Chip Industry Week in Review

By The SE Staff - 06 Jun, 2025 - Comments: 0

Qualcomm announced plans to buy Alphawave Semi for ~$2.4 billion in a deal expected to close in Q1 2026. Qualcomm plans to leverage Alphawave Semi's connectivity products, including chiplets, to develop high-performance, low-power solutions for AI inferencing and customized CPUs in data centers. Qualcomm's traditional targets were mobile phones and edge computing. [Updated 6/9.] Global semic... » read more

AR/VR Glasses Taking Shape With New Chips

By Liz Allan - 05 Jun, 2025 - Comments: 0

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

Co-Packaged Optics Reaches Power Efficiency Tipping Point

By Laura Peters - 02 Jun, 2025 - Comments: 0

Commercialization has started for network switches based on co-packaged optics (CPO), which are capable of routing signals at terabits per second speeds, but manufacturing challenges remain regarding fiber-to-photonic IC alignment, thermal mitigation, and optical testing strategies. By moving the optical-to-electronic data conversion as close as possible to the GPU/ASIC switch in data center... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review

By The SE Staff - 23 May, 2025 - Comments: 0

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

Chip Industry Week In Review

By The SE Staff - 18 Apr, 2025 - Comments: 0

[Podcast version is here.] TSMC said it will produce 30% of its leading-edge chips in Arizona when all six of its fabs are operational, a total investment of $165 billion, Axios reported. In its latest SEC filing, the foundry said it continues to add capacity in Taiwan, Arizona, Japan, and Germany. The Trump administration launched a Section 232 investigation into semiconductors and relat... » read more

Chip Industry Technical Paper Roundup: Apr. 7

By Linda Christensen - 07 Apr, 2025 - Comments: 0

New technical papers recently added to Semiconductor Engineering’s library: [table id=419 /] Find more semiconductor research papers here. » read more

Photonic-SRAM Bitcell for High-Speed On-Chip Photonic Memory and Compute Systems (UW, USC, GF)

By Technical Paper Link - 04 Apr, 2025 - Comments: 0

A new technical paper titled "Design of Energy-Efficient Cross-coupled Differential Photonic-SRAM (pSRAM) Bitcell for High-Speed On-Chip Photonic Memory and Compute Systems" was published by researchers at University of Wisconsin–Madison, USC and GlobalFoundries. Abstract "In this work, we propose a novel differential photonic static random access memory (pSRAM) bitcell design using fabri... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review

By The SE Staff - 28 Mar, 2025 - Comments: 0

McKinsey issued a new report on the state of the chemical supply chain for semiconductors in the U.S., citing potential shortages of high-purity materials such as tungsten, aluminum and copper, lack of access to CMP slurries and photoresists for EUV, and rising competition for high-k precursors that can fetch higher prices outside of the U.S. CSIS weighed in on the U.S. goverment's recent ... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review

By The SE Staff - 07 Mar, 2025 - Comments: 0

The Malaysian government signed a deal with Arm to kickstart a chip design ecosystem. Until now, Malaysia has focused on packaging and test. Adding chip design represents a major change in focus. The country will pay SoftBank $250 million over 10 years for Arm’s chip design IP and train 10,000 engineers. Global chip sales reached $56 billion in January, up nearly 18% from the same period i... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review

By The SE Staff - 28 Feb, 2025 - Comments: 0

Intel said its new fab in Licking County, Ohio will be delayed due to financial struggles and a need to align chip production with market demand, reported the Columbus Dispatch. Construction is now estimated to be completed in 2030, with operations to start in 2030 or 2031. The company said it already has invested $3.7 billion locally. Apple plans to invest more than $500 billion in the U.S... » read more

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