Today's Semiconductors Pulse
AMD CEO says AI boom revives focus on CPUs
AMD CEO Lisa Su said the rapid expansion of AI workloads is refocusing attention on central processing units. AMD also announced it will invest more than $10 billion in Taiwan’s ecosystem to accelerate AI infrastructure deployment.
US To Award $2 Billion To Quantum Companies, Take Equity Stakes
The U.S. Department of Commerce is set to award roughly $2 billion in grants to nine quantum‑computing firms, with the federal government taking equity stakes in each recipient. IBM will receive the largest portion—about $1 billion—and will pair it with an equal amount of private cash to launch Anderon, a 300‑mm quantum wafer foundry. Other beneficiaries include GlobalFoundries, D‑Wave, Rigetti, Quantinuum, Infleqtion and Australian startup Diraq, receiving between $38 million and $375 million. The announcement sent quantum‑related stocks soaring, with IBM up 9.7% and Rigetti up 26.7%.
Angstrom Era Resets Semiconductors; LAM Accelerates New Geometries
Enjoyed kicking off the day with @LamResearch CEO Tim Archer and discussing why this moment for semis is different, how the angstrom era is causing a reset in semis, and what LAM is doing to help accelerate the adoption of...
Can a Sparse-AI Hardware Architecture for Data Centers Work?
Weight‑pruning and activation sparsity can compress neural networks up to 50× and reduce compute by 2‑10×, creating a theoretical two‑order‑of‑magnitude MAC reduction. The Sparse Computing Core Technology (SCCT) architecture leverages a multibus design with private SRAM per lane, offering three...
Keysight Enables End-to-End Electrical-Optical-Electrical Simulation for Data Center and Ethernet Design
Keysight Technologies launched an Electrical‑Optical‑Electrical (EOE) simulation capability in its ADS 2026 software, allowing engineers to model the complete signal chain—from electrical transmitter through photonic components to electrical receiver—in a single environment. The feature addresses the growing need for 800 Gbps...
Nvidia’s Jensen Huang Wants to Be King of a Brand-New Empire
Nvidia, the world’s most valuable chipmaker, announced its entry into the central processing unit market with Vera, its first standalone AI‑focused CPU launched in March. CFO Colette Kress said the product opens a new $200 billion total addressable market, with early...
Intel Says 14A Is on Track for 2028 Risk Production, 10A and 7A Now in Development
Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger confirmed that development of the 10A and 7A process nodes is now under way, while the 14A node is on schedule for risk‑production in 2028 and volume shipments in 2029. The company’s latest consumer CPUs –...
Anthropic Mulls Renting Microsoft AI Chips
Anthropic is in early-stage talks to rent Microsoft’s Maia AI accelerator chips, adding a new compute option beyond its existing Azure and Nvidia arrangements. The discussion follows a $30 billion Azure commitment made in November 2025 and reflects the startup’s push...
Taiwan Cracks Down on Forged Nvidia AI Chip Exports
Taiwan is seeking to detain three individuals for forging documents in order to export Nvidia AI chips to China 50 servers. Absurd. If the goal is frontier models, these are not the GPUs you are looking for... https://t.co/4yIR6tuMMK
AMD Ramps up 2nm "Venice" CPU Production at TSMC Taiwan and Arizona Fabs
AMD announced that its 6th‑gen EPYC "Venice" processor is now in production on TSMC’s 2nm node in Taiwan, with a future ramp at TSMC’s Arizona fab. The move is backed by more than $10 billion in Taiwan ecosystem investments and signals...
NVIDIA Predicts $1 Trn in GPU Sales, Moves in on CPUs
NVIDIA projects its graphics processors will generate roughly $1 trillion in revenue between 2025 and 2027, driven by surging demand for generative and agentic AI. The company just reported a record $81.6 billion in Q1 fiscal 2027 revenue, with its nascent CPU...
New Semiconductor Building Blocks Make Power Converters Smaller, More Affordable
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has demonstrated a power converter built with gallium‑nitride (GaN) semiconductors supplied by ROHM. The GaN devices switch 10‑20 times faster than traditional silicon, delivering higher efficiency while shrinking the converter’s size and weight. The compact,...
Infineon Expands CoolGaN BDS Portfolio with Compact 40 V Bidirectional GaN Switches
Infineon Technologies has added two compact 40 V bidirectional GaN switches, the IGK048B041S and IGK120B041S, to its CoolGaN BDS family. The devices shrink PCB footprint by up to 82% and halve component count by integrating two MOSFET functions into a single...
Trump Approved an Nvidia Chip for Sale in China. Beijing Doesn’t Want It.
President Trump lifted a long‑standing export ban, allowing Nvidia to sell its high‑performance H200 AI chip to China. The move was touted as a win for Chinese artificial‑intelligence ambitions and a revenue boost for Nvidia, the world’s leading AI‑chip maker....
Scaling the Memory Wall: HBM, CXL, and the New GPU Playbook
The AI data‑center market is confronting a growing memory wall as inference workloads demand ultra‑low latency and massive KV‑cache capacity. High‑bandwidth memory (HBM) remains the primary bandwidth solution, but supply constraints and thermal costs are driving prices up, with the...
AMD EPYC Venice Enters Production on TSMC 2nm Process
AMD announced that its next‑generation EPYC “Venice” processor is now ramping production at TSMC’s 2 nm fab in Taiwan, with later production planned for TSMC’s Arizona plant. Venice is the first high‑performance server CPU built on the 2 nm node, targeting cloud,...
Nvidia Revenue Jumps 85% on AI Demand
Nvidia reported record first‑quarter fiscal 2027 revenue of $81.6 billion, an 85% year‑on‑year jump driven by soaring AI infrastructure demand. The data‑center segment generated a historic $75.2 billion, up 92%, while networking revenue exploded 199% to $14.8 billion. Edge‑computing sales rose 29% to...
AMD to Invest $10 Billion in Taiwan's AI Industry to Advance Top-End Chips
AMD announced a $10 billion investment in Taiwan's semiconductor and AI ecosystem, targeting advanced chip packaging and manufacturing. The program will partner with local firms such as ASE, SPIL, Sanmina, Wiwynn, Wistron and Inventec to accelerate development of its Helios AI...
Advancing Heterogeneous Integration Through Industry Roadmap Improvements
A multinational research team led by Intel published a perspective in Nature Reviews Electrical Engineering calling for a new generation of heterogeneous integration (HI) roadmaps. The paper argues that existing roadmaps lag behind rapid advances in AI, 5G/6G, and aerospace,...
Semidynamics and SiPearl to Develop EU-Sovereign Rack-Scale AI Compute Platform
Semidynamics and SiPearl announced a joint effort to build a European‑sovereign, rack‑scale AI compute platform that pairs SiPearl’s Arm‑based CPU with Semidynamics’ RISC‑V AI inference ASIC. The system will adhere to Open Compute Project standards, delivering high density, performance‑per‑watt and...
Fraunhofer IPMS Develops Wafer-Level Chiplet Systems
Researchers at Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems (IPMS) have unveiled a wafer‑level quasi‑monolithic integration (QMI) technique that embeds chiplets into structured silicon pockets and levels them for back‑end‑of‑line wiring. The method bridges the gap between traditional chip packaging and...
Infineon 40V CoolGaN BDS Family Shrinks Portable Power Designs
Infineon has added two GaN bidirectional switches, the IGK048B041S and IGK120B041S, to its 40 V CoolGaN BDS family. The devices shrink PCB footprints by up to 82 percent and halve the component count by merging two MOSFETs into a single package. Both...
Scaling the Next Generation of Multi-Die Systems
The EE Times virtual conference on June 23‑24 will examine how to scale next‑generation multi‑die chiplet systems for AI workloads. Sessions focus on accelerating design flows, advanced packaging, interconnect standards and the thermal, power and yield challenges that arise at production...
Data Center Revenue Soars 92% as NVIDIA Turns in Another Record-Breaking quarter...and the Share Price Falls
Nvidia reported a record $81.6 billion revenue for Q1 2027, driven by data‑center sales that jumped 92% year‑on‑year to $75.2 billion. Net income surged to $58.32 billion, yet the stock slipped as investors worried about sustaining the pace. CEO Jensen Huang highlighted the arrival...
Acer Veriton GN100 Packs NVIDIA Blackwell AI Compute Into Compact Workstation
Acer unveiled the Veriton GN100, a compact AI workstation built around NVIDIA’s DGX Spark platform and the GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip. Despite measuring only 150 mm × 150 mm × 50.5 mm, the system delivers up to 1 petaFLOPS of AI performance, 128 GB of unified LPDDR5x memory, and a 4 TB...
Imec Unveils Quantum Dot Qubit Device Using High NA EUV Lithography
imec demonstrated a silicon quantum dot qubit array fabricated with High NA EUV lithography at ITF World. The device features 6‑nm gate gaps, enabling dense qubit integration compatible with 300 mm CMOS fabs. This marks the first integrated hardware using High...
AMD Unveils Ryzen AI Max 400 ‘Gorgon Halo’ APU with 192 GB Unified Memory and 5.2 GHz Boost
AMD announced the Ryzen AI Max 400 ‘Gorgon Halo’ APU, a refreshed SoC that supports up to 192 GB of unified memory, Zen 5 CPU cores, RDNA 3.5 graphics and a 5.2 GHz boost clock. The chip targets AI‑heavy consumer and workstation workloads, with...
NVIDIA Q1 FY2027 Earnings Beat Forecasts, Shares Climb 1.4% After Hours
NVIDIA reported first‑quarter FY2027 earnings of $1.87 per share on $82 billion of revenue, beating analyst forecasts of $1.77 EPS and $79.19 billion revenue. The results sent the shares up 1.37% in after‑hours trading, reinforcing confidence in the company’s AI‑centric growth strategy.
AMD Ryzen AI Max 400 ‘Gorgon Halo’ Packs up to 192GB of Unified Memory — Refreshed APU Uses Zen 5...
AMD has refreshed its Ryzen AI Max line with the Gorgon Halo‑based Max 400 series, offering up to 192 GB of unified memory and Zen 5/ RDNA 3.5 cores. The top Max+ Pro 495 model clocks a 5.2 GHz boost, 16 CPU cores, and a 40‑CU Radeon 8065S iGPU. AMD positions...
AMD Launches New Ryzen Processors and Ryzen AI Halo Dev Platform
AMD unveiled the Ryzen AI Halo developer platform, now available for pre‑order at $3,999 and powered by the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 processor with up to 128 GB unified memory and 50 TOPS AI performance. The company also announced the upcoming Ryzen...
Analysts Underestimated Nvidia Revenue by over Six‑fold.
This graph/chart for $NVDA is just hilarious... it shows where the sell side analysts were 3 years ago on their forward estimates... this was around the time that $NVDA started to crush numbers from the H100. Back in May 2023, analysts...
Analog Devices to Acquire Empower Semiconductor for $1.5 B, Expanding AI Power Portfolio
Analog Devices (ADI) agreed to purchase Empower Semiconductor for $1.5 billion in cash, a move designed to broaden ADI’s high‑density power‑management portfolio for AI‑driven compute. The deal positions ADI to deliver power conversion closer to processors, shortening delivery paths and improving...
Cerebras Says Its Chips Run a Trillion-Parameter AI Model Nearly 7 Times Faster than GPU Clouds
Cerebras Systems announced that its wafer‑scale CS‑3 chip can run Moonshot AI’s trillion‑parameter Kimi K2.6 model at 981 tokens per second, 6.7× faster than the leading GPU‑based cloud provider and 23× faster than the median. In a 10,000‑token coding task, Cerebras...
Four-Tier Memory Hierarchy for LLM Reasoning (USC, UW)
Researchers at USC and UW introduced a semantics‑aware memory hierarchy that partitions LLM token caches across four storage tiers—HBM, DDR, compressed, and evicted. By scoring token importance with cumulative attention, low‑importance tokens are offloaded to CPU memory and prefetched without...
Bull, Orange, Scaleway and Partners Unite on French AI Gigafactory Bid
A coalition of French and European tech leaders—including Bull, Orange, Scaleway, EDF, Capgemini, Artefact and Ardian—has formed the AION consortium to submit a bid for the EU’s AI Gigafactory program. The group aims to build a sovereign, high‑performance AI infrastructure...
Memory Makers Brace for Hydrogen Fluoride Pricing Shock as Hormuz Blockade Impacts Supply Chain — Key Etching and Cleaning Material...
The war in Iran and the resulting Hormuz blockade have disrupted the supply chain for anhydrous hydrogen fluoride, a key etchant used in memory‑chip fabrication. Prices in China have surged 130 % over early‑2026 levels as sulfuric‑acid costs jump 27 % and...
CPU IP Processes Mixed Scalar and Vector Workloads
SiFive unveiled its Performance P570 Gen 3, a RISC‑V out‑of‑order superscalar processor IP that blends scalar and vector execution. The chip promises a sizable performance uplift over the earlier P550 Gen 1 and complies with the mandatory RVA23 profile, including Hypervisor and...
Siemens EDA Expands AI and Advanced Packaging Collaboration with TSMC
Siemens EDA announced an expanded AI‑driven collaboration with TSMC at the 2026 Technology Symposium, targeting automated design rule checking, AI‑assisted physical verification, and intelligent design optimization via its Fuse AI System. The partnership includes certification of Siemens tools on TSMC’s...
Rivian Unveils In‑House Silicon for R2 SUVs, Boosting EV Sales Pitch
Rivian announced that its R2 SUV line will ship with a self‑designed Gen 3 Autonomy Computer, built on proprietary silicon developed in a Palo Alto skunkworks. The move gives the company full stack control, promises higher compute efficiency and creates a...
Intel’s Crescent Island PCB Leak Shows Xe3P GPU with 160 GB LPDDR5X Memory
A PCB leak posted by leaker YuuKi_AnS confirms Intel's upcoming Crescent Island accelerator will use the Xe3P architecture and 160 GB of LPDDR5X memory. The design, aimed at air‑cooled data‑center inference, could give Intel a pricing edge over Nvidia and AMD's...
Alibaba Launches Zhenwu M890 AI Accelerator, Tripling Performance of Its Own Chip
Alibaba Group unveiled the Zhenwu M890 AI accelerator at its Cloud Summit, promising three times the performance of the earlier Zhenwu 810E and 144 GB of GPU memory. The chip is aimed at agent‑centric workloads and marks a fresh escalation in...
Semidynamics Secures a Strategic Investment to Advance Memory-Centric AI Inference Chips
Semidynamics announced a strategic investment to accelerate its memory‑centric AI inference chips, aiming to overcome the industry’s “memory wall.” The funding will expand engineering teams, speed product development, and deepen ecosystem partnerships. By re‑architecting silicon around memory efficiency, the startup...
NVDA Lags SOXX Gains, Potential Catch‑Up Play
Big day today with NVIDIA earnings after the close. All 30 stocks in the semiconductor index #SOXX are positive in 2026 and are also showing positive momentum. #NVDA is the 4th worst-performing stock in the index, underperforming by 46.7%. Decent...
CXMT IPO Highlights China's Drive for DRAM Independence
Why is Chinese DRAM maker CXMT’s IPO attracting so much attention? For good reason... https://t.co/hlHmGbEzGt via @scmpnews
India Just Signed Its Most Consequential Chip Deal. The Hard Part Starts Now.
India and the Netherlands sealed a landmark MoU between Tata Electronics and ASML, committing the Dutch firm to supply EUV lithography tools and support for a new semiconductor fab in Dholera, Gujarat. The plant, built with a 50 % government stake...
Nvidia Ships First Vera CPUs to Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Oracle Cloud
Nvidia has delivered its first Vera CPU systems to Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, launching a custom processor designed for agentic AI. The rollout signals Nvidia’s push beyond GPUs into a new CPU class that could reshape AI...
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Signals Surprise China Market Opening Amid Rising Chip‑trade Tensions
Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang made a surprise appearance in Beijing, indicating an unexpected opening to the Chinese market despite escalating chip‑trade disputes. The move, timed with a high‑profile U.S.-China summit, could reshape Nvidia's growth outlook and the broader...
Hoth Plans Rocket One Rebrand and AI Chip Pivot
Hoth Therapeutics announced it will rename itself Rocket One, Inc. and restructure to focus on artificial‑intelligence semiconductor and spintronic computing technologies, while keeping its biotech programs in a separate subsidiary. The company secured exclusive licenses from Virginia Commonwealth University for...
When Arm Meets RISC-V: SiPearl, Semidynamics to Co-Develop Sovereign AI Platform
SiPearl and Semidynamics announced a joint effort to build Europe’s first sovereign rack‑scale AI platform, pairing SiPearl’s Arm‑based Rhea2 CPUs with Semidynamics’ RISC‑V inference accelerators. The first‑generation system will rely on DDR memory for the CPUs and full CPU‑accelerator memory...
Blackstone and Google Commit $5 B to Launch U.S. AI‑Chip Company Focused on TPUs
Blackstone announced a $5 billion equity commitment to a joint venture with Google that will create a U.S. company offering compute‑as‑a‑service using Google’s Tensor Processing Units. The venture aims to bring 500 MW of data‑center capacity online in 2027, positioning private‑equity at...
China Reportedly Blocks NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D V2 Imports
Chinese customs have reportedly denied import permits for NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5090 D v2, a GPU specifically engineered for the Chinese market. The block appears to originate from Chinese regulators rather than new U.S. export controls, catching NVIDIA off guard. Because the card...