Intel Begins iPhone and Mac Chip Production as Apple Explores TSMC Alternative: Report
Apple has started low‑end and legacy processor production for iPhones, iPads and Macs at Intel’s 18A‑P foundry, according to analyst Ming‑Chi Kuo. Roughly 80% of the initial order mix targets iPhone chips, with small‑scale testing slated for 2026 and a production ramp‑up in 2027. Intel aims for 50‑60% yield stability by 2027, while TSMC will still supply over 90% of Apple’s silicon in the near term. The move diversifies Apple’s supply chain amid global chip constraints.
TetraMem Announces 22nm Multi-Level RRAM Analog In-Memory Computing SoC Milestone
TetraMem announced the tape‑out and initial silicon validation of its MLX200 platform, a 22 nm multi‑level RRAM analog in‑memory computing system‑on‑chip. Fabricated on TSMC’s 22 nm process, the SoC integrates mixed‑signal compute engines that perform vector‑matrix operations directly in memory, aiming at...
Siemens Unveils AI-Powered Library Characterization to Accelerate Semiconductor Design
Siemens introduced Solido™ Characterizer, an AI‑driven addition to its Solido™ Characterization Suite, aimed at speeding up semiconductor library creation. The tool leverages predictive AI to generate SPICE‑based Liberty files up to seven times faster, shrinking turnaround from weeks to days....
Foundry Set To Boom
In October 2002 UMC CEO John Hsuan projected the silicon‑foundry sector to grow over 30% in 2003, while TSMC chairman Morris Chang forecast annual growth above 20% that could persist through 2010. Both foundries were operating below capacity—UMC at 60%...
Mobile DRAM Prices Squeeze Smartphone Production
TrendForce reports that mobile DRAM prices are soaring in Q2 2026, with LPDDR4X ASPs up 70‑75% and LPDDR5X up 78‑83% quarter‑on‑quarter. Samsung is pursuing an aggressive one‑step price hike while SK Hynix opts for a milder, phased increase. The surge forces smartphone...
The Tech Download: Trump's China Visit Left Chip Export Issue Unresolved, with Rare Earths Deal Still Uncertain
President Donald Trump’s May 2026 visit to China, accompanied by top U.S. tech CEOs, failed to address the looming chip export control dispute, leaving Nvidia’s H200 AI chip sales to Chinese firms in limbo. The bilateral talks also left the...
Japan Power Chip Alliance Talks Slow as Rohm Resists Integration
Denso has withdrawn its bid to acquire Rohm, leaving Japan’s power‑semiconductor consolidation in limbo. Ongoing talks among Rohm, Toshiba and Mitsubishi Electric are stalled by concerns over joint management control and operational integration. Meanwhile Toshiba and Mitsubishi have each launched...
Chip Export Controls Were Not a Major Topic in Beijing, US Trade Rep Greer Says
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told Bloomberg that semiconductor export controls were not a major topic at the recent US‑China bilateral meetings in Beijing. The administration, however, cleared Nvidia’s H200 AI chips for several Chinese firms shortly after the summit,...
Intel Razor Lake-AX Rumored with 32 Xe3 Graphics Cores
Intel is developing a Razor Lake‑AX client SoC that could ship with up to 32 Xe³ GPU cores, a dramatic increase over current mobile iGPUs. The graphics tile is rumored to cover roughly 162.84 mm² and may be paired with on‑package...
Chip Industry Week in Review
The United States approved Nvidia’s H200 chip sales to ten Chinese firms, though no shipments have been confirmed yet. Industry groups are pressing Congress to extend the semiconductor tax credit and broaden it to design activities as TSMC forecasts IC...
0.1μm-UMS GaN-on-SiC Technology: Qualification & Perspectives
United Monolithic Semiconductors (UMS) announced that its GH10-10 0.1 µm GaN‑on‑SiC technology has completed qualification and entered production. The new process delivers higher power density and faster switching speeds than previous generations. UMS says the qualification enables customers to accelerate time‑to‑market...
Applied Materials Boosts Its Outlook as AI Chipmakers Scramble to Add More Production Capacity
Applied Materials lifted its outlook for the current quarter, forecasting earnings of $3.36 per share and revenue of $8.95 billion, both above analyst estimates. The company posted Q2 revenue of $7.9 billion, an 11% year‑over‑year increase, and net income of $2.806 billion. Strong...
Mature Nodes, Missing Links And Niche Markets
China is accelerating its mature‑node semiconductor fab capacity, growing four times faster than global demand between 2015 and 2023. The country now accounts for roughly half of new mature‑node capacity projected over the next three to five years, squeezing Japanese...
AI Chip Maker Cerebras Systems Hits $95B Valuation After IPO, Giving Its Founder a 2nd Big Win
Cerebras Systems went public, pricing shares at $185 and closing at $311, which lifts its market cap to roughly $95 billion. The IPO sold 30 million shares, raising $5.55 billion, making it the biggest U.S. tech listing since Uber in 2019. The company’s...
Cerebras Risked It All on Dinner Plate-Sized AI Accelerators a Decade Ago. Today It’s Worth $66 Billion
Cerebras Systems completed a blockbuster IPO on Thursday, raising $5.55 billion and debuting with a market valuation exceeding $66 billion. The company’s wafer‑scale engines—giant chips the size of a dinner plate—have evolved from the first‑gen WSE to the current WSE‑3, delivering up...
Cerebras Stock Nearly Doubles on Day One as AI Chipmaker Hits $100 Billion — What It Means for AI Infrastructure
Cerebras Systems went public on Nasdaq at $350 per share, nearly double its $185 IPO price, instantly achieving a $100 billion market value. The company sold 30 million shares, raising $5.55 billion, the largest U.S. tech IPO since Uber in 2019. Its wafer‑scale...
US Clears H200 Chip Sales To 10 China Firms
U.S. Commerce Department has granted export licenses to roughly ten Chinese companies—including Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance and JD.com—to purchase Nvidia's H200 AI chip, the company's second‑most powerful accelerator. Each approved buyer may acquire up to 75,000 units, but no shipments have...
Cerebras Opens at $385. IPO Price Was $185 Raising $5.5B at the IPO Price
Cerebras Systems debuted on Nasdaq at $385 per share, more than double its $185 IPO price, delivering a 108% first‑day gain. The offering raised $5.55 billion, valuing the AI‑chip maker at over $100 billion on a fully diluted basis. Cerebras’ wafer‑scale engine,...
Nvidia Hits $5.5 Trillion Valuation With Zero Revenue From Its Former Biggest Growth Market: Could Huang Trip to China Accelerate...
Nvidia’s market capitalization surged to $5.5 trillion, eclipsing Apple and Google as the world’s most valuable public company. The jump reflects exploding demand for its AI‑focused GPUs, yet the firm reported zero revenue from China, its former biggest growth market. Analysts...
Power Corner: IDEAL’s SuperQ Tapping Si’s Potential Beyond Superjunction
iDEAL Semiconductor unveiled SuperQ, a silicon MOSFET architecture that replaces traditional superjunction P‑N pillars with an ultra‑thin high‑K dielectric in high‑aspect‑ratio trenches. This charge‑compensation redesign shrinks the blocking region to as little as 5% of the die, freeing silicon for...
Rethinking Superjunction’s Charge-Compensation Architecture with SuperQ
iDEAL Semiconductor’s SuperQ technology replaces the traditional p‑type pillars in superjunction MOSFETs with a nanometer‑thin high‑k dielectric film, reclaiming up to 95% of the silicon cross‑section for conduction. This asymmetric charge‑compensation architecture reduces specific on‑resistance while preserving high blocking voltages...
ADP: DRAM Shortage Is Affecting Ransomware Recovery
ADP’s chief strategy officer Stacy Hayes warns that the global DRAM shortage is crippling ransomware recovery more than backup. AI workloads are gobbling up memory, driving up hardware costs and lengthening lead times for the infrastructure MSPs rely on. As...
Chinese Companies Are Ramping up Homegrown AI Chips, Even if Nvidia Is Coming Back
Chinese tech giants Tencent and Alibaba say domestic AI chip supply will surge this year as they expand capital spending and integrate home‑grown GPUs into their data centers. The push follows a year‑long U.S. export ban that sidelined Nvidia, prompting...
T-Global Partners with SiPearl to Launch Taiwan–France Advanced R&D Initiative
T-Global Technology has teamed with French fabless CPU designer SiPearl in a two‑year joint R&D effort to create high‑thermal‑conductivity materials and two‑phase liquid‑cooling modules for high‑performance computing chips. The project, approved under Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs “A+ Driving Industrial...
Diodes Launches PCIe 7.0 Clock Generator for AI Servers
Diodes Incorporated introduced the PI6CG33A06, a six‑output ultra‑low jitter clock generator built for PCI Express 7.0 platforms in AI servers and high‑performance data‑center equipment. The device delivers RMS jitter below 30 femtoseconds, comfortably beating the PCIe 7.0 maximum of 67 fs, and supplies stable 25 MHz...
Tower Signs Customer Contracts for $1.3bn Silicon Photonics Revenue for 2027
Tower Semiconductor announced $1.3 bn of silicon photonics contracts for 2027, backed by $290 m in prepaid capacity reservations. The deals cover more than 50 active customers and set the stage for a larger wafer commitment in 2028. Tower is ramping multi‑fab...
Chiplets Need A New Workflow
Chiplet architectures are reshaping semiconductor development from single‑die design to a system‑level, multi‑die challenge. Engineers must adopt coordinated workflows that integrate design, packaging, verification, test, and reliability early to avoid costly failures before tape‑out. Multi‑physics analysis—thermal, mechanical, power, and signal...
Flash Getting Stacked High-Bandwidth Version
Sandisk, in partnership with SK Hynix, has unveiled a high‑bandwidth flash (HBF) memory stack that mirrors the footprint of HBM but delivers far greater capacity—up to 3 TB per 16‑die stack—and 1.6 TB/s read bandwidth. The NAND‑based architecture targets AI inference workloads, keeping...
Rigaku Working with Imec to Accelerate Next-Gen Semiconductor Metrology Development
Rigaku Corp. has launched a three‑year collaboration with European research hub imec to fast‑track X‑ray‑based metrology for next‑generation semiconductors. The partnership will develop 3D device metrology, ultra‑sensitive ultrathin‑film detection, and non‑destructive defect inspection to support emerging architectures such as Gate‑All‑Around...
MRAM Gets Its Own SIG
Magnetoresistive RAM (MRAM) has reached a maturity level that prompted the creation of the MRAM Alliance Special Interest Group (SIG) within the Storage Networking Industry Association. The SIG brings together foundries, chip makers, memory vendors, equipment suppliers and end‑users to...
UK AI Chip Startup Fractile Raises $220M to Tackle the Growing Inference Bottleneck
UK AI‑chip startup Fractile announced a $220 million Series B round to accelerate its next‑generation inference hardware. The funding, led by Accel, Factorial Funds and Founders Fund, backs Fractile’s effort to cut the time and cost of producing massive token outputs for...
Flyback ICs Extend Operating Power to 440 W
Power Integrations has launched the TOPSwitchGaN family, extending flyback converter capability to 440 W. The new ICs combine PowiGaN switches with TOPSwitch architecture, delivering up to 92% efficiency and eliminating the need for heatsinks in many applications. Operating at up to...
IC-Link by Imec Joins TSMC 3DFabric® Alliance to Accelerate Advanced Packaging and 3D IC Innovation
IC‑Link by imec has become a member of TSMC’s 3DFabric Alliance within the Open Innovation Platform, giving it direct access to TSMC’s 2.5D/3D silicon stacking and advanced packaging technologies such as SoIC, CoWoS and InFO. The partnership expands IC‑Link’s ASIC...
China’s AI Suppliers Can’t Keep Up as Component Shortages Bite
Chinese AI hardware vendors are confronting a severe component shortage that threatens to curb the rapid growth they enjoyed earlier this year. Demand for GPUs, ASICs and edge‑AI processors remains robust, but supply chain bottlenecks in semiconductors and advanced packaging...
Beijing Put Huawei’s Secret Chip Lab on National TV Two Days Before Trump Arrives. The Message Wasn’t for Chinese Viewers.
Beijing aired footage of Huawei’s secret chip laboratory on prime‑time CCTV just two days before President Trump’s state visit, turning the broadcast into a diplomatic signal. The Lianqiu Lake campus, a $1.4 billion complex that will host 35,000 researchers, showcases Huawei’s...
Nvidia’s Huang Wants to Sell Chips to China. Trump Has Other Priorities.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang will not join President Donald Trump on the administration’s upcoming trip to China, according to media reports. The omission suggests the White House is scaling back efforts to open the Chinese market for U.S. semiconductor firms....
Cerebras Targets $33B IPO as It Challenges Nvidia in AI Chips
Cerebras Systems announced an upsized IPO targeting $4.8 billion in proceeds at a roughly $33 billion valuation, with shares priced between $150 and $160. The chip maker, known for its wafer‑scale processor the size of a dinner plate, has secured a multi‑year...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...