Enhancing Dexterous Humanoid Robot Hands With Superior Touch ICs


New Paths to Human-Level Dexterity Humanoid robots and other general-purpose robotic platforms have made astonishing progress in locomotion and perception. Some can now run, jump, and even perform flips, while advanced computer vision enables object recognition at scale. Yet true human-level dexterity requires more than just bipedal agility or high-resolution cameras: it demands a refined s... » read more

AI Pushes High-End Mobile From SoCs To Multi-Die


Advanced packaging is becoming a key differentiator for the high end of the mobile phone market, enabling higher performance, more flexibility, and faster time to market than systems on chip. Monolithic SoCs likely will remain the technology of choice for low-end and midrange mobile devices because of their form factor, proven record, and lower cost. But multi-die assemblies provide more fle... » read more

AI: A New Tool For Hackers, And For Preventing Attacks


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss hardware security challenges, including new threat models from AI-based attacks, with Nicole Fern, principal security analyst at Keysight; Serge Leef, AI-For-Silicon strategist at Microsoft; Scott Best, senior director for silicon security products at Rambus; Lee Harrison, director of Tessent Automotive IC Solutions at Siemens EDA; Mohit Arora, seni... » read more

6G Rollout Will Be A Patchwork At First


6G is expected to begin rolling out in 2030, but advances in 5G will inch cellular technology close enough that it will make the first 6G implementations seem more like just another upgrade. That's just the starting point, though. 6G technology gets much more interesting from there, connecting more devices at a significantly higher data rate, and enabling services that would be unattractive to ... » read more

The Complete Guide To Intelligent Edge Technology


The rise of edge technology is transforming how data is processed and decisions are made, right where data is generated. Unlike traditional cloud computing, intelligent edge computing pushes processing closer to the source, enabling faster responses and improved efficiency. The global edge AI market reflects this shift, which was valued at $20.78 billion in 2024. By 2030, it's projected to gro... » read more

Multimodal AI For IoT Devices Requires A New Class Of MCU


The rise of AI-driven IoT devices is pushing the limits of today’s microcontroller unit (MCU) landscape. While AI-powered perception applications—such as voice, facial recognition, object detection, and gesture control—are becoming essential in everything from smart home devices to industrial automation, the hardware available to support them is not keeping pace. The challenge? The broad ... » read more

Mobile Chip Challenges In The AI Era


Leading smart phone vendors are struggling to keep pace with the rising compute and power demands of localized generative AI, standard phone functions, and the need to move more data back and forth between handsets and the cloud. In addition to edge functions, such as facial recognition and other on-device apps, phones must accommodate a continuous stream of new communications protocols, and... » read more

AR/VR Glasses Taking Shape With New Chips


More augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and mixed reality (MR) wearables are coming, but how they are connected, and where image and other data is processed, are still in flux. Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses, for example, look like classic eyeglasses, but they rely on a tethered smart phone for such functions as taking pictures, AI voice assistance, and object identification. In contrast... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


Podcast: imec's roadmap and a one-on-one interview with the European research house's chief strategy officer. China's Xiaomi debuted an in-house-designed 10-core mobile SoC built on a 3nm process. The company did not identify the foundry. It also announced plans to invest 50 billion yuan (~$7B) over the next decade to develop high-end smartphone chips, as part of a 200 billion yuan (~$28B) c... » read more

Conversing With Your Dishwasher


What does "Error 22" mean on your smart appliance? Today, most people have to look it up on the internet, but that's about to change. John Weil, vice president and general manager for Synaptics IoT and Edge AI Processor business unit, talks about how AI can be inexpensively and efficiently utilized by mapping directly to a database using a natural language interface. Unlike today, that informat... » read more

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