Chip Industry Week In Review


The EU’s tariffs on semiconductors will not exceed 15%, according to Trump’s latest trade deal. In addition, the EU committed to purchasing at least $40 billion worth of U.S. AI chips as well as other investments. [FAQ is here.] Lifelines for Intel: Intel inked a deal to sell the U.S. government a 10% non-voting equity stake in its business, worth $8.9 billion. The stake will be fun... » read more

Chip Industry Technical Paper Roundup: August 19


New technical papers recently added to Semiconductor Engineering’s library: [table id=465 /] Find more semiconductor research papers here. » read more

Server-Scale Programmable Photonic Fabric to Interconnect Accelerators Within Servers (Cornell University, Lightmatter)


A new technical paper titled "Morphlux: Programmable chip-to-chip photonic fabrics in multi-accelerator servers for ML" was published by researchers at Cornell University and Lightmatter. Abstract "We optically interconnect accelerator chips (e.g., GPUs, TPUs) within compute servers using newly viable programmable chip-to-chip photonic fabrics. In contrast, today, commercial multi-accelerat... » read more

Can Cheaper Lasers Handle Short Distances?


Optical technology is well established for long-haul communications, but the distances it serves are shrinking — especially in the data center. Vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) already drive short fiber links. But efforts are underway to further scale them down to provide more connections through waveguides than fiber can provide. “We have seen the transition from long... » read more

Physics Limits Interposer Line Lengths


Electrical interposers provide a convenient surface for mounting multiple chips within a single package, but even though interposer lines theoretically can be routed anywhere, insertion losses limit their practical length. Lines on interposers — and on silicon interposers in particular — can be exceedingly narrow. Having a small cross-section makes such lines resistive, degrading signals... » read more

Photonics Speeds Up Data Center AI


Photonics is playing an increasingly vital role in the acceleration of AI within data centers. The global market for optical components is already substantial, accounting for $17 billion in revenue last year. Historically, telecommunications — such as undersea cables and fiber-to-the-home — dominated demand. However, the datacom sector, especially AI-driven data centers, now accounts for... » 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

Startup Funding: Q4 2024


The fourth quarter of 2024 saw five mega-rounds of over $100 million. One of the hottest areas continues to be AI hardware, with one company developing RISC-V AI processor IP bringing in nearly $700 million in the largest round for a chip design startup this year. It was far from the only AI startup, however, as several companies gathered support for neuromorphic designs focused on ultra-low po... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Arm joined forces with Korea's Samsung Foundry, ADTechnology, and Rebellions to create a CPU chiplet platform for AI training and inference. The new chiplet will be based on Samsung's 2nm gate-all-around technology. Intel and AMD, arch competitors for decades, formed an x86 ecosystem advisory group to collaborate on architectural interoperability and simplify software development. Samsung... » read more

Startup Funding: December 2023


Photonics and optics were strong in December, with investors funding two different companies using photonic technologies to develop AI chips and interconnects. Another key area — metaoptics — combines what traditionally would be separate lenses and optical components into a single, flat nanopatterned device. Metaoptics are being deployed in applications ranging from AI processing and sensor... » read more

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