AI Silicon
AI chips, GPUs, accelerators, and the silicon powering the AI era.
Trump Weighs Expanded Semiconductor Tariffs to Drive Reshoring, Raising Alarm Over U.S. AI Growth: Report
The Trump administration is weighing a sweeping expansion of semiconductor tariffs that could extend to laptops, gaming hardware, and data center servers. The preliminary proposal, as reported by POLITICO, aims to pressure tech giants into shifting manufacturing to U.S. soil, but it has sparked intense opposition from industry groups warning of severe economic fallout for […]
Jon Swartz · Aug 27, 2026 · 2 min
From Grid to GPU, AI Power Is Going Solid-State
AI was expected to drive unprecedented demand for GPUs, accelerators and memory. It is now creating a second semiconductor market in the transformers, power supplies, cooling systems and electrical infrastructure surrounding those processors. The transformer does not usually receive much attention in discussions about artificial intelligence. It lacks the glamour of a new GPU, the […]
Alan Shimel · Aug 26, 2026 · 11 min
NVIDIA Moves Groq 3 LPX Into Full Production for Agentic AI Inference
NVIDIA has moved its Groq 3 LPX inference accelerator into full production, adding specialized hardware to its Vera Rubin platform as the chipmaker addresses a key performance problem facing agentic AI. The new accelerator is built to generate tokens at high speed after an AI model has processed its input. This capability is particularly important […]
James Maguire · Aug 25, 2026 · 2 min
IBM Unveils Dual-Architecture Mainframe Processor With Native Arm Support
IBM is developing a new processor that would bring Arm-native applications directly to its IBM Z mainframes and LinuxONE systems, allowing both Arm and IBM’s mainframe instructions to run side by side on the same processor cores. That would allow organizations to run Arm-native Linux applications alongside existing z/OS and Linux workloads on the same […]
Andy Patrizio · Aug 25, 2026 · 2 min
Broadcom Eyes Up to $100 Billion in Financing for AI Chip Build-Out
Broadcom is in discussions to arrange a massive debt package to finance AI chips and infrastructure for Anthropic and other AI companies, an initiative that demonstrates how tech vendors are moving beyond sales and are now helping finance deals with customers. The proposed structure could include roughly $30 billion of junior debt and $60 billion […]
James Maguire · Aug 21, 2026 · 2 min
AMD Breaks 30% Client CPU Share in Q2
AMD captured a record share of the PC processor market in the second quarter of 2026, surpassing 30% of client CPU shipments for the first time as a sharp rebound in mobile processors and continued gains in servers offset a steep decline in desktop PCs. The overall x86 CPU market grew by more than 10% […]
Andy Patrizio · Aug 21, 2026 · 3 min
Google Inks $12.2B Custom AI Chip Deal with Marvell, Spurring Tech Stock Shift
Marvell Technology Inc. shares spiked nearly 10% following a regulatory filing revealing that Google has secured the option to buy up to $12.2 billion in Marvell stock. The agreement signals a major expansion in their custom silicon partnership as tech titans rush to build cheaper, viable alternatives to NVIDIA Corp.’s dominant artificial intelligence (AI) processors. […]
Jon Swartz · Aug 20, 2026 · 2 min
Cerebras Debuts CS-4 System to Accelerate AI Inference
Cerebras Systems has unveiled the CS-4, a rack-scale computing system built to greatly speed up AI inference, as the chipmaker pushes to compete with NVIDIA and other providers of AI infrastructure. The CS-4 includes three of Cerebras’ new Wafer Scale Engine 3 Turbo, or WSE-3T, processors. These unusually large chips are designed to keep more […]
James Maguire · Aug 19, 2026 · 2 min
Qualcomm Targets $300 Laptop Market With New Snapdragon C Processor
Qualcomm is pushing into a new market segment with the Arm-based Snapdragon C, an entry-level processor designed for laptops priced from around $300 but offering longer battery life and modern computing capabilities at an entry-level price. The company first announced Snapdragon C in May, positioning it for students, families and small businesses that primarily need […]
Andy Patrizio · Aug 17, 2026 · 2 min
The Neoclouds’ Indispensability Trap
Jim Chanos has a point about CoreWeave. The famed short-seller recently argued that neocloud moats are “both dug and filled” by Nvidia. His reasoning is straightforward: Nvidia supplies the GPUs that neoclouds rent to customers, influences their allocation and pricing, and possesses the ability to weaken or bypass the intermediaries whenever it chooses. Chanos went […]
Alan Shimel · Aug 17, 2026 · 10 min
Intel’s $36 Billion Second Chance: The Technology Is Working. Will the Business Follow?
One year ago, the United States government made an extraordinary bet on Intel. On Aug. 22, 2025, Washington agreed to invest $8.9 billion in the company, converting previously awarded CHIPS Act and Secure Enclave funding into an equity stake. The goal was bigger than rescuing another struggling American corporation. It was to preserve something the […]
Alan Shimel · Aug 12, 2026 · 9 min
AI-Driven Chip Shortage Triggers Washington Lobbying War as Apple Seeks Chinese Supplier Relief
An explosion in artificial intelligence (AI) development has ignited a severe global memory chip crunch, igniting an aggressive lobbying campaign on Capitol Hill as non-AI sectors scramble to secure critical components and protect failing supply pipelines. Driven by data centers vacuuming up massive volumes of high-bandwidth memory and dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) to train advanced […]
Jon Swartz · Aug 10, 2026 · 2 min
Intel Unveils Starfire Space Processor to Bring AI Computing to Orbit
Intel has introduced the Starfire processor, a new system-on-chip (SoC) designed to deliver artificial intelligence and high-performance computing capabilities aboard satellites and spacecraft. The processor, developed for U.S. government and aerospace missions, combines an 18A-based CPU and neural processing unit (NPU) with an Intel 3-based Xe graphics processor in a Foveros 3D package. The design […]
Andy Patrizio · Aug 10, 2026 · 2 min
Anthropic Plans Custom AI Chip Strategy for Claude
Anthropic is assembling an in-house chip design team to develop custom processors for its Claude family of AI models, a key step in the company’s effort to reduce infrastructure costs and improve AI performance. The company plans to design future AI models alongside custom hardware rather than adapting software to commercially available processors. That approach […]
James Maguire · Aug 6, 2026 · 2 min
Commerce Department Plans $874 Million for Seven Semiconductor R&D Projects
The US Department of Commerce plans to provide up to $874 million in CHIPS and Science Act incentives to seven semiconductor companies developing technologies for AI infrastructure, extending the government’s support for domestic semiconductor research and the US compute supply chain. The funding, announced through letters of intent, still requires additional review before final awards […]
James Maguire · Jul 31, 2026 · 3 min
GlobalFoundries Lands $300 Million in CHIPS Funding
GlobalFoundries has secured a planned $300 million award from the U.S. Department of Commerce to accelerate research and development of silicon photonics technology. The move is aimed at strengthening domestic semiconductor capabilities and addressing one of the biggest bottlenecks in next-generation artificial intelligence infrastructure, namely network throughput. The funding was announced Wednesday as a letter […]
Andy Patrizio · Jul 31, 2026 · 2 min
Samsung Lands $200 Billion Broadcom AI Chip Partnership in Major Foundry Win
Samsung Electronics and Broadcom have signed a memorandum of understanding to expand a strategic semiconductor partnership that the companies estimate will be worth more than $200 billion through 2030. The partnership is expected to support Broadcom’s growing portfolio of custom artificial intelligence processors and strengthen Samsung’s position in the rapidly expanding AI infrastructure market. The […]
Andy Patrizio · Jul 28, 2026 · 1 min
Intel to Restore Hyper-Threading in Future Xeon Chips
Intel is reversing course on one of its most significant recent processor design decisions, bringing back Hyper-Threading to future versions of the Xeon processor. Hyper-Threading is a technology that allows a processor core to execute two threads at once, sort of. While a Hyper-Threaded core appears as two logical processors to the system, they don’t […]
Andy Patrizio · Jul 27, 2026 · 2 min
Moore’s Law Didn’t End. It Changed Direction
IBM’s “0.7nm chip” is part marketing sleight of hand and part genuine semiconductor breakthrough. Ignore the decimal point. Nanostack—and the decision to build silicon upward—is the real story. Let’s get the marketing out of the way first. IBM says it has introduced the world’s first “sub-1 nanometer chip technology.” More specifically, the company calls this […]
Alan Shimel · Jul 24, 2026 · 9 min
AMD Challenges NVIDIA’s Dominance with New AI Hardware, Billion-Dollar Partnerships
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is launching a powerful new lineup of artificial intelligence (AI) data center hardware on Thursday, directly targeting market leader NVIDIA Corp. The news, unveiled at an industry event in San Francisco, centers around AMD’s efforts to capture market share in both AI training and inference, the computational work behind processing queries […]
Jon Swartz · Jul 23, 2026 · 2 min