Chip Industry Week In Review


Notable deals Cadence and Intel Foundry inked a multi-year agreement to advance design technology co-optimization and create PDKs for Intel Foundry's 14A process. Nvidia and SK hynix announced a multi-year partnership to co-develop memory technology for AI infrastructure and physical AI. Teradyne unveiled an integrated test cell solution with TEL that supports known-good device scree... » read more

Orbital Data Centers Are Souped-Up Satellites – For Now


Key Takeaways: Today’s orbital data centers are better described as compute centers in space, as they resemble satellite constellations more than terrestrial data centers. The most common power solution is sun-synchronous solar at the poles, but this requires a multi-hop data relay from power-hungry compute to standard satellite constellations in the low-orbit mesh, then to Earth. ... » read more

Humanoid Touch And Voice Are Improving Rapidly


Key Takeaways Humanoid robots are rapidly expanding beyond factories and logistics toward broader, general-purpose roles (including in-home assistance), driven by advances in AI and sensing. Compared with vision and language, touch (haptics) and hearing/voice in real environments remain the hardest — and most commercially important — sensing challenges, requiring fast sensor fusio... » 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

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

Annual Global IC Fabs And Facilities Report


Semiconductor companies announced a significant number of facilities in 2025 as global onshoring efforts continued across manufacturing, materials, packaging, design, and R&D. Investments came from both industry and government sources. Organizations worked together to solve current technology challenges, including soaring demand for AI chips and advanced memory, as well as complex applic... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Deals: NVIDIA inked a $20B non-exclusive licensing deal with Groq for its inference technology. The startup's founder, Jonathan Ross, and some other employees will join NVIDIA to assist in scaling and advancing the technology. The non-exclusive licensing deal, versus an outright purchase, is a tool other companies have used to avoid antitrust regulation. Samsung Ventures made a strategic inv... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


Government funding/defunding NIST is terminating funding for the SMART USA Institute, a CHIPS Act research center focused on digital twins, prompting congressional concern that the decision disrupts active awards and weakens U.S. semiconductor R&D commitments. Korea Zinc was awarded $210M in CHIPS Act funding towards a new $6.6B Tennessee advanced smelter and minerals processing facility,... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


SK hynix is ramping HBM manufacturing capacity to meet explosive demand for AI data centers. The company will launch 16-stack HBM4 next year, and up to 12-stack HBM4E. HBM5 and HBM5E will be introduced between 2029 and 2031, reports Business Korea. China will not have access to NVIDIA’s most advanced chips, President Trump told 60 Minutes. The Dutch economy minister said Nexperia's chip... » read more

Research Bits: Nov. 4


Diffusive memristor for artificial neurons Researchers from the University of Southern California, University of Massachusetts, University of California Los Angeles, Syracuse University, and the Air Force Research Laboratory developed artificial neurons that replicate the complex electrochemical behavior of biological brain cells. “Our existing computing systems were never intended to pro... » read more

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