Hacker News with Generative AI: Semiconductors

Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2001) (cs.wisc.edu)
The exponential dependence of resistivity on temperature in germanium is found to be a great big lie.
Apple chip engineer returns to China, joins Fudan University (scmp.com)
A former Apple chip engineer from China has left the US tech giant to join China’s prestigious Fudan University in Shanghai, underscoring the country’s efforts to attract top semiconductor talent as it seeks to bolster domestic chipmaking capabilities.
TSMC, Intel and other top chipmakers slow Japan, Malaysia expansions (nikkei.com)
Leading chipmakers and packagers including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Intel have slowed the pace of their expansions in Japan and Malaysia due to lackluster demand for older chips and tariff uncertainties, Nikkei Asia has learned.
ASML's boss has a warning for Europe (economist.com)
ASML is in an enviable position. The Dutch company is the only manufacturer of equipment that can reliably etch the most advanced semiconductors, as required for everything from artificial-intelligence (AI) accelerators to smartphone chips. Even for less sophisticated processors—the types found in cars and tumble dryers—its machines account for over 90% of global sales. No rival comes close.
TSMC's US builds won't make America great at chips again, says Gelsinger (theregister.com)
Intel ex-CEO Pat Gelsinger has thrown shade on Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC's plans to build fabrication plants in the USA, saying the factories will do nothing to advance American semiconductor leadership.
Researchers get spiking neural behavior out of a pair of transistors (arstechnica.com)
A paper published in Nature on Wednesday describes a way to get plain-old silicon transistors to behave a lot like an actual neuron. And unlike the dedicated processors made so far, it only requires two transistors to do so.
Thinner Films Conduct Better Than Copper (ieee.org)
Future chips need something better than copper. Are topological semimetals the answer?
Chinese Chips Power Ant Group's AI Breakthrough, Bypassing Nvidia (bloomberg.com)
Jack Ma-backed Ant Group Co. used Chinese-made semiconductors to develop techniques for training AI models that would cut costs by 20%, according to people familiar with the matter.
Jack Ma-Backed Ant Touts AI Breakthrough Built on Chinese Chips (bloomberg.com)
Jack Ma-backed Ant Group Co. used Chinese-made semiconductors to develop techniques for training AI models that would cut costs by 20%, according to people familiar with the matter.
SoftBank to acquire chip designer Ampere in $6.5B deal (cnbc.com)
Nvidia announces "Rubin Ultra" and "Feynman" AI chips for 2027 and 2028 (arstechnica.com)
Repealing the CHIPS Act risks US national security (ft.com)
Repealing the Chips Act risks US national security
Want even tinier chips? Use a particle accelerator (economist.com)
Semiconductor chips are among the smallest and most detailed objects humans can manufacture. Shrinking the scale and upping the complexity is a fight against the limits of physics, and optical lithography—etching nanometre-scale patterns onto silicon with short-wavelength light—is its most extreme frontier.
Malaysia signs deal with UK chip giant Arm to bolster semiconductor ambitions (channelnewsasia.com)
British chip giant Arm Holdings signed an agreement with Malaysia on Wednesday (Mar 5) to bolster the Southeast Asian country's efforts to produce high-end semiconductors amid the US-China tech trade war.
China unveils revolutionary chip without silicon – 40% faster than Intel / TSMC (twitter.com)
Something went wrong, but don’t fret — let’s give it another shot.
Chinese Bismuth Transistor Breakthrough (tomshardware.com)
TSMC Pitches Intel Foundry JV to Nvidia, AMD and Broadcom (cnbc.com)
Europe Takes Another Whack at Homegrown Compute Engines (nextplatform.com)
With RISC-V International, the body controlling the RISC-V instruction set, located in Switzerland for the past five years, RISC-V now has just as much right to call itself indigenous to Europe as does Arm Ltd, the British chip company that finds itself on the other side of the English Channel after the Brexit break up and that is still around 90 percent owned by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank.
Trump's Call to Scrap 'Horrible' Chip Program Spreads Panic (nytimes.com)
As President Trump addressed Congress last week, he veered off script to attack a sensitive topic, the CHIPS Act, a bipartisan law aimed at making the United States less reliant on Asia for semiconductors.
Alibaba launches server-grade RISC-V silicon, Beijing seems set to back the ISA (theregister.com)
The permissively licensed RISC-V instruction set architecture appears to be gaining significant momentum in China.
Taiwan vows most advanced tech will not go to US under $100B Trump deal (theguardian.com)
Taiwan’s government has promised its most advance semiconductor technology will not be moved to the US under a new $100bn (£79bn) deal signed between the chip maker TSMC and Donald Trump, amid accusations that it is allowing the island’s national security to be undermined.
US CHIPS Act Office Loses Two-Fifths of Staff to Trump Purge (bloomberg.com)
The US government office responsible for a marquee $52 billion chip subsidy program will lose about two-fifths of its staff as President Donald Trump slashes the federal workforce, according to people familiar with the matter.
Trump purge hits CHIPS Act office, two-fifths of staff to be terminated (tomshardware.com)
TSMC and Trump announce $100B investment in the US, including three fabs (tomshardware.com)
TSMC will reportedly invest $100B to expand US chip fab buildouts (arstechnica.com)
Striking a four-year deal with President Donald Trump, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) plans to invest $100 billion in chip manufacturing plants in the US, sources told The Wall Street Journal.
TSMC expected to announce $100B investment in U.S. (wsj.com)
WASHINGTON—Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. plans to invest at least $100 billion more in chip-manufacturing plants in the U.S. over the next several years under a plan announced Monday by the company and President Trump.
'Fire the Intel board and rehire Pat Gelsinger,' argues former Intel CEO (tomshardware.com)
CHIPS Act expected to be killed after mass firings of NIST employees this week (tweaktown.com)
The CHIPS Act has been placed on the chopping block, as its administrators expect to receive notices of firings sometime this week.
Warpage in wafer-level packaging: causes, modelling, and mitigation strategies (frontiersin.org)
Wafer-level packaging (WLP) is a pivotal semiconductor packaging technology that enables heterogeneously integrated advanced semiconductor packages with high-density electrical interconnections through its efficient and highly reliable manufacturing processes.
U.S.'s chipmaking sector is ringing the alarm about chip war with China (fortune.com)
The U.S.’s chipmaking sector is ringing the alarm about Washington’s chip war with China