How Is The Chip Industry Really Doing?


Throughout 2023, the general consensus among chip industry watchers was that IC sales were flat to down, fueled by market saturation for smart phones and PCs and excess inventory and capacity in DRAM and flash. But that doesn't tell the whole story, which is becoming highly nuanced and complicated. Unlike in the past, understanding how the chip industry is faring is no longer a simple math f... » read more

Blog Review: Jan. 17


Cadence's Rajneesh Chauhan introduces the Back-Invalidate feature in Compute Express Link (CXL) 3.0 and how it contributes to the efficient functioning of modern data center architectures by upholding cache coherence across multiple hosts and devices. Synopsys' Brett Murdock and Dana Neustadter point out the importance of protecting against DRAM attacks such as Rowhammer, RAMbleed, and cold-... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Jesse Allen, Karen Heyman, and Liz Allan Renesas will acquire Transphorm, which designs and manufactures gallium nitride power devices, for about $339 million. GaN, which is a wide-bandgap technology, is used for high-voltage applications in a slew of markets, including EVs and EV fast chargers, as well as data centers and industrial applications. Cadence acquired Invecas, a provider o... » read more

Blog Review: Jan. 10


Keysight’s Jenn Mullen explains how ChatGPT’s tools can help quality assurance (QA) engineers and software testers overcome test automation debt, and become more productive and able to deliver consistently high-quality products to market faster. Siemens’ Keith Felton discusses how the paradigm of “shift-left” power delivery analysis has emerged as a critical methodology in addressi... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Susan Rambo, Jesse Allen, and Liz Allan The U.S. government will provide about $162 million in federal incentives, under the CHIPS and Science Act, to help Microchip onshore its semiconductor supply chain. The move is aimed at securing a reliable domestic supply of MCUs and mature-node chips. “Today’s announcement will help propel semiconductor manufacturing projects in Colorado and O... » read more

Visa Shakeup On Tap To Help Solve Worker Shortage


Governments around the world are racing to train workers to design, manufacture, and package chips, but they are facing a talent shortfall that is expected to continue despite their best efforts — particularly for those engineers capable of designing and producing the most advanced chips. The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) predicts a U.S. chip worker shortfall of 67,000 by 2030, ... » read more

Blog Review: Jan. 3


Siemens' Stephen Ferguson looks at the history of computer aided engineering through the lens of how humans interact with computers, with each development enabling a step change in engineering productivity, and the new era on the horizon. Cadence's Krunal Patel finds that the security of data transmission can be improved by integrating Ethernet with Internet Protocol Security (IPSec), which ... » read more

Blog Review: Dec. 20


Siemens' Huw Geddes finds that the flexibility offered by the RISC-V ISA can introduce further verification and validation requirements to ensure that the combination of extensions and customization not just works but does not break anything else while delivering expected performance, plus looks at how processor trace can help. Cadence's Gustavo Araujo explains the various optimizations in t... » read more

Proprietary Vs. Commercial Chiplets


Large chipmakers are focusing on chiplets as the best path forward for integrating more functions into electronic devices. The challenge now is how to pull the rest of the chip industry along, creating a marketplace for third-party chiplets that can be chosen from a menu using specific criteria that can speed time to market, help to control costs, and behave as reliably as chiplets developed in... » read more

Shaping A Sustainable $1 Trillion Era


The semiconductor industry remains on course to reach a total of US$1 trillion in global revenue by 2030, with the journey from US$600 billion expected to take just a decade. At the CEO Summit during SEMICON Europa 2023, SEMI Europe President Laith Altimime attributed this remarkable growth to powerful megatrends, most notably artificial intelligence (AI). AI, in turn, is creating new opport... » read more

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