Chip Industry Week In Review


IBM unveiled a 7Å transistor architecture that uses staggered nanosheet transistors stacked on a precisely beveled angle, almost like tiles on a roof. That allows more transistors to be crammed into a given area, boosting performance by 50% or power efficiency by up to 70%. Perhaps even more important, IBM claims a 40% improvement in SRAM scaling, which is orders of magnitude faster and lower ... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Dealmaking Amkor inked a 10-year agreement with TSMC to provide advanced packaging and test services in Arizona, tying TSMC’s U.S. fab expansion to domestic OSAT capacity. Trump said in a post that Apple will partner with Intel on chip design and production in the U.S., marking a second reported win for the chipmaker this month. Intel Foundry will also reportedly manufacture 3 million... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


ECTC Panel-level packaging, hybrid bonding, new substrates, and fine-pitch interconnects topped the list of advanced packaging technologies at ECTC this week. Among the announcements: ASE launched an automated 310mm × 310mm panel-level packaging production line. Expected to enter production in the first half of 2027, the line is compatible with FOCoS and FOCoS-Bridge pa... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


Advanced nodes and capacity The US Commerce Dept. told IC equipment makers to stop shipments to Hua Hong Group, China's No. 2 chipmaker, in order to protect America's lead, according to Reuters. Global AI competition is causing wafer and packaging shortages, but capacity increases are expected to come online later this year and in 2027 to ease the crunch, according to TrendForce. Leadi... » read more

Blog Review: Apr. 29


Synopsys' Madhumita Sanyal shows why interface IP has emerged as the keystone for building scalable, reliable 3D multi-die designs in which interconnects often have a greater influence on overall system capability than the peak performance of individual dies. Cadence's Frank Ferro checks out why SOCAMM2 built on LPDDR is being deployed in AI data centers, increasing memory bandwidth and capa... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Acquisitions and business pivots Teradyne acquired Israel-based TestInsight, a semiconductor test provider with pattern conversion, validation, and virtual test capabilities. Credo plans to acquire DustPhotonics, a developer of silicon photonics PICs for optical transceivers. Molex plans to acquire Teramount, a provider of detachable, passive-alignment fiber-to-chip connectivity solu... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Disruptions caused by the Iran conflict have taken about one third of the global helium supply off the market, an essential gas for semiconductor manufacturing, reports the World Economic Forum. Other potential impacts for the chip industry include bromine and other chemical shortages, logistical disruptions, and higher energy prices incurred by fabs in Asia. Top Deals IBM and Lam R... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Think tank IAPS' report on AI integrity attacks contends that advanced AI systems must be protected from hidden tampering, backdoors, or unauthorized changes that could alter their behavior or outputs, especially when AI adoption is scaling rapidly, with over 60% of the federal workforce now using AI every day. Geopolitics The U.S. government has drafted new export rules that may give W... » read more

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

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

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