The currently strong semiconductor market is being driven by AI applications. A McKinsey survey showed 88% of businesses used AI in 2025 compared to just 55% in 2023. According to Inc.com, 306 of the S&P 500 companies mentioned AI in their third quarter 2025 earnings conference calls, up from only 53 citations three years earlier… Read More
Silicon Catalyst: Searching for the Next Great Start-up
Silicon Catalyst has emerged as a distinctive force in the global start-up ecosystem, positioning itself not merely as an accelerator, but as a launchpad for deep-technology innovation. Focused primarily on semiconductor and hardware-based start-ups, Silicon Catalyst addresses a long-standing gap in the venture landscape:… Read More
Kirin 9030 Hints at SMIC’s Possible Paths Toward >300 MTr/mm2 Without EUV
Earlier this month, TechInsights did a teardown of the Kirin 9030 chip found in Huawei’s Mate 80 Pro Max [1]. Two clear statements were made on the findings: (1) the transistor density of SMIC’s “N+3” process was definitely below that of the earlier 5nm processes from Samsung and TSMC, and (2) metal pitch was aggressively scaled
The 10 Practical Steps to Model and Design a Complex SoC: Insights from Aion Silicon
In the fast-evolving world of semiconductor design, creating a complex System-on-Chip (SoC) requires meticulous planning to ensure performance, power efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. Aion Silicon’s white paper, authored by Piyush Singh, outlines a streamlined methodology that leverages advanced modeling… Read More
Cost, Cycle Time, and Carbon aware TCAD Development of new Technologies
Our good friend Scotten Jones wrote a paper on a product that has been in joint development with Synopsys and is now available. Scott is currently President Semiconductor Manufacturing Economics and Senior Fellow at TechInsights. Scott and I have discussed this product many times and I feel it is ground breaking technology for… Read More
imec on the Benefits of ASICs and How to Seize Them
In an era where product differentiation increasingly depends on performance, power efficiency, and form factor, Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) have become the ultimate competitive weapon for innovative companies. Unlike off-the-shelf processors, FPGAs, or even ASSPs, a full- or semi-custom ASIC is… Read More
Revitalizing Semiconductor StartUps
Tarun Verma, Managing Partner of Silicon Catalyst, delivered a keynote at Verification Futures Austin titled “Revitalizing Semiconductor StartUps.” Drawing from his role in the world’s only accelerator focused on the global semiconductor industry, Tarun outlined the sector’s resurgence, persistent… Read More
Podcast EP320: The Emerging Field of Quantum Technology and the Upcoming Q2B Event with Peter Olcott
Daniel is joined by Peter Olcott, Deeptech Principal at First Spark Ventures specializing in early-stage investments. His background encompasses over 20 years of experience in electrical engineering, software engineering, algorithm design, combined hardware-software robotic devices, and novel innovations in biomedical… Read More
Live Webinar: Considerations When Architecting Your Next SoC: NoC with Arteris and Aion Silicon
The explosive growth of AI and accelerated computing is placing unprecedented demands on system-on-chip (SoC) design. Modern AI workloads require extremely high bandwidth, ultra-low latency, and energy-efficient data movement across increasingly heterogeneous architectures. As SoCs scale to incorporate clusters of… Read More
Cloud-Accelerated EDA Development
By Nikhil Sharma, Sunghwan Son, Paul Mantey
The semiconductor industry faces an unprecedented crisis that threatens the very foundation of technological innovation. According to the latest Siemens EDA / Wilson Research Study, first-silicon success rates have plummeted to just 14%[1]—the lowest figure in more than twenty… Read More


AI Bubble?