Chips and Semiconductors

Processors, GPU units, on-device artificial intelligence, chip manufacturing, and industry news.

74 Articles

Silvaco Showcases Workflow to Accelerate Manufacturing-Aware Photonic Integrated Circuit Simulation

Silvaco presents a fab technology co-optimization and digital twin-based methodology to bridge 3D process simulation and AI modeling, enabling accurate simulation of PICs impacted by manufacturing reality.

2026-10-21

Chips and Semiconductors

Technical Review of Latest Semiconductor Developments: From Data Center Shifts to Global Talent Challenges

The latest semiconductor industry technical review highlights the shift of AI workloads to the rack level, the evolution of interconnect protocols, the adoption of digital twins, and global workforce challenges.

2026-10-21

Chips and Semiconductors

Key Technical Research in the Chip Industry: HBM Power Consumption, GAAFET Leakage Paths, and Agentic AI

The latest technical research papers highlight HBM high-bandwidth memory power consumption, leakage path analysis in GAAFET transistors, and the use of agentic AI in design and verification.

2026-10-20

Chips and Semiconductors

Tenstorrent raises $1.5 billion and lifts valuation to $6.2 billion to support AI chips

Inference chip startup Tenstorrent has raised $1.5 billion in funding, lifting its valuation to $6.2 billion to scale its chips dedicated to open-weight models and avoid acquisition.

2026-10-19

Chips and Semiconductors

RTX Spark Test: A Powerful Graphics Processor for AI, and a Mid-Range CPU

RTX Spark tests show that the NVIDIA and MediaTek chip delivers graphics and local AI performance approaching that of discrete RTX cards, with unified memory of up to 128 GB. However, CPU performance does not compete with Apple and Qualcomm’s best chips, while the price and variable power consumption may limit its appeal outside the developer and content-creator segments.

2026-10-15

Chips and Semiconductors

Seven Papers Chart New Paths in Semiconductors and Smart Hardware

A Semiconductor Engineering report reviews seven research papers covering the growth of two-dimensional semiconductors, ultrathin gate dielectrics, high-numerical-aperture EUV lithography, protection of AI accelerators from bit-flip attacks, and memory interfaces and integrated photonics.

2026-10-13

Chips and Semiconductors

Microsoft Expands Azure Maia Systems to Multi-Gigawatt Deployments and Announces Maia 300 for 2027

Microsoft announced that Azure Maia 200 has entered production, alongside an expansion of its chip and systems family to run AI inference operations across multi-gigawatt deployments starting in 2027. The company says Maia 300 will deliver greater energy efficiency and increased capacity for running long-context models and multistep agentic tasks.

2026-10-12

Chips and Semiconductors

A Busy Week in the Chip Industry: A $2 Billion Manufacturing Deal and New Technologies to Address AI Expansion

Semiconductor Engineering reviewed a selection of major developments in the chip industry, from the TSMC–GlobalFoundries agreement to manufacture CoWoS packaging components, to research into Hyper-NA EUV and major investments in AI chips, power, and data centers. The developments show that the bottleneck is gradually shifting from processor manufacturing to packaging, power, optical interconnects, and supply chain security.

2026-10-09

Chips and Semiconductors

Chip Industry Week: Design Agents, HBM Memory, Photonics, and Energy and Security Pressures

Semiconductor Engineering reviewed several major developments in the chip industry, from artificial intelligence agents for chip design and Spectre-v2 threats to the expansion of advanced packaging and photonics and the shortage of engineers. The overall picture reveals that the growth of AI infrastructure is simultaneously placing pressure on memory, energy, networking, and manufacturing capacity.

2026-10-02

Chips and Semiconductors

Why Chip Verification Needs a Connected Digital Thread, Not More Tools

The article argues that the complexity of modern systems has made simply compiling tests and reports insufficient, and that chip design teams need a verification thread linking requirements to configurations, tests, and results throughout the lifecycle. It explains that the value of this approach depends on the clarity of requirements and the recording of evidence and its context, not on tool integration alone.

2026-09-29

Chips and Semiconductors

Moores Lab AI Bets on Agentic AI to Accelerate Chip Design

Moores Lab AI is developing tools to automate stages of chip design and verification, saying its customers have been able to reach their first bug within 48 hours instead of waiting months. But the company acknowledges that AI reliability remains a critical challenge in an industry that does not tolerate mistakes.

2026-09-29

Chips and Semiconductors

Why Advanced Packaging Substrates Are Moving Toward Application-Specific Designs

Production capacity for substrates is no longer sufficient to meet advanced packaging needs; package size, layer count, interconnect precision, and integrated functions make each design increasingly similar to a specialized manufacturing process. This affects materials, equipment, qualification, and supply sources, particularly in artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, integrated optics, and automotive packages.

2026-09-28

Chips and Semiconductors

From L1 to L5: How Is the Autonomy of AI Agents in Chip Design Measured?

Semiconductor Engineering presents a five-level framework for evaluating the autonomy of AI agents in chip design, starting with the optimization of a specific task and extending to the execution of a complete workflow within a controlled engineering scope. It emphasizes that the level of autonomy alone is insufficient unless the scope of decisions, verification mechanisms, and the engineer’s responsibility for intervention and final approval are specified.

2026-09-24

Chips and Semiconductors

3D Chips Push Chip Design Tools to Rebuild the Workflow

The shift of AI chips toward stacked architectures and chiplet-based designs is forcing EDA tools to analyze the entire system, from the chip to the package and board, while integrating agentic AI to accelerate exploration. However, interoperability, dynamic planning, power and thermal analysis, and maintaining result accuracy remain key challenges.

2026-09-24

Chips and Semiconductors

The Future of Chip Design Tools Is Moving Toward Evidence-Backed Automation

An analytical article concludes that artificial intelligence will deliver the greatest value in chip design tools when it coordinates workflows across tools and teams, rather than merely optimizing a single tool. However, reliance on it remains conditional on continuity of meaning, deterministic verification, and the ability to audit every result.

2026-09-24

Chips and Semiconductors

Singaporean Nexstrom Raises $12 Million to Develop 2D Semiconductor Manufacturing

Nexstrom has raised a $12 million seed funding round to develop equipment that grows 2D semiconductor materials directly on 300 mm wafers. The company aims to help chip fabs produce TMD materials in commercial quantities, but does not expect its equipment to be ready for commercial production before the period between 2030 and 2035.

2026-09-22

Chips and Semiconductors

日本ガイシ Presents Ceramic Solutions for Dissipating Heat from AI Chips and Improving CPO Signals

日本ガイシ presented ceramic technologies targeting cooling and signal-loss challenges in semiconductor packages used with AI workloads, including an aluminum nitride substrate for 300 mm sizes and a packaging architecture for co-packaged optics (CPO) applications.

2026-09-18

Chips and Semiconductors

Chip Week: Memory and AI Redraw the Manufacturing Map

Semiconductor Engineering’s weekly review reveals the synchronization of several shifts in the chip industry: memory deals, the expansion of artificial intelligence infrastructure, the rising cost of designing advanced nodes, and the emergence of Chinese equipment suppliers. The developments also show that manufacturing, packaging, power, and security gaps continue to determine markets’ ability to capitalize on growing AI demand.

2026-09-18