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.
Nvidia Is Buying the Chip Supply Chain
Nvidia disclosed that it has secured $95.2 billion in purchase commitments from its chip‑making and memory suppliers, an 89% increase over the prior quarter. The figure dwarfs the $11.4 billion the company is investing directly in its own facilities, highlighting a strategy of buying out the supply chain to guarantee AI‑compute components. By locking in massive volumes of HBM, DRAM and other parts, Nvidia aims to mitigate shortages that have plagued the fast‑growing AI market. The move signals a shift toward vertical integration for the AI chip leader.
Sanjay Mehrotra: From NAND Inventor To
Sanjay Mehrotra legendary LinkedIn work experience: > co-invents tech for NAND flash memory > co-founds SanDisk and runs for 28 years > sells SanDisk to Western Digital for $19B in 2016 > becomes Micron Technology in CEO in 2017 and market cap since grown...
Intel CEO Promises Partnership with Nvidia Will Produce "Exciting New Products"
Intel CEO Lip‑Bu Tan reaffirmed the ongoing partnership with Nvidia, highlighting joint development of hybrid System‑on‑Chip products that combine Intel Xeon or Titan Lake CPUs with Nvidia Blackwell, Rubin and RTX GPUs. The collaboration includes a custom Xeon‑based SoC with NVLink...
AI Will Go Decentralized, Running on Cheap Edge Devices
I believe that over the next 10-20 years, AI will become ubiquitous at about the pace smart phones did. But I don't think the giant AI businesses will survive. Instead, I expect we'll see AI running standalone on inexpensive, low-energy...
Top Companies Across Each Photonics Value Chain Layer
A breakdown of the photonics value chain and best positioned business: Layer 1: Materials & wafers • $GLW • $AXTI • $IQE • $AIXA • $AMS Layer 2: Core photonic devices • $IPGP • $COHR • $LITE • $LASR • $SIVE • Layer 3: Components & modules • $AAOI • $MTSI • $FN • $VIAV • $LPTH Layer 4:...
Trump Is Taking More than a Dozen U.S. Executives to China. Jensen Huang Isn’t One of Them
President Donald Trump is traveling to Beijing with a delegation of more than a dozen U.S. executives, but Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang will not join them. Huang has made several trips to China over the past 18 months, yet his...
Intel Rally Faces Reality Check After Triple-Digit Surge
Intel’s stock has surged more than three‑fold since late March as investors bet the chipmaker will win a sizable Apple foundry contract. Bank of America estimates the Apple opportunity could be worth $35‑$40 billion, potentially adding over $10 billion of annual revenue...
Nvidia: Still A Buy Despite Mounting Risks
Nvidia remains the AI and semiconductor bellwether despite recent under‑performance versus peers. The company targets over $88 billion in Q2 sales and maintains margins near 75 percent. Analyst Victor Dergunov keeps a Buy rating, raising the 12‑month price target to $275 while...
Majestic Labs Tackles Memory Wall with New Inference Infrastructure
@Majestic_Labs founding team predicted this 2 years ago and set out to build infrastructure inference compute to break through the memory wall:
SanDisk’s 2025 Spin‑Off Fuels $200 B Market Cap as AI Storage Boom Accelerates
SanDisk completed its spin‑off from Western Digital in February 2025 and has since surged more than 550% this year, lifting its market value above $200 billion. The rally is powered by exploding AI‑driven demand for NAND flash, while the company locks in...
AI Delivers Faster, Actionable DRC Closure for Complex SoC Designs
As semiconductor designs push below 2 nm, full‑chip design rule checking (DRC) can generate billions of violations, threatening tape‑out schedules. Siemens EDA’s Calibre Vision AI applies machine‑learning to group these violations into a few hundred actionable clusters and supports incremental OASIS loading,...
Massive News for Marvell Stock Investors: Nvidia Just Changed the Story
Marvell Technology (MRVL) announced a strategic partnership with Nvidia to supply custom silicon for AI data‑center workloads, bolstering its position in the growing AI infrastructure market. The collaboration has already spurred a sharp share price rally, with the stock up...
Record CASCI Index Driven by Strong Chip Performance
The only way to track the manufacture and shipping of AI Compute is through the CASCI Composite index, by @Culpium April's CASCI Composite hit a record. BUT: Chip strength made up for faltering momentum elsewhere in the supply chain. Head to...
NASA Partners with Microchip to Build Next-Generation Spaceflight Chips with 100x the Power of Current Offerings — Chip Designed to...
NASA has teamed up with Microchip Technology to create a next‑generation system‑on‑a‑chip (SoC) for spacecraft that promises 100 times the computing capacity of today’s spaceflight processors. The partnership will produce two variants: a radiation‑hardened chip for deep‑space, Moon and Mars missions,...
Limited Memory Supply Forces Customers to Cut Usage
For memory, Micron $MU etc According to SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won, who also oversees SK hynix, if companies like SK hynix do not increase their memory supply, customers will find ways to use less memory by optimizing their infrastructure and...
SoftBank Has Injected $450 Million Into This British AI Chip Company
SoftBank has poured $457 million into Graphcore, the UK AI‑chip maker it acquired in 2024. The capital injection is intended to accelerate Graphcore’s development of intelligence processing units for artificial general intelligence projects. The funding also dovetails with SoftBank’s wider AI...
Trump-Xi Summit Puts Rare‑Earth Mineral Tensions Front‑and‑Center
U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in Beijing to discuss trade, security and rare‑earth minerals, with Washington pressing Beijing to ease supply‑chain pressure on critical mining inputs. The talks come amid broader Middle‑East turmoil and a...
AMD Leaks Budget Radeon RX 9050 with 2,048 Cores, Targeting Strained Mid‑Range Market
AMD is reportedly developing a low‑end Radeon RX 9050 that carries the same 2,048 stream processors as its higher‑end RX 9060 XT, but with reduced clock speeds. The card would ship with 8 GB of GDDR6 on a 128‑bit bus, positioning...
China's Next-Gen CPUs and GPUs Prepare to Challenge Last-Gen Intel and AMD in 2027 — Loongson 3B6600 and 9A1000 Aim...
Loongson Technology announced its next‑generation 3B6600 CPU and 9A1000 GPU, slated for retail release in 2027. The 3B6600, built on a 12 nm process, aims to match the performance of Intel’s 12th‑Gen Alder Lake i5/i7 chips, while the 9A1000 targets parity with...
Zhejiang University Unveils Graphene Composite Doubling Strength and Boosting Conductivity Tenfold
A team from Zhejiang University introduced an "inverse phase enhancement" method that creates a bulk graphene‑polymer composite with 117% higher tensile strength and ten‑times the thermal conductivity of conventional composites. The advance could accelerate heat‑management solutions for AI chips, smartphones...
Taiwan’s Chips Power the Global Economy. China Holds the Leverage
Taiwan’s semiconductor champion TSMC supplies roughly 90% of the world’s most advanced chips and 99% of the AI‑training silicon that powers smartphones, electric vehicles and the global AI race. A serious disruption—whether from a blockade, customs inspections or outright conflict—could...
VIS Says AI Demand Drives Growth as Singapore Fab Fully Booked
Vanguard International Semiconductor (VIS) says AI demand is fueling semiconductor growth, with its Singapore 12‑inch wafer fab's first phase already fully booked. The fab will begin sample shipments in July 2025 and target mass production in the first quarter of...
The Semiconductor Industry Is Set to Surpass $1 Trillion by 2030, Driving Industry Innovation
The global semiconductor market posted a record $791.7 billion in 2025, a 25.6% jump, and is projected to top $1 trillion by 2026. Growth is driven by AI, data centers, 5G/6G, electric vehicles and edge computing. Marco Van Der Haar of Malvern...
Chip-Processing Method Could Assist Cryptography Schemes to Keep Data Secure
MIT engineers unveiled two low‑cost hardware innovations that could reshape security and computing at the edge. First, they devised a twin physical‑unclonable‑function (PUF) fabrication method that splits a chip so each half shares a unique fingerprint, enabling direct authentication without...
CEA-Leti and NcodiN Partner to Industrialise 300 Mm Silicon Photonics
CEA‑Leti announced a series of strategic collaborations aimed at scaling next‑generation silicon photonics and memory technologies. In partnership with French startup NcodiN, the institute will transfer the company’s nanolaser‑enabled optical interposer to a 300 mm silicon‑photonic process, targeting sub‑0.1 pJ/bit links for...
Unlocking Yield Improvements in Advanced Packaging Through Materials-Driven Failure Analysis
Advanced packaging—3D ICs, FOWLP, chiplets—now underpins AI, 5G, and edge computing, but its complex material interfaces are creating severe yield pressure. Traditional defect inspection alone cannot capture the subtle, multiscale failures that arise from thermal stress, CTE mismatch, and contamination....
Optimising SiCr Deposition for High-Yield Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS Manufacturing with Picosecond Ultrasonics
Picosecond ultrasonic (PULSE™) technology provides non‑contact, sub‑angstrom thickness metrology for silicon‑chromium (SiCr) films used in bipolar‑CMOS‑DMOS (BCD) devices. The technique, validated against TEM, achieved repeatability better than 0.5 Å (1σ) and captured wafer‑wide uniformity across 49 points. Simultaneously, reflectivity measurements revealed...
Shifting Supply Chains in the Era of Photonics
The article titled “Shifting supply chains in the era of photonics” appears to be unavailable, offering only a 404 error page. Nonetheless, the headline signals a growing focus on how photonics manufacturers are re‑engineering their supply chains amid component shortages,...
Beyond High-NA EUV: Particle Accelerator Technology Promises Exciting Future for Lithography
TAU Systems CEO Jerome Paye proposes compact laser‑wakefield acceleration (LWFA) free‑electron laser sources to replace traditional EUV lithography. High‑NA EUV is hitting both physical and economic limits, prompting a search for brighter, tunable light. LWFA can deliver orders‑of‑magnitude higher photon...
Another Surge for SiC
At CS International, onsemi’s senior director Mrinal Das highlighted silicon‑carbide (SiC) as the key enabler for megawatt‑scale power electronics in electric‑vehicle (EV) fast charging and AI data‑center servers. He noted that 1 MW charging is already available and that SiC’s modest...
What’s Really Needed For Advanced Test?
Advanced test in semiconductor manufacturing promises adaptive binning, feed‑forward models and real‑time analytics, but the industry’s biggest obstacle is data quality. PDF Solutions highlights that misaligned metadata and incomplete tool‑level data routinely break automated test flows, forcing engineers to intervene...
The Specialty Device Surge Part 3: Solving The Process Control Challenges Of MEMS, Photonics, Co-Packaged Optics, And More
The article outlines how specialty semiconductor devices—MEMS sensors, CMOS image sensors, SiC/GaN power transistors, and photonic/co‑packaged optics—require tighter process control than traditional logic chips. It details the specific challenges each class faces, such as wafer‑level uniformity, multi‑layer variability, and defect...
Complete End-To-End Closed-Loop Product Yield Ramp And Learning
Yield ramping at advanced semiconductor nodes is increasingly difficult as designs grow larger, more heterogeneous, and generate massive test data. A closed‑loop learning flow that ties together test pattern generation, diagnosis, volume analytics, and failure analysis can compress the learning...
Ensuring AI Reliability: Mitigating Silent Data Corruption Risks
Silent Data Corruption (SDC) is emerging as a critical reliability threat for large‑scale AI training and inference, as highlighted in a new Open Compute Project whitepaper co‑authored by NVIDIA, Google, Meta, and Microsoft. The paper links rising SDC rates to...
AI Accelerator Testing Depends On DFT Innovations
The rise of AI accelerators is reshaping semiconductor test flows, demanding deeper functional testing, advanced DFT techniques, and continuous monitoring throughout a chip’s lifecycle. I/O and lane‑repair capabilities are emerging as critical yield‑enhancing tools, while system‑level testing is essential for...
Advanced Metrology for Backside Metallization Using Picosecond Laser Ultrasonics
Picosecond Ultrasonics (PULSE) technology is emerging as the preferred metrology solution for backside metallization (BSM) in advanced semiconductor manufacturing. The non‑contact, non‑destructive method can accurately measure film thickness and elastic modulus across single‑layer and multilayer metal stacks ranging from 50 nm...
The AI Server Challenge: Testing Power At Scale
AI servers are hitting a power‑delivery bottleneck as accelerators run at ultra‑low voltages while drawing tens of amps. Multi‑stage converters are consolidating to higher distribution voltages to cut losses, but this raises the stakes for accurate, high‑current testing. Traditional test...
Home Win: Challenging The Traditional Semiconductor Manufacturing Model
Custom Interconnect Ltd. (CIL) has opened a 64,000 sq ft BP2 facility, the UK’s largest semiconductor packaging operation, featuring a 15,000 sq ft ISO 7 cleanroom and the only domestic wafer‑level chip‑scale packaging system. The plant integrates high‑volume PCB assembly with semiconductor assembly, delivering up...
Arm’s Software Chief Sees Human Language as the New Way to Program
Arm’s senior vice president for AI and developer platforms, Alex Spinelli, says the company is moving beyond chip design to build its own AGI‑class CPU and a new Performix software suite that lets engineers write code using natural‑language “recipes.” The...
Trump Unlikely to Hand Taiwan, TSMC Threatens His Security
This is why I would be surprised if Trump sold Taiwan out to China on this trip, as some are predicting. TSMC falling into Chinese hands would totally shift the compute balance toward China, making Trump and his family personally...
Senasic Clears HKEX Hearing as CATL-Backed Chip Platform Eyes IPO
Senasic Electronics Technology cleared its Hong Kong Stock Exchange listing hearing and is moving toward an IPO, backed by joint sponsors CICC and Guotai Haitong. The company, the world’s third‑largest automotive wireless sensing SoC maker and China’s largest, counts CATL...
AMD
Why not $AMD more though? I agree with the dynamic - as my saying goes - all viable compute will be used but Helios is going to be a beast. And AMD has CPUs. I know it’s a both situation...
ARM CEO Predicts 512‑Core CPUs as Agentic AI Reduces GPU‑CPU Ratio Relevance
ARM chief executive Rene Haas warned that the rise of agentic AI will drive data‑center CPUs toward 512 cores, shrinking the importance of traditional GPU‑to‑CPU ratios. He projected a $100 billion CPU market opportunity by 2030 and cited $2 billion in customer...
Micron SVP Warns Memory Bandwidth Bottlenecks Will Curb Data‑center GPU Efficiency
Micron senior vice president Jeremy Werner told The Circuit Podcast that memory bandwidth has become a strategic bottleneck for data‑center AI inference. He warned that without faster, larger memory, GPU utilization could fall sharply as inference workloads grow, prompting a...
Nikkei 225 Hits Record Intraday High, Then Slides on Profit‑Taking
The Nikkei 225 jumped more than 650 points, about 1%, to a new intraday peak in early Monday trading before giving back gains as investors took profits. Semiconductor stocks led the rally, while renewed Middle East concerns sparked the sell‑off.
KAIST Microcomb Chip Generates 22 GHz Low‑Noise Signals for Future 6G Networks
A joint KAIST team led by Prof. Kim Jungwon and Prof. Lee Han Suk unveiled a microcomb photonic chip that generates ultra‑low‑noise 22 GHz millimeter‑wave signals. The breakthrough promises to overcome noise and stability limits of electronic sources, paving the way...
Archer Materials Strengthens Pathway to Wafer-Scale Quantum Device Manufacturing
Archer Materials (ASX: AXE) is shifting its graphene‑based quantum device program from laboratory prototypes to wafer‑scale production using standard semiconductor processes. The company remains on track to showcase a functional qubit before year‑end, marking a critical milestone in its development...
Nvidia Accelerates Vera Rubin AI Chip Rollout with July Shipments and 2026 Mass Production
Nvidia has finalized trial production of its Vera Rubin AI platform in June and will begin shipping the first racks to major North American cloud providers in July. The company also set a timeline for full system rollout by the...
Roundhill Memory ETF Raises $6.5 B in 36 Days, Sets New Launch Record
Roundhill's DRAM‑focused ETF ($DRAM) accumulated $6.5 bn in assets under management within 36 days, propelled by a $1 bn, 13% single‑day inflow. The rapid growth marks the fastest ETF launch in history and highlights investor appetite for AI‑related memory infrastructure.
Chipmakers Lift S&P 500 and Nasdaq to Record Highs as Oil Prices Surge
AI‑focused chipmakers such as Nvidia, Intel and Qualcomm propelled the S&P 500 up 0.33% to 7,424 and the Nasdaq up 0.40% to 26,352, even as West Texas Intermediate crude rose to $98 a barrel. The rally underscores the outsized influence...