Chip Industry Week In Review


Computex in Taiwan: Arm and Nvidia introduced an AI PC platform, RTX Spark, with an Arm-based Grace CPU, Blackwell RTX GPU, and unified memory. Cadence announced a fully autonomous virtual agentic AI design engineer, enabling customers to run dynamic simulations in automated workflows. Intel launched Xeon 6+, its first data-center CPU built on Intel Foundry's 18A process. The company... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


ECTC Panel-level packaging, hybrid bonding, new substrates, and fine-pitch interconnects topped the list of advanced packaging technologies at ECTC this week. Among the announcements: ASE launched an automated 310mm × 310mm panel-level packaging production line. Expected to enter production in the first half of 2027, the line is compatible with FOCoS and FOCoS-Bridge pa... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Deals Marvell acquired Polariton Technologies, a Swiss developer of plasmonics-based silicon photonics devices. Onto Innovation is partnering with Rigaku, combining Onto’s analysis software with Rigaku’s CD-SAXS platform for advanced semiconductor process control. Onto also agreed to acquire a 27% stake in Rigaku for about $710M. Tesla plans to use Intel’s 14A process for its T... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Acquisitions and business pivots Teradyne acquired Israel-based TestInsight, a semiconductor test provider with pattern conversion, validation, and virtual test capabilities. Credo plans to acquire DustPhotonics, a developer of silicon photonics PICs for optical transceivers. Molex plans to acquire Teramount, a provider of detachable, passive-alignment fiber-to-chip connectivity solu... » read more

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


Arm uncorked its first internally developed CPU chip this week, aimed squarely at the agentic AI data center market. Arm CEO Rene Haas (pictured) emphasized the CPU's power efficiency and performance/watt compared to other AI processor architectures. "We are obsessed with efficiency, and if you think about one of the biggest appeals that Arm has had over the years, it is power profile," he ... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


War impacts The Iran War's toll on the chip industry is widening. Over 95% of Taiwan's energy is imported, causing the country to secure alternative sources. Korea is also heavily dependent on energy imports from the Middle East. Shortages of key materials are cropping up everywhere. Helium from Qatar, the second largest producer behind the U.S., is constrained by hostilities in the Per... » read more

New Automotive Architectures Are Shaking Up Processor And Memory Choices


Key Takeaways Assisted and autonomous driving require more data from more sensors, and much faster processing of some of that data. The shift to software-defined vehicles and centralized intelligence makes it easier to identify where the most advanced processors and memories are required, and where older and less expensive technologies can be deployed. Technologies that were largely ... » read more

Automotive Week In Review


Quick links: Deals and New Chips, Batteries and BEVs, Autonomous, Policy and Research. Deals and New Chips Infineon and BMW are jointly developing software-defined vehicles based on BMW’s “Neue Klasse” architecture and Infineon’s MCUs, high-speed Ethernet solutions, power management ICs, and power switches. Tata Electronics will manufacture Qualcomm's automotive modules in I... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


Intel hired ex-Qualcomm GPU guru Eric Demers for the company's high-performance GPU push, setting the stage for a three-way battle with Nvidia and AMD. The key targets for Intel and AMD will be better power efficiency and a programming model that rivals CUDA, but don't expect Nvidia to stand still. Acquisitions Texas Instruments plans to acquire Silicon Labs for ~$7.5B cash to enhance i... » read more

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