Chip Industry Week in Review


Advanced nodes and capacity The US Commerce Dept. told IC equipment makers to stop shipments to Hua Hong Group, China's No. 2 chipmaker, in order to protect America's lead, according to Reuters. Global AI competition is causing wafer and packaging shortages, but capacity increases are expected to come online later this year and in 2027 to ease the crunch, according to TrendForce. Leadi... » 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


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

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

Automotive Week In Review


Quick links: Automotive chips, Autonomous, EVs, Batteries, Policy, Research. Automotive chips  Mythic and Honda will jointly develop an automotive-grade AI SoC for Honda’s SDVs that leverages Mythic’s energy-efficient analog compute-in-memory technology. ST released a new MCU with AI acceleration for the automotive edge, integrating an embedded neural network accelerator. 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

Chip Industry Week In Review


Big deals and fundings Teradyne and MultiLane are forming a joint venture, MultiLane Test Products (MLTP), to accelerate the development of test solutions for high speed data connections.  Teradyne will be the majority owner. Ricursive Intelligence raised $300M Series A for AI-driven IC design. IonQ plans to acquire SkyWater for ~$1.8B, creating a "vertically integrated full-stack q... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Space Forge autonomously generated plasma aboard its ForgeStar-1 satellite, utilizing extreme low Earth orbit (LEO) conditions needed for gas-phase crystal growth of wide- and ultra-wide bandgap materials, GaN, SiC, aluminum nitride, and diamonds. Copper prices surged to a historic record of $12,600 per metric ton, an increase of more than 40% YOY, which will impact the cost of data center b... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


Deals of the week: Arteris announced plans to acquire cybersecurity provider Cycuity. “Expanding our technology portfolio to include Cycuity’s hardware security assurance products will enable our customers to achieve secure on-chip data movement,” said Charlie Janac, chairman and CEO of Arteris. Qualcomm acquired Ventana Micro Systems, a maker of RISC-V data center-class CPU IP. ... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


Samsung reportedly is hiking memory chip prices by 30% to 60% due to high demand from AI data centers and constrained supplies. Those shortages are causing ripples elsewhere. SMIC, China's largest foundry, said its customers are holding back orders for other types of semiconductor due to concerns about memory supplies. Meanwhile, interest in photonics and power semiconductors is picking up, ... » read more

← Older posts