Source: Jonathon Evans and Polychronis Xekalakis, “NVIDIA Vera CPU,” Hot Chips 2026. Performance figures are NVIDIA claims, and several results were based on preproduction or unofficial testing.
NVIDIA’s Vera CPU is a server processor designed specifically for agentic AI, where language models repeatedly observe, reason,… Read More
Daniel is joined by Dr. Germain Fenger, Senior Director of Product Management at Synopsys where he leads advanced mask solutions and computational lithography technologies. With a background spanning semiconductor manufacturing, lithography research, engineering, and product leadership, Germain has held roles at imec,… Read More
The global semiconductor market in the second quarter of 2026 was $368 billion, according to WSTS. 2Q 2026 set records for growth: up 35% from 1Q 2026 and up a phenomenal 104% from 2Q 2025. The previous record growth was set in 1Q 2026: up 25% from the prior quarter and up 79% from a year earlier.
Growth continues to be driven by AI. Memory… Read More
Here’s what the presentations selected for the 2026 Hot Chips Conference tell us about what Silicon Valley companies are doing these days.
The conference, running this week at Stanford’s Memorial Auditorium, doesn’t publish detailed abstracts ahead of time, but the program itself, just the lineup of who’s presenting what, … Read More
NVIDIA’s expansion of the NVIDIA Agent Toolkit with PhysicsNeMo and CUDA-X libraries marks a shift from general-purpose AI assistants toward autonomous engineering systems. Instead of limiting agents to document retrieval, code generation, or workflow automation, the expanded toolkit lets developers connect reasoning… Read More
For anyone tracking enterprise infrastructure, the storage landscape is moving at a breakneck pace. The explosive growth of generative AI, multi-million token context windows, and massive data-centric workloads have pushed traditional memory and storage architectures to their absolute limits.
This August, the industry… Read More
The “Silicon Shield” describes the idea that Taiwan’s central role in advanced semiconductor manufacturing raises the economic and strategic cost of military action against the island. The shield is not a literal defense system. It is a form of structural deterrence created by technological concentration: governments and… Read More
Global unit shipments of PCs and smartphones were both down versus a year ago in the 2nd quarter of 2026, according to IDC. PCs were down 4.9% and smartphones were down 6.7%. Both PCs and smartphones showed growth in 2024 and 2025. IDC is predicting an 11.3% decline in PCs and a 13.9% decline in smartphones in 2026.
What is causing the… Read More
Synopsys is catalyzing the era of pervasive intelligence with comprehensive engineering solutions spanning silicon design, IP, and simulation and analysis. At this year’s Design Automation Conference (DAC), the company will showcase innovations transforming silicon and systems development for a wide range of applications… Read More
Mark Ren has 26 years of EDA and AI R&D experience spanning IBM Research and NVIDIA Research, driving design automation innovations that power modern chip design. He received the IBM Corporate Award for contributions to the design closure for high-performance microprocessors. At NVIDIA, he helped establish the company
