Today's Semiconductors Pulse
Analyst Flags Intel’s $200+ P/E as Overvalued Amid AI Hype
Analyst Gil Luria says Intel’s valuation, trading above a 200‑times price‑to‑earnings multiple, is out of step with the AI cycle and may be overstated. He notes Intel’s Q1 FY2026 revenue rose 7.2% to $13.58B but execution risk remains high, and points to Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom and Micron as lower‑multiple alternatives with stronger near‑term upside.
Also developing:
By the numbers: SiPearl raises $37M Series A
SEMI Appoints Mary Bischoping as Senior Director of Public Policy and Advocacy
SEMI announced Mary Bischoping as its new Senior Director of Public Policy and Advocacy, based in Washington, D.C. Bischoping will steer SEMI’s engagement with U.S. lawmakers on supply‑chain resilience, intellectual‑property protection, tax policy, and emerging technologies such as AI and quantum computing. She brings a decade of legal and policy experience, most recently as Deputy Assistant Secretary for the State Department’s Bureau of Emerging Threats. Her appointment signals SEMI’s intent to deepen advocacy for a robust U.S. semiconductor ecosystem.
Cohu Announces $30 Million Follow-On Orders for High-Performance Computing Test
Cohu announced two customers placed follow‑on orders worth $30 million for its Eclipse platform with active thermal control to test next‑generation high‑performance computing processors. The orders, to be delivered over the next few quarters, deepen Cohu’s footprint in the rapidly expanding...
ACM Research Introduces ACM Planetary Family Product Portfolio Structure
ACM Research announced a rebranding of its product line into the ACM Planetary Family, a process‑based portfolio organized around eight distinct series. Each series corresponds to a core step in semiconductor wafer and panel manufacturing, from cleaning to advanced packaging...
CEA-Leti, CEA-List and PSMC Collaborate to Integrate RISC-V and MicroLED Silicon Photonics Into 3D Stacking and Interposer for...
CEA‑Leti, CEA‑List and Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (PSMC) announced a strategic partnership to fuse CEA‑List’s RISC‑V design expertise with CEA‑Leti’s silicon‑photonic microLED technology into PSMC’s 3D‑stacking and interposer platforms. The joint effort will embed short‑reach, high‑bandwidth optical links and customizable...
Infineon Launches TLVR Quad-Phase AI Power Module
Infineon Technologies has unveiled the TDM24745T, a quad‑phase power module built on its TLVR (trans‑inductor voltage regulator) architecture for AI‑focused data centers. The 9 × 10 × 5 mm³ device packs four power stages, a TLVR inductor and decoupling capacitors, achieving a current density above...
Intel Linux NPU Driver 1.32 Adds Wildcat Lake Support
Intel has launched Linux NPU Driver 1.32, adding official support for the upcoming Wildcat Lake platform in Core Ultra processors. The new driver mirrors the earlier IVPU kernel driver update, delivering user‑space components that interface with the accelerator hardware. It also drops the...
Memory Supply Chain Faces Growing Constraints, Market Unaware
The memory point is not the only interesting comment here, but we have had a range of supply chain chats on memory, and I don't think the market fully grasps what's coming. We are stacking constraints at this point. This...
OpenLight Pushes Photonic Integration as AI Networks Drive Optical Scaling
OpenLight unveiled a photonic design platform that lets customers create custom photonic integrated circuits using standard semiconductor design tools, with lasers integrated directly onto the chip. The model mirrors fabless semiconductor companies, aiming to bring silicon‑scale economies to optics and...
Peak Nano and Advanced Conversion Partner on DC-Link Capacitors for 800 V+ SiC EV Inverters
Peak Nano and Advanced Conversion have teamed up to co‑develop DC‑link capacitors tailored for 800 V+ silicon‑carbide (SiC) inverter systems in electric vehicles and other e‑mobility platforms. The solution pairs Peak Nano’s NanoPlex LDF film, which holds a dissipation factor below...
Modder Gets Intel Core 9 273PQE "Bartlett Lake" To Boot Windows 11 on Z790 Motherboard
A modder has successfully booted Intel’s Core 9 273PQE “Bartlett Lake” processor on a standard Z790 motherboard. The 12‑core, 24‑thread chip, originally sold only to industrial OEMs and lacking official BIOS support, previously stopped at POST. By modifying the motherboard firmware, the...
ST Introduces STripFET F8 MOSFET Series for Automotive
STMicroelectronics launched the Smart STripFET F8 MOSFET series targeting automotive power‑distribution and battery‑management applications. The first part, STL059N4S8AG, is a 40 V, 420 A N‑channel device with a record‑low 0.59 mΩ RDS(on) in a compact PowerFLAT 5×6 package. Its high thermal conductivity, 175 °C rating...
Intel Reportedly Planning Another CPU Price Increase in May Amid Massive Demand
Intel is preparing a third CPU price increase in May, following 10‑15% hikes in February and a further 15% rise in March. The cumulative adjustment aims for roughly a 30% premium over 2025 pricing and will affect both Core Ultra...
GMKtec Launches NucBox K17 Mini PC with Intel Core Ultra 5 226V
GMKtec unveiled the NucBox K17, a 127.5 mm square mini PC powered by Intel’s new Core Ultra 5 226V Lunar Lake processor built on a 3 nm TSMC node. The system delivers 97 TOPS of AI compute across CPU, Arc 130V iGPU and a dedicated NPU,...
TSMC to Bring 3nm Production to Second Japan Fab by 2028
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) will equip its second Japanese fab for 3 nm production starting in 2028, targeting a monthly output of roughly 15,000 12‑inch wafers. The plant joins an existing Japanese facility that began mass production in late 2024,...
Vishay Launches First 8mm SMD-4 Automotive MOSFET Driver for EV Systems
Vishay introduced the VODA1275, an automotive‑grade MOSFET driver housed in an 8 mm SMD‑4 package with a 600 CTI mold compound, targeting high‑voltage EV and HEV systems. The device offers industry‑leading 80 µs turn‑on time—three times faster than rivals—alongside 1260 V peak isolation...
MGC Raises Semiconductor Materials Prices 30% as Packaging Material Costs Rise
Japan's Mitsubishi Gas Chemical (MGC) announced a roughly 30% price increase across its electronic materials portfolio, including copper‑clad laminates, prepreg, and resin‑coated copper, effective April 1, 2026. The company attributes the hike to higher raw‑material costs, rising labor expenses, and increased...
🍪 TWiC: Samsung SiPho, Mobile Demand, Nvidia+Marvell, Intel Fab, Claude Leak, ++
Samsung unveiled its SiPho Foundry platform, marrying high‑bandwidth memory with silicon photonics on a 300 mm wafer, positioning it as a turnkey alternative to TSMC. Meanwhile, memory‑driven cost pressures forced MediaTek and Qualcomm to slash 4 nm mobile chip shipments by 15‑20 million...
AUROS Technology Targets Mass Supply of 1nm-Level Metrology Tools This Year
AUROS Technology is finalizing qualification of its ultra‑precision thin‑film thickness metrology system with a leading domestic chipmaker, aiming to begin mass production this year. The tool measures film thickness at angstrom‑level accuracy, supporting etching, deposition and CMP processes, and could...
DEEPX Expands NPU Partnership With Lotte Innovate After PoC Approval
DEEPX announced on April 2 that its DX‑M1 neural processing unit has cleared Lotte Innovate’s proof‑of‑concept validation, prompting the two firms to move into a mass‑production phase. Lotte Innovate selected the DX‑M1 for its strong computational performance, efficient thermal management and...
Tungsten Supply Risks Mount as China Controls Exports, Japan Cuts WF6 Output
The semiconductor industry is confronting a new supply bottleneck as China tightens export controls on tungsten, the raw material for tungsten hexafluoride (WF6) gas. Japanese WF6 producers, responsible for roughly 25% of global output, plan to cut production in the...
Snapdragon X2's Adreno X2-85 GPU Sees Driver Improvements For Linux 7.1
Rob Clark submitted a batch of MSM DRM driver changes for the upcoming Linux 7.1 merge window, targeting Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 laptop SoC. The updates bring preemption support, SKU detection with speed‑bin tables, and error fixes to the Adreno X2‑85 GPU, while the...
Realtek RTL8159 10GbE to USB 3.2 Adapters Sell for About $55 and Up
Realtek's RTL8159 10 GbE‑to‑USB 3.2 adapters have entered the market at prices ranging from roughly $45 to $80, making multi‑gigabit Ethernet accessible for laptops and small‑form‑factor PCs. The WisdPi WP‑UT9 retails for $79 (about $87 shipped to the US), while the XikeStor...
Mobilint Raises 70 Billion Won in Series C Funding
Mobilint announced a 70 billion won Series C round on April 1, backed by Praxis Capital Partners, POSCO Investment and K Partners. The funding will fuel development of next‑generation neural processing units, expand mass‑production capacity, and support global market entry. Mobilint’s AI chip portfolio...
Qualitas Semiconductor Signs 2nm Edge AI IP License Deal Worth 1.3 Billion Won
Qualitas Semiconductor announced a design‑IP license agreement for its 2‑nanometer gate‑all‑around (GAA) MIPI C/D‑PHY, valued at roughly 1.3 billion won—about 21% of its projected 2024 revenue. The license, granted to a U.S. edge‑AI semiconductor firm, runs through March 30 2025 and carries no...
FuriosaAI to Mass Produce Second-Gen AI Chip, Supply to Samsung SDS Cloud From July
FuriosaAI announced mass production of its second‑generation Renegade AI chip, targeting 20,000 units in 2024 after an initial 4,000‑unit run. The chip upgrades to HBM3E memory, boosting capacity to 72 GB and delivering up to 20 petaflops per rack. Samsung SDS will...
MiTAC Shows Servers with Next-Gen CPUs and Solidigm SSDs at NVIDIA GTC 2026
MiTAC unveiled a next‑generation G‑Series server at NVIDIA GTC 2026, pairing dual AMD EPYC “Venice” CPUs with NVIDIA RTX Pro 6000 and 4500 Blackwell GPUs. The chassis places GPUs and Solidigm D7‑PS1010 PCIe Gen5 SSDs at the front, while NVIDIA ConnectX‑8 delivers eight 400 GbE...
C-Hawk Expands Southeast Asia Manufacturing Capabilities and Capacity with New Malaysia and Vietnam Facilities
C-Hawk Technology announced the opening of two new manufacturing facilities in Southeast Asia—a 200,000‑square‑foot plant in Johor Baru, Malaysia, and a 96,000‑square‑foot site in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The Malaysian location expands precision‑plastic production and adds PFA tube‑bending, while the Vietnamese factory...
IBM Announces Strategic Collaboration with Arm
IBM announced a strategic collaboration with Arm to create dual‑architecture hardware that blends IBM’s enterprise‑grade reliability and security with Arm’s power‑efficient designs. The partnership targets AI and data‑intensive workloads, emphasizing virtualization, high‑availability, and ecosystem growth. By integrating Arm‑based software environments...
GigaIO Sells SuperNODE and FabreX AI Fabric to D-Matrix
GigaIO announced the sale of its SuperNODE platform and patented FabreX PCIe Gen 5 AI fabric to low‑latency inference specialist d‑Matrix. The deal concludes a year‑long partnership that integrated d‑Matrix’s Corsair accelerators into SuperNODE, creating the industry’s most scalable inference node. Along...
Cohu Announces $30M Follow-On Orders for High Performance Computing Test
Cohu announced two customers placed follow‑on orders worth $30 million for its Eclipse platform with active thermal control, targeting next‑generation high‑performance computing (HPC) processors. The deals include a PAICe Prescriptive software subscription valued at roughly $330 K in annual fees, aimed at...
PrismML Launches World’s First 1-Bit AI Model to Redefine Intelligence at the Edge
PrismML emerged from stealth to launch the world’s first commercially viable 1‑bit large language model, the 8‑billion‑parameter Bonsai 8B. Built on Caltech research and trained on Google v4 TPUs, the model delivers performance comparable to full‑precision 8B models while using...
Embedded World 2026: Boards and Modules (Part 3)
Embedded World 2026 showcased five new edge‑AI boards and modules aimed at industrial and IoT markets. Variscite’s VAR‑SMARC‑MX8M‑PLUS brings a 2.3 TOPS NPU and dual Gigabit Ethernet, while congatec’s Conga‑SMX95 pairs an NXP i.MX 95 CPU with a 2 TOPS eIQ Neutron accelerator...
The Epoch Brief - March 2026
Epoch AI’s March 2026 brief highlights three new Data Insights, including a 4.1× annual rise in AI chip memory bandwidth now at 70 million TB/s, and reveals that advanced packaging and high‑bandwidth memory, not logic dies, constrained chip production in 2025. A...
AMD Details Upcoming Zen 6 PQOS Extensions: Advanced Bandwidth and Privilege Controls
AMD released a technical document outlining three new PQOS ISA extensions for its upcoming Zen 6 microarchitecture: Global Bandwidth Enforcement (GLBE), Global Slow Bandwidth Enforcement (GLSBE) and Privilege‑Level Zero Association (PLZA). GLBE lets system software set L3 cache external bandwidth caps...
Silicon Catalyst and Microelectronics US 2026
Silicon Catalyst has been named the exclusive strategic partner for the Microelectronics US 2026 conference in Austin, Texas. The two‑day event, scheduled for April 22‑23, will bring together more than 3,000 engineers, investors, and policymakers to discuss semiconductor design, AI hardware, advanced...
Mitsubishi Electric Enters ROHM–Toshiba Chip Integration Talks
Mitsubishi Electric has signed a memorandum of understanding to discuss integrating its power‑device operations with the semiconductor businesses of ROHM and Toshiba Electronic Devices, alongside Japan Industrial Partners and TBJ Holdings. The talks aim to create a globally competitive semiconductor...
This Chip Keeps Working at 700°C, Surviving Lava-Like Heat
USC researchers have built a memristor‑based memory chip that continues to function at 700 °C—hotter than molten lava—by stacking tungsten, hafnium oxide and a single‑atom graphene layer. The device stored data for over 50 hours without refresh, survived more than a billion...
NVIDIA Invests $2 Billion in Marvell to Expand NVLink AI Ecosystem
NVIDIA announced a $2 billion investment in Marvell Technology to broaden its NVLink ecosystem and support custom AI infrastructure. The partnership will deliver NVLink Fusion, a high‑speed interconnect that lets customers build rack‑level heterogeneous AI systems using NVIDIA GPUs, CPUs, DPUs...
Kioxia Killing Off Old NAND Chippery
Kioxia has issued an end‑of‑life notice for its third‑generation 3D NAND products, including 64‑layer planar and sub‑96‑layer chips such as SLC, MLC and TLC. Sales will cease in September 2026 with final shipments ending by the close of 2028, giving customers...
Tech Giants Wield Supply Chains to Crush Competition
Not just Apple making it hard on competition via supply chain power, but NVIDIA and Broadcom also. I outlined all this in my Master of the Supply Chain report. https://t.co/9ZCdGgQZVs
(PR) Solidigm Expands Sacramento Development, Fueling Global AI Leadership
Solidigm announced it has exceeded its original $100 million investment target in Greater Sacramento, now committing roughly $175 million to its Rancho Cordova headquarters and R&D campus. The company poured $75 million into a new NAND lab, added close to 100 NAND development tools,...
Memory Market Focus Shifts to Duration Over Demand
New report in the @DiligenceStack. Memory market update and sharing the framework for our tracking model of the cycle's durability. The Next Debate in Memory Is Duration, Not Demand https://t.co/gB1OsgGpBW
China's Homegrown Silicon Suppliers Gain Traction as Nvidia Struggles to Get Its Chips Into the Market — Huawei, Cambricon and...
Chinese AI and graphics chip makers have surged in 2025, capturing 41% of the domestic AI server market and cutting Nvidia's share to 55% from a claimed 95% peak. Huawei alone shipped over 812,000 AI chips, accounting for roughly half...
Nvidia Software Pushes MLPerf Inference Benchmarks To New Highs
At GTC 2026, Nvidia announced record AI inference performance on the MLPerf v6.0 benchmark, driven by its Blackwell Ultra GPUs and a refreshed software stack. The company’s Dynamo inference framework and TensorRT‑LLM optimizations delivered up to 2.77× speed gains and cut...
Bourns Adds AEC-Q Option to SSA-2 Current Sensors
Bourns announced an AEC‑Q‑compliant assembly option for its SSA‑2 analog current sensors, giving automotive, industrial and energy designers a qualified part without restarting the qualification process. The SSA‑2 series delivers precise current measurement, ultra‑low insertion loss and electrically isolated outputs...
650-V Bidirectional GaN Could Rewrite the Power-Conversion Playbook
Renesas introduced the TP65B110HRU, a 650‑V bidirectional GaN switch, at APEC 2026. The device merges a d‑mode GaN chip with silicon MOSFETs, offering 110 mΩ on‑resistance, a 3‑V gate threshold, and ±20‑V gate margin. Its true bidirectional operation enables single‑stage 500‑W solar...
Nexperia's China Unit Nears Fully Local Production of Chips: Company Sources
Nexperia’s China unit is on the cusp of achieving fully localized semiconductor manufacturing, according to internal sources. The move will enable the Dutch‑headquartered, Chinese‑owned chipmaker to produce a broader portfolio of chips within mainland China. Local production is expected to...
(PR) IBM Announces Strategic Collaboration with Arm
IBM announced a strategic collaboration with Arm to create dual‑architecture hardware aimed at enterprise AI and data‑intensive workloads. The partnership leverages IBM’s end‑to‑end system design expertise and Arm’s low‑power, scalable IP. IBM will integrate its Telum II processor and Spyre accelerator...
Nuvoton NuMicro M3331 Cortex-M33 MCU Features Built-In ARGB LED Controller, Optional USB 2.0 OTG Interface
Nuvoton has launched the NuMicro M3331 series of 32‑bit Cortex‑M33 microcontrollers running at 180 MHz, featuring a built‑in ARGB LED controller and an optional high‑speed USB 2.0 OTG interface on the M3334 variant. The devices offer up to 512 KB flash, 320 KB SRAM,...
Webinar – How to Reclaim Margin in Advanced Nodes
The ClockEdge webinar highlighted a hidden crisis in sub‑5 nm chip design: excessive guard‑banding caused by modeling uncertainty, which can strip 25‑35% of the clock period and cut performance‑per‑area (PPA) by up to 35%. Dave Johnson explained the “abstraction tax” and...