming is slower to benefit. FPGAs historically have been designed using Verilog or VHDL, but higher-level languages could push more intelligence into compilers. ML tools can also help with mixed-signal co-design by automatically tuning DSP algorithms based on analog simu... » read more

Automotive Week In Review


Quick links: Deals and New Chips, Batteries and BEVs, Autonomous, Policy and Research. Deals and New Chips Infineon and BMW are jointly developing software-defined vehicles based on BMW’s “Neue Klasse” architecture and Infineon’s MCUs, high-speed Ethernet solutions, power management ICs, and power switches. Tata Electronics will manufacture Qualcomm's automotive modules in I... » read more

Wi-Fi 7 Moves To The IoT


Wi-Fi 7 has been a staple in high-end applications such as notebook computers and AR/VR glasses for the past couple years, where high-speed connectivity and low latency are essential. Known alternatively as IEEE 802.11be, and Extremely High Throughput Wi-Fi, it is starting to migrate downstream into IoT devices such as smart door locks, thermostats, and robotic vacuum cleaners. But the reason i... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Geopolitics U.S. lawmakers are urging tighter export controls on advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment (SME) to China, warning existing loopholes threaten national security. "China is working to build domestic SME by exploiting access to U.S. and allied subcomponents required to produce tools," states the letter, which also says better coordination with allies is essential. The U.S.... » read more

Automotive Week In Review


Quick links: Automotive chips, Autonomous, EVs, Batteries, Policy, Research. Automotive chips  Mythic and Honda will jointly develop an automotive-grade AI SoC for Honda’s SDVs that leverages Mythic’s energy-efficient analog compute-in-memory technology. ST released a new MCU with AI acceleration for the automotive edge, integrating an embedded neural network accelerator. I... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


Intel hired ex-Qualcomm GPU guru Eric Demers for the company's high-performance GPU push, setting the stage for a three-way battle with Nvidia and AMD. The key targets for Intel and AMD will be better power efficiency and a programming model that rivals CUDA, but don't expect Nvidia to stand still. Acquisitions Texas Instruments plans to acquire Silicon Labs for ~$7.5B cash to enhance i... » read more

Securing Hardware For The Quantum Era


Key Takeaways: Quantum threats to security are already real. Adversaries are already harvesting data that will be decrypted later by quantum computers. Quantum computers capable of breaking RSA and ECC may arrive as early as next year. Asymmetric encryption algorithms like RSA and ECC will become inadequate against quantum threats, while symmetric encryption (such as AES) is less vul... » read more

Consumer And Med Tech Mushroom As Quantum Closes In


Key Takeaways: Universities and companies are making devices inspired by biology and the human senses to help with health monitoring, semiconductor materials development, human-computer interfaces, and more. When this nascent technology becomes a viable product, government regulations will be needed to ensure consumer safety in tracking or treating their body and the environment. Qua... » read more

Wi-Fi 7 for IoT


Introduced in 2024, Wi Fi 7 delivers numerous PHY and MAC layer enhancements for high performance networking, including 320 MHz channels, 4096 QAM modulation, and up to eight spatial streams (8×8 MIMO). While these capabilities are important for access points and high throughput clients, they are less relevant to IoT devices, which typically operate at low data rates with small payloads, const... » read more

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