Chip Industry Week in Review


Major Deals: Taiwan-based UMC is exploring possible collaboration with Polar Semiconductor for high-volume production of 8-inch wafers at Polar’s expanded Minnesota fab, a move that could provide domestic manufacturing capacity for automotive, data center, consumer, aerospace, and defense customers. Marvell will acquire Celestial AI for $3.25B, adding photonic fabric technology for o... » read more

TEE.fail: When Your Security System Leaves the Window Open


Let’s talk about a cybersecurity attack that’s been making waves: TEE.fail. TEE stands for Trusted Execution Environment. Sounds reassuring, right? But here’s the kicker: exactly what a TEE is, and what it’s supposed to guarantee, is surprisingly unclear. TEEs have been around for about a decade, but as with many things in security, the rules are more like guidelines. You might think, �... » read more

Small Language Models Create New Security Risks


The rollout of edge AI is creating new security risks due to a mix of small language models (SLMs), their integration into increasingly complex hardware, and the behavior and interactions of both over time. AI data centers still garner the most attention due to massive investments and an ongoing flood of deals and acquisitions, but the edge is quietly starting to take shape for several reaso... » read more

Physical AI Takes Functional Safety Cues From Automotive


Robots are becoming smarter, more capable, and more pervasive, setting the stage for a whole new round of growth that will touch nearly every part of the semiconductor and software industries for decades to come. Robots are at the core of physical AI, a broad segment of edge AI systems that interact with the world through artificial intelligence and sensors. This includes everything from hum... » read more

Harnessing Silicon Lifecycle Management For Chip Security


Silicon lifecycle management is starting to be used in ways that extend well beyond its original mission of ensuring a chip functions to spec throughout its expected lifetime. While tracking aging effects and component failures are still important, the technology also is being deployed to proactively monitor, authenticate, and respond to potential threats in real-time. In fact, not applying ... » read more

Optimizing AI Workloads For Edge Computing


Experts At The Table: Semiconductor Engineering gathered a group of experts to discuss how some AI workloads are better suited for on-device processing to achieve consistent performance, avoid network connectivity issues, reduce cloud computing costs, and ensure privacy. The panel included Frank Ferro, group director in the Silicon Solutions Group at Cadence; Eduardo Montanez, vice president an... » read more

FPGAs Find New Workloads In The High-Speed AI Era


FPGAs are finding new applications in the age of artificial intelligence, high-speed wireless communications, medical and life science technology, and in complex chip architectures where they can improve the flow of data. Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) enable designers to reprogram or reconfigure digital logic after the chips have been deployed, which is essential in the AI world, wher... » read more

Scaling AI Infrastructure: The Critical Role Of PCIe 7.0 Retimers


In a previous blog, Scaling in the AI Era: The Role of PCI Express 7.0 Switches in Next-Gen Data Centers, we explored how PCIe 7.0 switches enable high-bandwidth, low-latency interconnects for AI-driven data centers. Switches are essential for building flexible, composable architectures that connect thousands of GPUs, accelerators, and memory subsystems. But as AI clusters grow in size and comp... » read more

Power Integrity And Voltage Issues Get Harder To Detect And Solve


Voltage and power integrity are becoming increasingly critical and challenging for chip designers and architects, regardless of which process technology they are using or which market they are targeting. An explosion of features vying unevenly for current is increasing the number of constraints and possible interactions that engineers need to sort through to ensure reliability. These include... » read more

High Bandwidth Memory (HBM): Everything You Need To Know


In an era where data-intensive applications, from AI and machine learning to high-performance computing (HPC) and gaming, are pushing the limits of traditional memory architectures, High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) has emerged as a high-performance, power-efficient solution. As industries demand faster, higher throughput processing, understanding HBM’s architecture, benefits, and evolving role in ... » read more

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