DIGITIMES Semiconductors: IC design, distribution news

Home Tech Semiconductors IC design, distribution

Thursday 28 May 2026

Peking University's true-3D EDA tool gives Huawei's LogicFolding chip roadmap critical design link

Peking University researchers have unveiled a prototype electronic design automation (EDA) tool built for "true-3D" chip design, offering a potential missing link for Huawei's LogicFolding architecture and its broader Tau (τ) Scaling Law roadmap.

Thursday 28 May 2026

Nvidia's Rubin CPX plans clouded as Groq gains bigger inference role

Nvidia's plan to launch Rubin CPX, an inference-focused graphics processing unit for its Vera Rubin platform, has become increasingly uncertain as supply-chain activity around the product appears to have stalled, according to The Elec.

Thursday 28 May 2026

Commentary: China's AI chip certification becomes new market gatekeeper

China has brought AI chips into its national security and reliability evaluation framework for the first time, turning what looks like a product certification process into something more consequential: an emerging gatekeeping system for AI computing infrastructure.

Thursday 28 May 2026

Synopsys flags mixed regional trends as China growth contrasts with weaker Western demand

Synopsys reported divergent regional performance in the second quarter, with China showing sequential growth while North America and Europe declined, as demand patterns for semiconductor design tools and simulation software remained uneven across end markets.

Thursday 28 May 2026

Huawei Tau Law series 3: Global chip experts split over China's post-Moore push

Huawei's "Tau (τ) Scaling Law," unveiled at ISCAS 2026 on May 25, has become a global semiconductor flashpoint, drawing scrutiny from financial institutions, media outlets, chip analysts, and research firms.

Thursday 28 May 2026

Synopsys sees agentic AI and Ansys integration expanding long-term growth opportunities

Synopsys said the rise of agentic artificial intelligence and the integration of Ansys are creating new growth opportunities across electronic design automation (EDA) and simulation software, as semiconductor and industrial customers adopt more complex AI-driven engineering workflows.

Thursday 28 May 2026

Qualcomm wins ASIC customers beyond ByteDance

Qualcomm has reportedly landed more than one ASIC customer, with a separate project for a US cloud service provider also taking shape, according to industry sources. The development follows reports from Bloomberg and other media that ByteDance, the developer of TikTok, is Qualcomm's first major client for its custom chip push.

Thursday 28 May 2026

Synopsys sees hyperscaler chip ambitions fueling AI-related demand

Synopsys said growing demand for artificial intelligence chips from semiconductor companies and hyperscale data center operators is driving broader adoption of its electronic design automation (EDA), hardware-assisted verification, and intellectual property (IP) products, supporting a higher fiscal 2026 revenue outlook and reinforcing the company's position in AI-related semiconductor development.

Thursday 28 May 2026

Marvell raises multi-year outlook as AI data center demand drives accelerating growth

On May 27, Marvell Technology reported record revenue in the fiscal first quarter of 2027 and raised its long-term outlook, citing accelerating demand for AI-related data center infrastructure, particularly in high-speed interconnect, Ethernet switching, and custom silicon solutions used in hyperscale cloud deployments.

Thursday 28 May 2026

Marvell eyes XPU and attach wins as pillars of custom silicon growth

Marvell Technology has said its custom silicon business and data center solutions are emerging as central pillars of its long-term growth strategy, driven by rising demand from hyperscale cloud customers building AI infrastructure, including XPUs, Ethernet switching systems, and high-speed optical interconnects.

Thursday 28 May 2026

Marvell expands silicon photonics, switching, and interconnect roadmap

Marvell Technology used its first-quarter fiscal 2027 earnings call to detail accelerating progress across optical, copper, and silicon photonics-based connectivity, signaling that AI infrastructure is shifting from compute-centric bottlenecks toward networking-driven architectures. The company's expanded interconnect portfolio, new silicon photonics acquisition, and emerging scale-up switch programs underpin a materially higher multi-year outlook.

Thursday 28 May 2026

Synopsys raises fiscal 2026 outlook after strong second-quarter revenue growth

Synopsys raised its fiscal 2026 revenue target after reporting a 42% year-over-year rise in second-quarter sales, driven by continued demand for AI-related chip design tools and verification systems.

Wednesday 27 May 2026

Qualcomm and ByteDance's rumored AI ASIC deal signals potential shift in China's data center chip supply

The agreement between Qualcomm and ByteDance positions the former for large-scale AI ASIC demand from the latter, as reported by Bloomberg, but market viability remains uncertain amid intense AI chip competition, evolving China procurement preferences, and regulatory pressures affecting cross-border semiconductor adoption.

Wednesday 27 May 2026

Jensen Huang: Taiwan is center of AI revolution, with US$150 billion in capex powering local ecosystem

Nvidia held an "employee town hall" on the morning of May 27 at the T17 and T18 sites in Beitou-Shilin Technology Park (BSTP), where CEO Jensen Huang met staff, gave away Dom Pérignon, and framed Taiwan as central to the company's AI expansion. Taipei Mayor Wayne Chiang attended only as a "guest."

Wednesday 27 May 2026

China clears 9 domestic AI chips for state procurement

China has formally brought AI chips into its national security and reliability evaluation framework for the first time, marking a further expansion of the country's Information Technology Application Innovation procurement policy into AI computing infrastructure.

Wednesday 27 May 2026

Qualcomm's ByteDance deal gives smartphone chipmaker entry into AI data center market

Qualcomm has reached a deal to supply AI data center chips to ByteDance, giving the US smartphone processor designer a potentially high-volume customer as it tries to expand into AI infrastructure and custom silicon.

Wednesday 27 May 2026

China-based SmartSens, Unisoc team up on Micro LED optical interconnects for AI clusters

SmartSens and Unisoc have formed a strategic partnership to develop Micro LED high-speed optical interconnects, aiming to deliver domestic, low-power, high-bandwidth solutions for short-reach AI cluster links. The collaboration could accelerate the commercialization of Micro LED co-packaged optics (CPO) technology and strengthen China's role in global AI infrastructure supply chains, according to a press release.

Wednesday 27 May 2026

Broadcom and Taiwan's chipmakers ride ASIC wave

The world's largest chip designers are steadily growing more bullish on the future of cloud artificial intelligence (AI) chips known as ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits) — a market increasingly seen as the next major battleground in the global AI boom.

Wednesday 27 May 2026

Kinpo accelerates ODM push into AI servers and EV chargers

Kinpo Electronics outlined its 2026 core strategy at a shareholders' meeting on May 25, centering on "bearing fruit" as it builds on years of product-mix adjustments, expands into AI-related products, and accelerates its shift toward an ODM model.

Wednesday 27 May 2026

Huawei Tau Law series 2: Advanced packaging, AI interconnects, EDA lead the way

Huawei's Tau Law proposal is rapidly redirecting attention across China's semiconductor industry away from pure lithography competition and toward advanced packaging, 3D stacking, optical interconnects, and system-level architecture design.

Tuesday 26 May 2026

Nvidia and Marvell CEOs to share Computex stage— How US$2 billion turned rivals into partners

When Nvidia quietly wrote a US$2 billion check to Marvell Technology earlier this year, it was less a financial bet than a strategic maneuver — one that converted a potential rival into a committed partner. Now, for the first time since that deal was struck, the two companies' CEOs will share a stage.

Tuesday 26 May 2026

Inside China's chip war: How Xiaomi, BYD, and Nio are rewriting the rules

China's semiconductor war has been underway for seven or eight years now.

Tuesday 26 May 2026

Chiplet boom puts Taiwan's InPsytech and its AI connectivity IPs in the spotlight

As the global semiconductor industry pivots toward chiplet-based designs — where multiple smaller chips are packaged together rather than built as a single monolithic die — the specialized intellectual property that makes those chips communicate reliably has become critical infrastructure. InPsytech, a Taiwanese IP design firm and subsidiary of Egis Technology, has staked its business on exactly that.

Tuesday 26 May 2026

Huawei Tau Law series 1: How China's chip industry is pivoting beyond Moore's Law

When Huawei unveiled its "Tau (τ) Scaling Law" at ISCAS 2026 in Shanghai, the announcement signalled more than another chip architecture update. It marked China's most ambitious attempt yet to redefine how semiconductor performance is measured in the post-Moore era.

Tuesday 26 May 2026

AMD and Nvidia deepen investments in Taiwan semiconductor ecosystem

When AMD CEO Lisa Su arrived in Taiwan on May 20, she announced plans to invest more than US$10 billion with local supply-chain partners and the island's broader semiconductor ecosystem. The goal, she said, was to help secure a long-term supply of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chips.

More IC design, distribution coverage