Today's Semiconductors Pulse
SMIC clears final hurdle for $5.97B takeover of SMNC
China’s Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) secured regulatory approval to acquire the remaining 49 % of its Beijing‑based unit SMNC, valuing the stake at 40.6 billion yuan (≈$5.97 bn). The transaction will be funded by issuing 547.2 million A‑shares at ¥74.20 ($10.91) each, with a 12‑month lock‑up for sellers, making SMNC a wholly‑owned subsidiary.
SK Hynix to Invest $12.85bn in Advanced Packaging Plant in Cheongju, South Korea
SK Hynix announced a $12.85 billion investment to build the P&T7 advanced packaging plant in Cheongju, South Korea, with construction starting this month. The 230,000 sqm facility will house three floors of wafer‑level packaging and seven floors of wafer test lines, targeting completion of the test line by October 2027 and packaging line by February 2028. At peak construction, up to 9,000 workers may be on site, and the finished plant will employ about 3,000 staff. The project is positioned as a cornerstone of SK Hynix’s strategy to dominate AI‑driven memory markets amid a projected chip shortage lasting to 2030.
Transitioning Voltage Regulator Design From Unidirectional To Bidirectional
The article by Nazzareno Rossetti outlines the shift from traditional unidirectional voltage regulators to bidirectional converters, a change driven by modern energy‑management systems that must move power between electric vehicles, photovoltaics, home batteries, and the grid. It highlights how synchronous...
Nvidia's 800V DC Shift Redefines Data Center Power
everything you need to know about racks, power, cooling, and Nvidia's shift to 800 volt direct current - kelly and i spent months writing a 30 page report, complete with investment ideas - published it a few months ago. our...
Anker THUS Chip Enables Large AI on Wearables
Anker THUS chip breaks computing rules to put big AI models on wearable devices https://www.techradar.com/ai-platforms-assistants/anker-thus-chip-breaks-computing-rules-to-put-big-ai-models-on-wearable-devices
Samsung Is Increasingly Worried About First-Ever Mobile Division Loss in RAM Crisis, Report
Samsung’s mobile division is confronting its first potential operating loss as a global RAM shortage, driven by soaring AI demand, inflates component costs. The company’s head of MX, TM Roh, warned of a possible annual deficit, marking a stark departure...
MSI Pushes 128GB DDR5 to 9400 MT/S on X870E Platform
MSI demonstrated a 9400 MT/s DDR5 overclock on its MEG X870E Unify‑X MAX motherboard using a 128 GB configuration of two 64 GB dual‑sided modules. The record was achieved with a new BIOS that MSI plans to release soon, indicating the platform still...
China Shifts US Chip Tool Imports to Southeast Asia, $9.1B Surge in 2025
China’s imports of U.S. semiconductor equipment surged to $9.1 billion in 2025 via Malaysia and Singapore, while direct shipments from the United States dropped 34% to $2 billion, the lowest level since 2017. The shift reflects U.S. export controls, rising tariffs and...
How to Overcome the Advanced Node Physical Verification Bottleneck
Synopsys unveiled its IC Validator platform as a new answer to the mounting physical‑verification bottlenecks that accompany advanced‑node designs. The tool’s HyperSync distributed‑processing engine delivers 2‑4× faster full‑chip antenna and PERC ESD checks while slashing CPU usage by up to 70 %. Elastic...
Your Desk Is Now an AI Lab: RP Tech, an NVIDIA Partner, Demos NVIDIA DGX Spark in Bangalore
On April 11, 2026, RP Tech, an NVIDIA partner, showcased the NVIDIA DGX Spark at a Bangalore event, demonstrating a 1.2 kg tabletop AI supercomputer with 128 GB unified memory. The device loaded a 120‑billion‑parameter Nemotron 3 model in quantized form, delivering near‑full GPU utilization for...
Intel LLM-Scaler vllm-0.14.0-b8.2 Released With Official Arc Pro B70 Support
Intel released LLM‑Scaler vllm‑0.14.0‑b8.2, officially adding support for the Arc Pro B70 GPU. The update refreshes the Docker platform image to intel/llm-scaler-platform:26.18.8.2 and continues the Project Battlematrix push for multi‑GPU AI inference on Intel Arc hardware. The B70, a 32 GB VRAM card...
Earth Week 2026: Advancing Sustainable Manufacturing for the Essential Technologies the World Relies On
GlobalFoundries (GF) used Earth Week 2026 to detail its 2025 sustainability progress across greenhouse‑gas cuts, energy efficiency, water stewardship, and waste reduction. The company lifted its 2030 Scope 1‑2 emissions target to a 42% absolute reduction, delivering about 105,000 tCO₂e cut in...
Google Cloud Announces Eighth-Generation TPUs, Boasting AI Training and Inference Leaps
Google Cloud unveiled its eighth‑generation tensor processing units, the TPU 8t for training and TPU 8i for inference. The 8t chip is 2.8× faster than the prior Ironwood generation, delivering 121 FP4 exaflops and supporting pods of up to 9,600 chips. The 8i...
We're Launching Two Specialized TPUs for the Agentic Era.
Google announced two new Tensor Processing Units—TPU 8i and TPU 8t—built for the emerging “agentic” AI era. TPU 8i focuses on ultra‑low‑latency inference, enabling autonomous AI agents to reason and act quickly. TPU 8t is optimized for training, offering a massive shared memory pool...
AI Designs RISC‑V CPU Core in 12 Hours
How Did An AI Agent Build a RISC V CPU Core In Just 12 Hours https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-chip-design?share_id=9374945
AI Agent Designs a RISC-V CPU Core From Scratch
Verkor.io unveiled VerCore, a RISC‑V CPU core fully designed by its autonomous AI system, Design Conductor. The agent took 12 hours to generate a 1.48 GHz core that scores 3,261 on CoreMark, comparable to Intel’s 2011 Celeron SU2300. Design Conductor orchestrates...
Hong Kong Advances Semiconductor Pilot Lines and Innovation Fund to Strengthen Greater Bay Area Collaboration
Hong Kong’s government announced a suite of measures to deepen Greater Bay Area (GBA) collaboration, centering on semiconductor pilot lines, a new manufacturing innovation centre, and a massive Innovation and Technology Industry‑Oriented Fund (ITIF). The Microelectronics Research and Development Institute...
Anker Launches THUS Compute‑in‑memory Chip to Power AI in Low‑power Wearables
Anker introduced its THUS compute‑in‑memory (CIM) silicon, fabricated in Germany, to enable large AI models on battery‑constrained Bluetooth earbuds. The chip integrates NOR flash memory with neural‑network style compute, targeting lower power consumption and new features like Clear Calls, with...
CVD Equipment Advances SiC Cystal Growth with University Collaboration
CVD Equipment Corporation successfully grew a high‑quality single‑crystal 4H silicon carbide (SiC) boule using its Physical Vapor Transport (PVT) system, in partnership with Stony Brook University. The crystal was shown to be polytype‑free and to have a low defect density,...
Russian Team Unveils Nanolaser with Record‑Pure 0.15 Nm Linewidth
Scientists from Saint Petersburg State University and partner institutes have built a semiconductor nanolaser whose emission line width is just 0.15 nm, five to ten times narrower than typical devices. The active region measures no more than 60 nm, a scale that...
AMD Taps GlobalFoundries for MI500 Photonics as It Advances CPO Design
AMD is developing a co‑packaged optics (CPO) version of its Instinct MI500 accelerator, using photonic integrated circuits fabricated by GlobalFoundries and multi‑chip‑module packaging from ASE. The CPO approach aims to boost bandwidth and cut power consumption by placing optical links directly...
Microchip Launches CLB MCUs to Improve Timing Control and Cut System Cost
Microchip Technology unveiled two new 8‑bit microcontroller families, the PIC16F13276 and PIC18‑Q35, that embed a configurable logic block (CLB) alongside traditional MCU functions. The CLB lets designers shift critical logic from software to hardware, cutting latency and improving predictability for...
The Quantum Bottleneck Isn’t Chips — It’s Lasers, and Vexlum Wants to Fix It
Vexlum, a Finnish spin‑out focused on III‑V semiconductor lasers, is transitioning from boutique production to its own semiconductor fab to satisfy rising demand for high‑power, low‑noise laser sources. Its VECSEL technology provides compact, multi‑wavelength lasers crucial for quantum computers, atomic...
EU to Launch Chips Act 2.0 in May to Speed Funding and Boost Local Ecosystem
The European Union will unveil Chips Act 2.0 on May 27, tightening the timeline for semiconductor funding and shifting subsidies toward home‑grown firms. The revised framework promises a more direct, faster disbursement process to avoid the delays that have hampered projects under...
Raspberry Pi RP2350 Board Offers NB-IoT Cellular Connectivity, GNSS, and Wi-Fi Indoor Location
Challenger+ has released a Feather‑compatible RP2350 board that adds certified NB‑IoT and GNSS connectivity via the ST87M01 modem. The dual‑core RP2350 MCU runs at 150 MHz and includes 8 MB PSRAM, 8 MB flash, and a USB‑C power interface. Cellular performance reaches up...
The Last 1.5mm of AI Power: Three Numbers From Vicor’s Q1 2026 Earnings Call
Vicor Corp. disclosed its second‑generation Vertical Power Delivery (VPD) module on the Q1 2026 earnings call, highlighting a 3 A/mm² current density, up to 40× current multiplication, and a 1.5 mm package thickness. The company also announced a capacity boost at its...
High-Throughput Diffuse Electron Projection Lithography
Researchers introduced diffuse electron projection lithography (DEPL), which uses a wide diffuse electron beam in air and patterned gold‑nanoparticle masks to pattern features as small as 4 nm. The technique demonstrated a throughput of 15 4‑inch wafers per hour and projects up...
Anker Made Its Own Chip to Bring AI to All Its Products
Anker unveiled the Thus processor, a custom AI chip that uses compute‑in‑memory architecture to embed neural‑net inference directly in audio, mobile accessories, and IoT devices. The chip, smaller and lower‑power than conventional AI silicon, will first appear in Soundcore’s upcoming...
Bosch Sampling Third-Generation SiC Chips to Global Automakers
Bosch has begun sampling its third‑generation silicon carbide (SiC) power chips to automakers worldwide. The new chips deliver about 20% higher performance while being significantly smaller, enabling more chips per wafer and lower costs. Bosch has invested roughly $3.3 billion in...
TU Delft’s Karen Dowling Receives NWO Open Competition ENW-XS Grant
Dr Karen Dowling of TU Delft’s Microelectronics Department secured an NWO Open Competition ENW‑XS grant to study gallium nitride (GaN) for thermoelectric applications in space. Her project will model, fabricate and test 2‑D GaN layers across a temperature span from 500 K...
Chips With Everything: Securing the Silicon Future
U.S. firms must shift from treating semiconductors as a routine procurement category to viewing them as strategic inputs, akin to energy generation capacity. Companies should stratify sourcing by criticality—optimizing commodity parts, securing dual‑source contracts for strategic chips, and building architectural...
Morgan Stanley: Agentic AI Shifts Value From GPUs to CPUs and Memory, Creating up to $60bn Incremental CPU TAM by...
Morgan Stanley’s latest research warns that the next wave of AI – termed “agentic” AI – will shift economic value from GPUs to the broader server stack, especially CPUs and memory. Multi‑step autonomous agents require extensive orchestration, making CPUs the...
How to Implement OTA Firmware Update on MCUs
The article walks design engineers through implementing over‑the‑air (OTA) firmware updates on NXP’s RW612 MCU using a “staging + copy” workflow. Because the RW612 stores its application image in external serial NOR flash, the update routine relies on NXP’s ROM‑resident FlexSPI API...
Blog Review: Apr. 22
The April 22 blog roundup highlights a series of industry podcasts and posts that dissect critical bottlenecks in chip verification, the rising complexity of analog‑mixed‑signal design, and security threats such as ATM jackpotting. It also showcases new verification IP for...
TSV Complexity Leads To Manufacturing Bottleneck
Through‑silicon vias (TSVs) are essential for 3D stacking and high‑bandwidth memory, but shrinking dimensions are driving up fabrication cost and defect rates. The surge in AI demand has strained HBM and advanced‑assembly capacity, creating a bottleneck in the limited pool...
TSMC Q1 Earnings Call: What It Means for SMH>
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company posted a record Q1 2026 revenue of $35.9 billion, a 40.6% year‑over‑year jump, while gross margin rose to 66.2% and net income surged 58.3%. Advanced 3‑nm and 5‑nm nodes generated 61% of the quarter’s sales, underscoring deep...
RAM Price Relief? SK Hynix Plans $13-Billion Korean Fab
SK Hynix announced a $12.85 billion investment to build a new advanced‑packaging fab in South Korea, with construction starting this month. The plant will focus on high‑bandwidth memory (HBM) chips that power AI accelerators, addressing a surge in demand driven by...
Google Is in Talks with Marvell About Two New AI Chips—Putting Pressure on Broadcom
Google is reportedly in talks with Marvell to develop two custom AI chips—a Memory Processing Unit and a new TPU optimized for inference. The discussions come after Google signed a long‑term AI‑chip supply agreement with Broadcom that runs through 2031....
Tech Component Shortages Boost Our Portfolio Holdings
There’s a shortage in • Memory + storage $DRAM $MU • Optical Transceivers $LITE $AAOI • Power infrastructure $VRT $ETN • CPU shortage $AMD $INTC And we own stocks in each of those sectors
From Embedded Systems to Edge AI: How STMicroelectronics Is Enabling Vietnam’s Electronics Industry
STMicroelectronics is deepening its foothold in Vietnam as the country moves from a manufacturing hub to a design‑centric semiconductor ecosystem. The company has nurtured local talent for nearly two decades, supplying free microcontroller kits to universities and hosting hands‑on Tech...
New Handbook Maps Emerging Materials Shaping Future Semiconductors
#Technology #Thread #Semiconductor #Manufacturing #Materials The Semiconductor Handbook Emerging Materials: 1/ - Recently, Researchers From Distinct Universities Wrote A Book Titled Handbook Of Emerging Materials For The Semiconductor Industry - This Comprehensive Handbook Is Essential For Understanding How These New Materials...
Helium Powers Chips, Not Just Party Balloons
How many people know that Helium is more important to the semiconductor industry than it is to birthday balloons…? 🤔
Micron Defends Patent Challenge, Federal Circuit Upholds Invalidity of Key Semiconductor Patents
Micron Technology persuaded the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to affirm the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s decision that two of its semiconductor patents are invalid. The ruling curtails Katana Silicon Technologies' infringement lawsuit and reinforces the...
Lam Research Corp (LRCX) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript
Lam Research reported record 2025 revenue of $20.6 billion, up 27% year‑over‑year, with gross margin at a historic 49.9% and operating margin of 34.1%. Diluted EPS rose 49% to $4.89, and the December quarter delivered $5.34 billion in revenue, marking ten straight...
SoftBank's New Memory Chip Venture Gains Government, Industry
SoftBank's next-generation semiconductor memory company government to support RIKEN, Fujitsu, etc. also solidify investment https://t.co/s7WUUwhf0M
ANU Spinout Raises $36 Million Series A to Make AI Chips
Australian National University spin‑out Syenta announced a AU$36 million (≈US$26 million) Series A round, led by Playground Global and the National Reconstruction Fund. The capital will accelerate commercialisation of its lithography‑free Localized Electrochemical Manufacturing (LEM) process, which promises 40% fewer steps and higher...
Photonic Chip Generates Milliwatt-Level UV Light, 100 Times Brighter than Before
Researchers at the University of Twente and Harvard have demonstrated a photonic chip that generates several milliwatts of ultraviolet (UV) light, a power level roughly 100 times higher than prior on‑chip attempts. The breakthrough relies on converting two red photons...
Arm Exec: New AGI CPU Has Big On-Prem Potential—But Limited Channel Play For Now
Arm unveiled its first silicon product, the AGI CPU, aimed at on‑prem AI data centers handling agentic workloads. The 136‑core, 300‑watt processor promises more than double the rack performance of traditional x86 CPUs and could save up to $10 billion per...
Why Indie Semiconductor (INDI) Just Made A Move Beyond Automotive
Indie Semiconductor announced on March 23 its first 399 nm ultraviolet‑visible distributed feedback (DFB) laser diode, a single‑frequency device tailored for quantum‑computing systems that use cooled ytterbium atoms. The UV laser adds to the company’s existing LXM‑U and narrow‑linewidth visible DFB lines,...
Arm Unveils First Data‑Center CPU, the AGI Chip, to Power Agentic AI
Arm introduced the Arm AGI CPU, its inaugural data‑center processor, built with Meta as lead partner. The move expands Arm’s licensing model into production silicon, aiming to meet the power, space and coordination challenges of next‑generation agentic AI systems.
Tenstorrent Demo Shows Ultra‑fast Video Generation on 256 BlackHole Chips
.@tenstorrent will launch its new gen cluster-scale systems next week, but in the mean time, Jim Keller @jimkxa and Jasmina Vasiljevic @JasminaVas gave me a sneak preview of their video generation demo running on 256 BlackHole chips (spoiler - it's...