Chip Industry Week In Review


By Susan Rambo, Liz Allan, and Gregory Haley. TSMC rolled out the second version of its 3Dblox, which creates an infrastructure for stacking chiplets and other necessary components in a package, along with a standardized way of achieving that. Two novel features are chiplet mirroring for design reuse, and what is basically sandbox for power and thermal analysis of different design elements. ... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Cadence will acquire Rambus' SerDes and memory interface PHY IP business. Rambus will retain its digital IP business, including memory and interface controllers and security IP. “With this transaction, we will increase our focus on market-leading digital IP and chips and expand our roadmap of novel memory solutions to support the continued evolution of the data center and AI,” said Sean Fan... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Arm advanced its progress toward an initial public offering, confidentially submitting a draft registration statement on Form F-1 to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The size and price range for the proposed offering have yet to be determined. Graphene IDM Paragraf acquired Cardea Bio, a maker of graphene-based biocompatible chips. Cardea has developed a biosignal processing unit... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


The UK government published its National Quantum Strategy, which outlines the plan to invest £2.5 billion (~$3.0 billion) over the next 10 years into quantum technology, including computing, sensing, timing, imaging, and networking. "We will develop UK strengths across different hardware platforms, software, and components, and reinforce our capabilities throughout the supply chains. Although ... » read more

Startup Funding: June 2022


Big money went to manufacturing in June, with a massive round for a Chinese analog foundry’s expansion to 55 – 40nm nodes. A fab management software startup also drew sizeable investment, as did a supplier of semiconductor-grade silicon components. Investors didn’t forget chip design, with three EDA companies receiving new funding, one of which drew over $100 million. Plus, numerous te... » read more

Startup Funding: November 2021


There's nothing virtual about the level of interest in AR/VR startups. As the concept of the 'metaverse' becomes more widespread with Nvidia's recent GTC announcements and Facebook's rebranding, investors poured money into startups with enabling technology for augmented, virtual, and extended reality. Most of those are developing waveguides and other display technology that is light enough to b... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


U.S. government officials met with semiconductor industry companies and automakers to request supply chain information it hopes could address the current semiconductor shortage, Reuters reports. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo hopes the information will enable them and industry to "get more granular into the bottlenecks and then ultimately predict challenges before they happen," but also wa... » read more

Startup Funding: September 2020


It was a good month for startups, with big rounds in automotive, data centers, and AI. A new startup with big backing is taking aim at energy inefficiency in the data center, and another is looking to make the industrial IoT battery-free. SK Hynix founded a new company to analyze semiconductor manufacturing data, and one of China's EV companies sees a massive cash infusion. This month, we look ... » read more

Startup Funding: April 2020


It was another strong month for automotive startups, with one autonomous trucking company in China drawing a massive $100M investment. Another hot area was optimization of machine learning deployments, including one new company launch. Quantum computing, etch equipment, and mmWave feature in this month's look at twenty-two startups that collectively raised $375M. Semiconductors & design ... » read more