Today's Semiconductors Pulse
Analyst Flags Intel’s Sky‑High Valuation Amid AI Hype
Gil Luria argues Intel’s valuation north of 200× earnings is out of step with the AI cycle, warning the market may be pricing a multi‑year boom that could stall. 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
Kioxia to Phase Out Older NAND Flash Products
Japanese memory maker Kioxia announced it will discontinue a range of older NAND flash products built on 32 nm, 24 nm and 15 nm process nodes, including floating‑gate and BiCS FLASH gen.3 devices. The phase‑out covers SLC, MLC and TLC variants in wafer, BGA, TSOP, eMMC and UFS formats. Customers must place final orders by September 30 2026, with shipments ending December 31 2028. Kioxia says the move is part of routine product‑lifecycle planning and does not affect items already slated for earlier retirement.
(PR) ASUS Announces UGen300 USB AI Accelerator
ASUS unveiled the UGen300 USB AI Accelerator, its first AI‑focused USB device powered by Hailo’s 10H processor delivering 40 AI TOPS. The compact 105 × 50 × 18 mm module packs 8 GB of LPDDR4 memory and draws only 2.5 W via a USB‑C interface. It offers plug‑and‑play compatibility...
(PR) AI Compute Demand Drives 44% YoY Growth for Top 10 Global Fabless IC Firms in 2025
AI compute demand propelled the top ten global fabless IC designers to $359.4 billion in 2025, a 44 % year‑over‑year increase. NVIDIA led the pack with $205.7 billion revenue, accounting for 57 % of the group’s total, while Broadcom rose to second place thanks...
Aehr Gains Initial Order From New Silicon Photonics Transceiver Customer
Semiconductor test equipment maker Aehr Test Systems announced an initial order from a major, unnamed networking supplier developing silicon‑photonic transceivers for hyperscale AI and cloud data centers. The order includes several FOX‑XP wafer‑level burn‑in systems capable of testing nine wafers...
Secure at First Silicon: Reducing Cost and Risk
Side‑channel leakage often surfaces only after first silicon, forcing expensive redesigns. The Inspector Pre‑Silicon framework embeds side‑channel analysis into RTL and gate‑level verification, generating test vectors and statistical metrics to identify leakage early. By providing actionable, module‑level insights throughout the...
Revolutionary New DDR Standards Expected
The article reviews the historical scaling limits of DDR DRAM and highlights that DDR5 now supports only one DIMM per channel, a trend that may continue with DDR6. Industry insiders speculate that DDR7 could eliminate DIMMs entirely, dramatically reducing bus...
Telink TL3228 – Low-Power, Low-Latency Dual-Core RISC-V Wireless MCU Supports Bluetooth 6.0, 802.15.4, and 2.4 GHz Proprietary
Telink introduced the TL3228, the first chip in its TL322x wireless MCU family, featuring a 192 MHz dual‑core RISC‑V processor and support for Bluetooth 6.0, Matter, Thread, Zigbee, RF4CE, and a proprietary 2.4 GHz radio. The MCU offers up to 6 Mbps data rates,...
Advanced Nodes to Dominate 2026 SoC Shipments
Advanced nodes (5nm and below) accounted for over 50% of smartphone SoC shipments in 2025 and are projected to reach nearly 60% in 2026, according to Counterpoint Research. Samsung debuted its 2nm Exynos 2600 in the Galaxy S26, while Apple,...
Arrow Electronics Launches Omnichannel Platform for Components Business
Arrow Electronics has unified its global components business under a redesigned, omnichannel arrow.com platform, retiring the legacy MyArrow portal. The new site merges product selection, purchasing, services, and account management into a single digital workflow. It also embeds direct access...
Arm’s First-Ever Silicon Products Targeted at AI Data Centers
Arm Holdings has launched the Arm AGI CPU, its first production silicon product aimed at AI data‑center workloads. The chip packs up to 136 Neoverse V3 cores, a 300‑watt TDP and can deliver more than twice the rack performance of...
Nvidia‑Marvell Tie‑up Could Lock Supply Chain via Custom XPU Racks
Per the $NVDA + $MRVL investment... I do wonder if this also opens the door to $NVDA selling CPU racks to custom XPUs made by $MRVL for hyperscale customers. Obvsiously, it does help them lock up more parts of the...
DRAM Price Rally Pauses in March, Seen Resuming in Second Quarter
The year‑long rally in DRAM prices paused in March as pre‑negotiated contracts locked the average 8 Gb DDR4 price at $13, ending 11 months of double‑digit growth. First‑quarter DRAM prices still surged 100‑115% versus the prior quarter, reflecting strong demand. TrendForce...
Telechips Advances Network Gateway Chip Business, Seeks Global Customers
Telechips is accelerating its network gateway chip business, launching proof‑of‑concept projects with select global customers as it seeks a profitability turnaround. The company is simultaneously expanding AI‑integrated automotive semiconductor offerings for ADAS and autonomous driving, while upgrading its in‑vehicle infotainment...
POET Technologies Q4 2025: Reading Past the Headline Loss
POET Technologies reported a Q4 2025 net loss of $42.7 million on $341 k revenue, yet its stock jumped 16.9% to $5.94 after the release. The loss was dominated by a $30.6 million non‑cash fair‑value adjustment on CAD‑denominated warrants and a $6.85 million accounting...
The $2 Billion Nvidia Deal With Marvell Is About A Lot More Than NVLink Fusion
Nvidia is investing another $2 billion in Marvell, extending a series of multi‑billion‑dollar bets aimed at shaping the AI datacenter supply chain. The partnership will have Marvell produce custom XPUs and NVLink Fusion‑compatible networking, leveraging its recent acquisition of XConn’s high‑bandwidth PCIe...
New ZEISS Crossbeam 750 FIB-SEM for High-Accuracy Sample Preparation Workflows
ZEISS introduced the Crossbeam 750 FIB‑SEM, a focused ion beam‑scanning electron microscope optimized for high‑accuracy sample preparation. The system features Gemini 4 electron optics and a high‑dynamic‑range Mill + SEM that provides a live, high‑resolution SEM view during any milling condition, enabling real‑time endpoint...
SK Hynix Orders Hybrid Bonding Equipment From Applied Materials and Besi
South Korean memory maker SK hynix has ordered a hybrid bonding inline system co‑developed by Applied Materials and BE Semiconductor Industries, valued at roughly 20 billion won. The equipment combines CMP and plasma modules with Besi’s die‑bonder, enabling mass‑production of next‑generation...
Metallium Announces Off-Take Agreement with Indium Corp for Critical & Precious Metals Including Gallium and Germanium
Metallium Ltd's US arm, Flash Metals USA, has signed a long‑term off‑take agreement with Indium Corp to purchase recovered gallium, germanium, copper, tin, gold and indium from Metallium's recycling operations. The contract runs for an initial ten years with automatic...
Mobilint Seeks to Supply NPU Chips for Shinsegae AI Checkout Systems
South Korean AI chip startup Mobilint has completed silicon proof‑of‑concept validation for its second‑generation NPU, Regulus, developed for Shinsegae Group’s AI‑powered checkout kiosks. The chip, fabricated on TSMC’s 12‑nm process, is slated for mass production in the second quarter and...
Samsung Electronics Adopts Hybrid Bonding Inspection Equipment
Samsung Electronics is rolling out hybrid bonding inspection equipment, partnering with Onto Innovation’s picosecond laser ultrasound system that is already being validated on mass‑production lines. The joint development targets detection of microscopic voids and overlay errors in high‑bandwidth memory (HBM)...
Rebellions Raises 640 Billion Won in Pre-IPO Round as First Korea National Growth Fund Pick
South Korean AI chip designer Rebellions Inc. closed a 640 billion won pre‑IPO funding round, valuing the company at 3.4 trillion won. The round, led by the state‑backed Korea National Growth Fund with 250 billion won, also included contributions from KDB and Mirae...
Causal Inference for AMS Design (U. Of Florida)
University of Florida researchers released a technical paper introducing a causal‑inference framework for analog‑mixed‑signal (AMS) circuit design. The method builds a directed‑acyclic graph from SPICE simulation data and estimates average treatment effects (ATE) to rank design parameters. Tested on three...
Latest Issue of Semiconductor Today Now Available
Semiconductor Today’s March 2026 issue spotlights rapid advances in compound semiconductors, noting a projected market size of roughly $5.2 bn by 2031 growing at a 14% CAGR. The publication highlights the ALP‑4‑SiC project for quantum photonic circuits, new growth methods for...
Phase-Shift Control ICs Squeeze More Efficiency From Resonant Converters
STMicroelectronics has launched two phase‑shift control ICs, the STNRG599A and STNRG599B, targeting resonant‑converter power supplies and lighting drivers. The devices operate up to 750 kHz, provide zero‑voltage switching, and improve no‑load efficiency while offering built‑in safety features such as X‑capacitor discharge...
Memory Market Still On Track for $200 B
Will do a memory market update next week. But in the meantime. Nothing has changed since this report a month ago. Memory still on track to ~$200B https://t.co/QSHAd1OxK2
Fujitsu Plans Dedicated 1.4nm AI Chip Manufactured Entirely in Japan by Rapidus — AI Chip to Be Designed and Manufactured...
Fujitsu announced plans to develop a dedicated AI inference NPU using Rapidus' 1.4 nm process, with an estimated development cost of ¥58 billion (about $363 million). The project, funded roughly two‑thirds by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization, will be designed...
RISC-V Now! — Where Specification Meets Scale!
RISC‑V Now! is a Silicon Valley conference designed to turn the open RISC‑V instruction set architecture into shipped products at scale. The event attracted roughly 600 semiconductor professionals from more than 250 companies, including industry giants such as Apple, Google,...
Kioxia Discontinues 2D NAND Products, Last Shipments to Be Made in 2028 — 1980s Planar NAND Memory Reaches End of...
Kioxia announced it will cease production of all 2D (planar) NAND flash and its third‑generation BiCS 3D NAND, with final shipments scheduled for December 31 2028. The phase‑out covers legacy 32nm, 24nm and 15nm planar nodes as well as early 64‑layer BiCS3...
Quantum Diamonds Expands to Asia
QuantumDiamonds GmbH announced Peter Lemmens as Managing Director Asia, coinciding with the launch of a new regional hub in Taiwan. The hire leverages Lemmens' 25‑year semiconductor leadership and deep Taiwan network to accelerate adoption of the company’s quantum‑diamond microscopy (QDM)...
Toradex OSM and Lino SoMs – 30×30mm NXP i.MX 93/i.MX 91 Modules with Solder-Down or B2B Connector Designs
Toradex introduced two ultra‑compact 30 × 30 mm System‑on‑Module families, OSM and Lino, built around NXP i.MX 91 and i.MX 93 processors for edge industrial and IoT use cases. OSM follows the OSM Size‑S standard with a 332‑ball LGA that is soldered directly to a...
Light Bends Perovskite Crystal Lattice, Opening Way to New Devices
Researchers at UC Davis have demonstrated that halide perovskite crystals undergo rapid, reversible lattice distortions when illuminated, a phenomenon termed photostriction. Using laser excitation and X‑ray probing, they showed the effect can be tuned by adjusting the crystal composition, light wavelength,...
Apple M5 Max MacBooks Are Getting Surprisingly Close to Real Gaming PCs
Apple’s latest M5 Pro and M5 Max chips are closing the performance gap with dedicated gaming PCs. Benchmarks by YouTuber Andrew Tsai show the M5 Pro delivering roughly 60 fps in upscaled 1440p on titles like Cyberpunk 2077, while the 40‑core M5 Max sustains similar frame rates...
AOI Receives New Order for 800G Data-Center Transceivers From Major Hyperscale Customer
Applied Optoelectronics Inc. (AOI) secured a volume order exceeding $53 million from a major hyperscale customer for 800‑gigabit single‑mode data‑center transceivers. The order supports AI‑driven GPU clusters and will be shipped between Q2 and mid‑Q3 2026 after product qualification. AOI’s CEO highlighted...
Nanya Raises $2.5 Bln, Signs DRAM Supply Deals with Kioxia and SanDisk
Nanya Technology raised roughly $2.5 billion via share sales and private placements to expand its DRAM production capacity. Kioxia invested T$15.6 billion for a 2 % equity stake and a long‑term DRAM supply agreement, while SanDisk committed T$31 billion and signed a multi‑year supply...
Intel Announces The "Optimization Zone"
Intel unveiled the Optimization Zone, a GitHub‑hosted repository that consolidates performance tuning guides and best‑practice recipes for Intel data‑center hardware. The hub currently includes optimization recipes for workloads such as Apache Kafka, Cassandra, Redis, and Spark, and provides BIOS tunables,...
T-Display-P4 Smartphone-Like Devkit Features ESP32-P4 MCU, ESP32-C6 Wireless SoC, and SX1262/LR2021 LoRa Transceiver
LILYGO has launched the T‑Display‑P4, a smartphone‑sized development kit that pairs the new ESP32‑P4 RISC‑V MCU with an ESP32‑C6 Wi‑Fi 6/BT 5.x module and optional SX1262 or LR2021 LoRa transceiver. The board offers a 4‑inch TFT or AMOLED screen, 2 MP camera, 32 MB...
Samsung Electronics Launches Silicon Photonics Foundry Business
Samsung Electronics' foundry division announced its entry into the silicon photonics market, unveiling a roadmap that moves from photonic integrated circuits (PICs) this year to optical engines in 2027 and turnkey co‑packaged optics (CPO) by 2029, with a next‑generation CPO...
LG Chem Targets 2 Trillion Won in Semiconductor and Automotive Electronics Materials Revenue by 2030
LG Chem announced a plan to double its semiconductor and automotive electronics materials revenue to 2 trillion won (about $1.5 billion) by 2030, up from roughly 1 trillion won today. The company created a new advanced R&D unit under its Advanced Materials Research Institute to...
Three-in-One Diode Integrates Sensing, Memory and Processing for Smart Cameras
Researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China have created a single semiconductor diode that simultaneously senses light, stores data and performs processing. By inserting an aluminum‑gallium‑nitride layer into a GaN p‑n junction, the device can switch among...
Photonic Chip Packaging Can Withstand Extreme Environments
NIST researchers have introduced hydroxide catalysis bonding (HCB) as a new packaging method for photonic integrated circuits, replacing traditional polymer adhesives with a glass‑like inorganic bond. The HCB‑packaged chips survived cryogenic temperatures, intense ionizing radiation, high‑vacuum conditions, and rapid thermal...
Researchers Demonstrate Laser Chips Performing Clock and Quantum Operations
Researchers at UC Santa Barbara and UMass Amherst have built a chip‑scale, visible‑light Brillouin laser that can be frequency‑stabilized to the narrow strontium optical‑clock transition and used to drive a trapped‑ion qubit. The integrated laser, paired with an on‑chip coil...
Rogue Valley Microdevices Launches MEMS Design Services
Rogue Valley Microdevices (RVM) announced the launch of MEMS Design Services, a foundry‑flexible offering that supports customers from concept through production‑ready design. The service provides three engagement models—Design only, Design with technology transfer, and full Design‑and‑Fabricate within RVM’s own fab—allowing...
New £10.4M Project to Grow Next-Generation Semiconductor Materials
The UK’s EXPRESS programme, a five‑year, £10.4 million EPSRC‑funded initiative led by the Universities of Warwick and Southampton, will develop next‑generation transistor and optoelectronic devices using transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs). Researchers will combine electrochemical deposition with bespoke precursor chemistry to grow...
Accelerator-Equipped MCU Brings Greater Access to AI in Cars
STMicroelectronics introduced the Stellar P3E, an automotive microcontroller that embeds a Neural‑ART accelerator for on‑chip AI inference. The MCU consolidates multiple ECUs, features six Cortex‑R52+ cores up to 500 MHz, and includes high‑density xMemory. By offloading machine‑learning tasks to the NPU, the...
High-Voltage Power Diodes Offer Higher Current Capacities, Faster Recovery Times
Dean Technology has launched two new high‑voltage diode families, the FH and SH series, expanding its medium‑power portfolio. The FH series delivers a reverse‑recovery time as low as 40 ns, a substantial improvement over the legacy 2CL line’s 100 ns, while supporting...
The Silicon Desert
The Silicon Desert map visualizes Arizona’s rapidly expanding technology ecosystem, covering semiconductor, hardware, software, AI, IoT, and life‑science sectors. It lists more than 50 participants, from early‑stage startups to Fortune 100 multinationals such as Intel, IBM, and Boeing. The Arizona Technology...
Display Driver IC Suppliers Mull Price Hikes Amid Rising Foundry, OSAT Costs
Display driver IC (DDIC) suppliers are confronting mounting cost pressure as foundry and outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) expenses rise. Foundry services account for roughly 60‑70% of DDIC costs, while backend packaging contributes about 20%, and limited 8‑inch wafer...
Week 13, 2026
The semiconductor and AI ecosystem is entering a phase defined by efficiency gains, massive infrastructure scaling, and strategic localization. This week’s highlights include Gartner’s forecast of a sharp decline in large‑language‑model inference costs, NVIDIA’s dual‑model AI stack, and Google’s near‑lossless...
Foundryecosystem Report: Capacity Shortages, Fabs, ASE, ATE
The latest Foundryecosystem Report highlights a severe shortage of leading‑edge foundry capacity for AI chips, as AMD, Nvidia and others scramble for wafers. Rising costs are also pressuring mature‑node display driver IC (DDIC) suppliers, prompting potential price hikes. Meanwhile, major...
EPIC Microsystems Raises $21M to Power Next-Gen AI Data Centers
EPIC Microsystems announced an oversubscribed $21 million Series A round, bringing its total capital to $26 million. The funding, led by Seligman Ventures with participation from Intel Capital and other venture firms, will accelerate commercialization of its hybrid switched‑capacitor (HSC) power delivery technology...