Startup Funding: November 2023


November was a banner month for quantum computing startups, with two raising rounds of $100 million for their superconducting and silicon spin qubit technology. Another significant round went to a company developing photonic-based systems. Several other companies drew funding, including one applying quantum sensors to semiconductor inspection. Sizeable funding also went to an autonomous tran... » read more

Startup Funding: September 2022


The onshoring and buildout of dozens of fabs, many costing tens of billions of dollars, is beginning to spill over into other areas that are critical for chip manufacturing. Materials, in particular, which often gets little attention outside of chip manufacturing, witnessed a big spike in September 2022. In fact, seven materials companies covered in this report made up more than a third of the ... » read more

The Silicon Carbide Race Begins


The growing adoption of silicon carbide (SiC) for a variety of automotive chips has reached the tipping point where most chipmakers now consider it a relatively safe bet, setting off a scramble to stake a claim and push this wide-bandgap technology into the mainstream. SiC holds great promise for a number of automotive applications, particularly for battery electric vehicles. It can extend d... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive Intel’s Mobileye and Sixt SE said they are collaborating on an autonomous ride-hailing services in Munich in 2022. Mobileye will own the robotaxi fleet. Mobileye also recently unveiled its electric autonomous vehicle (AV), which it will use in ridehailing in Munich and Tel Aviv.. To increase the supply of automotive chips, Intel said it will build new chip manufacturing facilit... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Edge, cloud, data center Synopsys launched its USB4 IP and tools, already with a successful tapeout of a USB4 PHY test chip on 5nm advanced FinFET process. The Designware USB4 IP’s throughput is up to 20 or 40 Gbps, which Synopsys says is the bandwidth needed for high-performance edge AI, storage, PC, and tablet SoC designs. Also, Samsung Foundry certified Synopsys’ Design Compiler NXT for ... » read more

The New Road Warriors


Chip vendors and other companies that have little or no experience in automotive are flooding into this market as the race for assisted and autonomous driving begins to heat up. This market is expected to pay big dividends for companies that succeed in helping to build the vehicles of the future in this century. IC Insights earlier this year forecast the auto chip market would grow 22% this ... » read more