Custom Silicon
Microsoft Plans Upgraded Custom AI Chips for 2027
Microsoft is preparing to release a new generation of its Azure Maia custom AI accelerator to multi-gigawatt deployments beginning in 2027, positioning its in-house silicon as the primary inference platform for the company’s products and services. Microsoft already has the Maia 200 available in Azure and has just announced the third generation of the custom […]
Andy Patrizio · Oct 14, 2026 · 2 min
AWS Signs $1 Billion Synopsys Deal to Expand Custom Chip Design
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has signed a multiyear agreement with Synopsys worth more than $1 billion to license chip design intellectual property, deepening the cloud provider’s push to develop increasingly sophisticated custom processors for AI and cloud infrastructure. The agreement expands a 15-year relationship between the companies and makes Amazon the lead customer for Synopsys’ […]
Andy Patrizio · Oct 1, 2026 · 2 min
Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit 2026 Features New Hardware, Software
Qualcomm used the opening day of its Snapdragon Summit to outline a broad strategy for everything from smartphone chips to the next phase of artificial intelligence, with agentic AI emerging as the central theme of the company’s latest platforms. The highlight of the opening day was the introduction of two flagship smartphone processors: the Snapdragon […]
Andy Patrizio · Sep 24, 2026 · 2 min
Can a Laser Write Memory Directly Into Silicon?
Researchers are exploring whether ultrafast light could directly create persistent, addressable memory states inside silicon, with verification, retention and neighbor isolation determining whether the concept can become practical.
Burak Oktenli · Sep 23, 2026 · 3 min
Alibaba Unveils China’s ‘Most Powerful’ AI Chip Ahead of U.S.-China Summit
Alibaba Group introduced its most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip to date on Tuesday, as well as ambitious plans to train a massive next-generation AI model. The blitz reflects China’s accelerating push toward technological self-reliance, coming just days ahead of a closely watched summit between Chinese and U.S. leaders. Speaking at Alibaba Cloud’s annual flagship […]
Jon Swartz · Sep 22, 2026 · 3 min
Apple’s M5 Ultra Processor Outpaces AMD Threadripper
Early benchmark results of Apple’s upcoming M5 Ultra processor for workstations show an impressive appearance in the Geekbench 7 database, with the 36-core chip outperforming AMD’s 96-core Ryzen Threadripper PRO 9995WX in both single- and multi-core testing. The results were found by Wccftech, which stated the results are notable because the M5 Ultra has fewer […]
Andy Patrizio · Sep 17, 2026 · 1 min
Qualcomm Lands Amazon AI Chip Deal Worth Up to $60 Billion
Qualcomm has signed an AI infrastructure agreement with Amazon that could generate up to $60 billion in business for the chipmaker, giving Qualcomm an important foothold in the rapidly growing data center market. The two companies will develop multiple generations of custom silicon for Amazon Web Services, with an initial focus on AI inference. They […]
James Maguire · Sep 8, 2026 · 3 min
MIT Silicon Photonics Process Augurs a New Wave of Bendable and Transparent Devices
The world of semiconductors is having a bend it like Beckham moment. Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have figured out how to make stiff silicon photonic chips flexible and transparent and produce them at scale. The breakthrough makes possible applications like discreet health monitors that conform to the body or lightweight, transparent […]
Frank Vizard · Sep 4, 2026 · 1 min
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
OpenAI Found a Crack in Nvidia’s AI Fortress
Nvidia has built one of the strongest competitive positions the technology industry has ever seen. It dominates the market for artificial intelligence accelerators, owns the CUDA software ecosystem that developers have spent years learning and has expanded beyond individual GPUs into networking, rack-scale systems and increasingly complete AI infrastructure. OpenAI’s first custom processor is not […]
Alan Shimel · Aug 27, 2026 · 8 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
IBM and Arm Unveil Dual-Architecture Chip Plan for Future Z and LinuxONE Mainframes
IBM and Arm have unveiled a processor design intended to bring Arm-native Linux software directly onto future IBM Z and LinuxONE systems. Well, this is different. At the Hot Chips conference, IBM and Arm revealed they’re working on an Arm chip in which each core can natively execute IBM Z or LinuxONE instructions and ARM […]
Steven Vaughan-Nichols · Aug 24, 2026 · 3 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
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
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
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
Google Is Betting the AI Model Is Ready to Become the Machine
For most of computing history, progress meant separating the software from the machine. Software could be changed, upgraded and replaced without throwing away the computer beneath it. Hardware became increasingly general purpose, while software developers gained the freedom to decide what those machines would do. The decoupling of hardware and software helped create the modern […]
Alan Shimel · Jul 23, 2026 · 9 min
Samsung Negotiates Multimillion-Euro Stake in Mistral AI at $22.8 Billion Valuation
Samsung Electronics is in advanced talks to make a massive financial bet on Europe’s leading artificial intelligence (AI) startup, Mistral AI, signaling a critical shift in how global semiconductor leaders compete for dominance in the AI hardware supply chain. According to a report from The Financial Times, South Korea’s Samsung is negotiating an investment of […]
Jon Swartz · Jul 22, 2026 · 2 min
Meta to Begin Production of Custom Iris AI Chips in September in Bid for 14-Gigawatt Power Grid: Report
Meta Platforms Inc. plans to begin manufacturing its next-generation custom artificial intelligence (AI) chip in September, according to an internal memo reviewed by Reuters. Code-named Iris, the in-house silicon is part of a broader effort by the social media giant to double its computing infrastructure capacity to 14 gigawatts by next year and reduce its […]
Jon Swartz · Jul 14, 2026 · 2 min
MIT Researchers Unveil Petabit Photonic Networking Chip
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) say they have made a series of breakthroughs that could pave the way for computer chips capable of transmitting more than a petabit of data per second while consuming far less energy. The work comes from MIT’s Future of Integrated Photonics and Electronics Microsystems (FUTUR-IC) research program, […]
Andy Patrizio · Jul 13, 2026 · 2 min