Chip Industry Week In Review


Siemens announced plans to acquire Altair Engineering, a provider of industrial simulation and analysis, data science, and high-performance computing (HPC) software, for about $10 billion. Altair's software will become part of Siemens' Xcelerator portfolio and provide a boost to physics-based digital twins. Onto Innovation bought Lumina Instruments, a San Jose, California-based maker of lase... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Imec announced a new automotive chiplet consortium to evaluate which different architectures and packaging technologies are best for automotive applications. Initial members includes Arm, ASE, Cadence, Siemens, Synopsys, Bosch, BMW, Tenstorrent, Valeo, and SiliconAuto. Imec also launched star, a global network bringing together automotive and semiconductor innovators to address technological c... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Global spending on 300mm fab equipment is expected to reach a record US$400 billion from 2025 to 2027, according to SEMI. Key drivers are the regionalization of semiconductor fabs and the increasing demand for AI chips in data centers and edge devices, with China, South Korea, and Taiwan leading the way. The Biden-Harris Administration launched the National Semiconductor Technology Center’... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


The U.S. Department of Commerce issued a notice of intent  to fund new R&D activities to establish and accelerate domestic advanced packaging capacity. CHIPS for America expects to award up to $1.6 billion in funding innovation across five R&D areas, as outlined in the vision for the National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program (NAPMP), with about $150 million per award in each... » read more

MIPI Deployment In Ultra-Low-Power Streaming Sensors


Streams of data from higher-speed sensors pose throughput and latency challenges for designers. However, optimizing a design for those criteria can come at the expense of increased power consumption if not conceived and executed carefully. A device like a high-resolution, high-frame-rate home security camera in a non-wired application requiring frequent battery changes or recharging will likely... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Intel issued an advisory of a potential security vulnerability in some of its processors. The company recommends updating to the latest firmware version. NVIDIA unveiled its GH200 Grace Hopper platform, based on 144 Arm Neoverse cores and 282GB of HBM3e memory. Meanwhile, Chinese internet companies including Baidu, ByteDance, Tencent, and Alibaba ordered about $5 billion worth of A800 proces... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


U.S. President Joe Biden issued an executive order to restrict U.S. investment in Chinese companies, targeting semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum information technologies, and artificial intelligence systems with military or intelligence applications. Specific technologies within these groups will be defined later. Some will only require investors to notify the Department of the Tre... » read more

The I3C Interface Can Help Improve Performance In Sensor Applications


The I3C interface (officially the “MIPI Alliance Improved Inter Integrated Circuit”) was initially developed by the MIPI Alliance to support sensor interconnect in mobile applications. The MIPI Alliance is a global alliance of electronics companies that develop technical specifications for mobile applications, of which Renesas Electronics is a member. The original concept behind the I3C ... » read more

MIPI’s Focus Widens


Ashraf Takla, president and CEO of Mixel, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about the evolution of MIPI, from mobile displays to automotive, chiplets, and how the standard is evolving to keep up with increasing data volumes. SE: There has been a lot of activity around MIPI in automotive. What's driving that? Takla: One of the early use-cases for MIPI, after Mobile has been ... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Nvidia's proposed acquisition of Arm is officially off. The deal faced significant pushback from regulatory agencies in the UK, USA, and Europe, which feared it would reduce or limit competition in areas like data center. Nvidia indicated it would continue working with Arm, and it will retain a 20-year Arm license. (SoftBank will retain the $1.25 billion prepaid by Nvidia.) SoftBank said it wil... » read more

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