Chip Industry Week In Review


Deals, Funding Intel will join Elon Musk’s Terafab chip manufacturing project alongside Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI. Intel described its role as helping refactor silicon fab technology for a project targeting production of 1 TW/year of compute for AI and robotics applications. Intel and Google are expanding a multi-year collaboration on AI and cloud infrastructure, with Intel Xeon processo... » 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

Research Bits: Mar. 3


Computational electron microscopy Researchers from Cornell University, TSMC, and ASM used electron ptychography for atomic-scale defect inspection of transistors. The computational imaging method uses an extremely precise electron microscope pixel array detector (EMPAD) to collect detailed scattering patterns of electrons after they pass through transistors and compare how the patterns chan... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Big Deals and Fundings Rapidus secured US$1.7B in a new funding round from the Japanese government and the private sector to ramp 2nm production by next year. Open AI announced a $110B in new funding, with $30B from Nvidia, $30B from Softbank and $50B from Amazon. In a $100B multi-year deal, Meta will power its AI infrastructure with up to 6GW of AMD's GPUs. SambaNova and Intel ar... » read more

Research Bits: Feb. 24


Growing patterned diamond Researchers from Rice University developed a bottom-up microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition method for growing patterned diamond surfaces that could help decrease operating temperatures in electronics by 23 degrees Celsius. The team used two techniques for controlling seed crystal placement. Photolithography was used for small, detailed patterns. To scale up ... » read more

Chip Industry Technical Paper Roundup: Feb. 16


New technical papers recently added to Semiconductor Engineering’s library: [table id=523 /] Find more semiconductor research papers here. » read more

3D Printing To Create Spatially Freeform, Nanomaterial-based Electronics (Rice, U. of Utah, NUS)


Researchers from Rice University, University of Utah and National University of Singapore (NUS) published "Three-dimensional printing of nanomaterials-based electronics with a metamaterial-inspired near-field electromagnetic structure." Abstract "Three-dimensional (3D) printing can create freeform architectures and electronics with unprecedented versatility. However, the full potential of... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


SK hynix is ramping HBM manufacturing capacity to meet explosive demand for AI data centers. The company will launch 16-stack HBM4 next year, and up to 12-stack HBM4E. HBM5 and HBM5E will be introduced between 2029 and 2031, reports Business Korea. China will not have access to NVIDIA’s most advanced chips, President Trump told 60 Minutes. The Dutch economy minister said Nexperia's chip... » read more

Research Bits: Sept. 8


Gallium oxide pn diodes Researchers at Nagoya University fabricated functional gallium oxide pn diodes that can carry twice as much electrical current as previous gallium oxide diodes and waste less energy than silicon-based diodes. The key challenge in making the pn diode was creating a stable p-type gallium oxide layer. While gallium oxide's crystal structure easily accepts the atoms need... » read more

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

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