Chip Industry Week In Review

Chip Industry Week In Review Marvell’s plasmonics buy; Onto’s process control stake; TSMC A14/13 and EDA flows; Apple shuffle; LPDDR6; SOCAMM2 chipset; MATCH Act progress; EUV resist crunch; India 3D packaging fab; digital test card for HPC; telemetry platform for power management; edge AI MCU for voice; new Google TPUs. Deals - Marvell acquired Polariton Technologies, a Swiss developer of plasmonics-based silicon photonics devices. - Onto Innovation is partnering with Rigaku, combining Onto’s analysis software with Rigaku’s CD-SAXS platform for advanced semiconductor process control. Onto also agreed to acquire a 27% stake in Rigaku for about $710M. - Tesla plans to use Intel’s 14A process for its Terafab AI chip manufacturing project in Austin, Texas, becoming Intel’s first customer for the new process node, reports Reuters. - Arteris is collaborating with GF’s MIPS to build physical AI computing platforms using smart NoC IP and SoC integration automation software. TSMC North America Technology Symposium Node number leapfrogging is in full swing, even though it’s not clear what those numbers actually mean anymore. Regardless, TSMC said this week that it will ship its A14 node in 2028, followed by an A13 optical shrink of that node in 2029. The foundry also said it will: - Allow customer access to COUPE co-packaged optics later this year; - Introduce backside power access at the A14 node; - Introduce a logic base die for HBM3E and HBM4; - Offer interposers up to 40X the size of today’s reticles, and - Roll out advanced packaging capability in Arizona by 2029. Fig. 1: TSMC roadmap slide for system-on-wafer (SoW) integration. Source: TSMC TSMC also expanded its collaboration with EDA companies: - Cadence will provide digital and analog flows that integrate agentic AI across TSMC’s N3, N2, A16, and A14 process nodes. - Siemens will provide automated design