Chip Industry Week in Review


The IEEE ISSCC conference was held this week in San Francisco. Among the highlights: IBM detailed an AI accelerator based on its new inferencing dataflow architecture. CEA-Leti presented a chip-scale, ultra-fast, battery-operated EPR spectrometer. QuTech introduced a cryo-CMOS SoC with NV centers in diamond. UTokyo showed its low-jitter PLL architecture for beyond 5G/6G. Imec d... » read more

The On-Device LLM Revolution


The AI world is experiencing a fundamental shift. After years of cloud-centric inference dominated by massive data center GPUs, we're witnessing an accelerating migration of language models to edge devices. These are not the trillion-parameter behemoths that require server farms, but the "Goldilocks zone" models: 3B to 30B parameters — large enough to deliver genuinely useful AI capabilities,... » read more

The Race Begins For Much Bigger Abstractions In Data Centers


Key Takeaways Data center build-out is enabling much larger and more complex abstractions. Competition is building for digital/virtual twins across multiple industry segments, including automotive, aerospace, and chip manufacturing. AI, and particularly AI agents, will play a significant role in sorting through data to find potential trouble spots. The frenzy of new data cen... » read more

Chiplets And 3D-ICs Add New Electrical And Mechanical Challenges


Key Takeaways • Chiplets and 3D-IC architectures add new thermal-mechanical stresses that can affect the reliability of entire systems. • As chiplets are assembled into packages, defectivity targets become more stringent for each component in a system. • Traditional silos are breaking down, forcing design teams to address issues such as materials choices that previously were handled by... » read more

Changes In Chip Architectures At The Edge


Edge computing is all about low latency, within a tight power budget, and with sufficient performance. This is very different from an AI data center, where the real focus is on data throughput between processor and memory. Achieving those goals requires a focus on what different processing elements bring to the table. Nigel Drego, co-founder and CTO of Quadric, talks about how these different c... » read more

Balancing Training, Quantization, And Hardware Integration In NPUs


Experts At The Table: AI/ML is driving a steep ramp in neural processing unit (NPU) design activity for everything from data centers to edge devices such as PCs and smartphones. Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss this with Jason Lawley, director of product marketing, AI IP at Cadence; Sharad Chole, chief scientist and co-founder at Expedera; Steve Roddy, chief marketing officer at Qu... » read more

Addressing Critical Tradeoffs In NPU Design


Experts At The Table: AI/ML are driving a steep ramp in neural processing unit (NPU) design activity for everything from data centers to edge devices such as PCs and smartphones. Semiconductor Engineering sat down with Jason Lawley, director of product marketing, AI IP at Cadence; Sharad Chole, chief scientist and co-founder at Expedera; Steve Roddy, chief marketing officer at Quadric; Steven W... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


Geopolitics Taiwan and the U.S. signed a trade agreement this week, with TSMC and other Taiwanese companies collectively pledging to directly invest at least $250B in investments in advanced semiconductor, energy and AI production and capacity in the U.S.  The agreement also included Taiwan providing another $250B in credit guarantees for additional IC supply chain expansions in the U.S., cap... » read more

How And Why To Optimize NPUs


Experts At The Table: AI/ML are driving a steep ramp in neural processing unit (NPU) design activity for everything from data centers to edge devices such as PCs and smartphones.  Semiconductor Engineering sat down with Jason Lawley, director of product marketing, AI IP at Cadence; Sharad Chole, chief scientist and co-founder at Expedera; Steve Roddy, chief marketing officer at Quadric; Steven... » read more

Annual Global IC Fabs And Facilities Report


Semiconductor companies announced a significant number of facilities in 2025 as global onshoring efforts continued across manufacturing, materials, packaging, design, and R&D. Investments came from both industry and government sources. Organizations worked together to solve current technology challenges, including soaring demand for AI chips and advanced memory, as well as complex applic... » read more

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