Chip Industry Week In Review


Global chips sales hit a record $56.9 billion in October, a 22% increase versus October 2023, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association. Also, global semiconductor equipment billings reached $30.38 billion in Q3 2024, a 19% YoY increase and 13% growth QoQ, SEMI reported. TSMC commenced equipment installation for its 2nm fab in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, six months ahead of schedule. The 2n... » read more

Government Chip Funding Spreads Globally


This is the first in a series of articles tracking government chip investments. See part two for Americas-focused funding and part three for the UK and EMEA, and part four for Asia. Countries around the world are ramping up investments into their semiconductor industries as part of new or existing approaches. The increased government activity stems from growing awareness of the strategic imp... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


JEDEC and the Open Compute Project rolled out a new set of guidelines for standardizing chiplet characterization details, such as thermal properties, physical and mechanical requirements, and behavior specs. Those details have been a sticking point for commercial chiplets, because without them it's not possible to choose the best chiplet for a particular application or workload. The guidelines ... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Absolics, an affiliate of Korea materials company SKC, will receive up to $75 million in direct funding under the U.S. CHIPS Act for the construction of a 120,000 square-foot facility in Covington, Georgia, for glass substrates in advanced packaging. imec will host a €2.5 billion (~$2.72B) pilot line for researching chips beyond 2nm, partially funded through the EU Chips Act. imec CEO Luc ... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive, mobility Qualcomm signed a definitive agreement to acquire fabless semiconductor company Autotalks, maker of automotive-qualified vehicle-to-everything (V2X) SoCs, processors, sensors, V2X RF transceivers, and other products for use in automatic braking and cooperative perception systems (where a vehicle can see what another vehicle is seeing). Autotalks’ V2X products are dual-m... » read more

Flat-Panel Display Demand Soars


What a difference a year makes in the flat-panel display market. Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak in early 2020, the flat-panel display (FPD) market was gloomy. Oversupply, falling prices and losses were the common themes in the market. It’s been a different story during the outbreak. In 2020, the FPD market rebounded. In the stay-at-home economy, consumers went on a buying spree... » read more

Hard-To-Hire Engineering Jobs


While the pandemic has hurt many job sectors, the semiconductor industry can't get enough qualified people. And that shortage is expected to persist for years, as companies reach deep into untapped talent pools around the globe. Most in demand are experienced engineers and engineers with hybrid knowledge. Skills in machine learning and artificial intelligence are very desirable. Combined kno... » read more

Regaining The Edge In U.S. Chip Manufacturing


The United States is developing new strategies to prevent it from falling further behind Korea, Taiwan, and perhaps even China in semiconductor manufacturing, as trade tensions and national security concerns continue to grow. For years, the U.S. has been a leader in the development of new chip products like GPUs and microprocessors. But from a chip manufacturing standpoint, the U.S. is losin... » read more

AI Design In Korea


Like many in the semiconductor design businesses, Arteris IP is actively working with the Korean chip companies. This shouldn’t be a surprise. If a company is building an SoC of any reasonable size, it needs network-on-chip (NoC) interconnect for optimal QoS (bandwidth and latency regulation and system-level arbitration) and low routing congestion, even in application-centric designs such as ... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Fab tools and materials Applied Materials has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Kokusai Electric for $2.2 billion in cash from investment firm KKR. With the acquisition of Kokusai’s semiconductor equipment unit, Applied expands its customer base and gains a foothold in the batch processing equipment business, where a tool can process wafers in parallel. Applied’s strength is in the ... » read more

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