Featured
Hand-picked coverage from the Techstrong Semi editorial team.
The Robot-Sized Hole in America’s China Chip Controls
Nvidia delivered another blockbuster earnings report this week, but one line in its outlook was easy to miss. The company said its guidance assumes no data center compute revenue from China. That is different from saying Nvidia expects no revenue from China. Far from it. At almost the same moment, The Wall Street Journal reported […]
Alan Shimel · Sep 1, 2026 · 7 min
NVIDIA’s $3.5 Billion MediaTek Deal Expands Its AI Infrastructure Reach
NVIDIA is investing $3.5 billion in Taiwanese chip designer MediaTek, a deal designed to keep NVIDIA technology central to AI data centers even as hyperscalers develop more of their own processors. For NVIDIA, the transaction is its largest direct investment outside the U.S. Alphabet also participated in the offering, although MediaTek did not disclose the […]
James Maguire · Aug 31, 2026 · 2 min
AI Accelerator Deployment Can Take Four Months or More
Enterprises are finding that deploying AI accelerators is no easy task. In a recent survey, nearly 62% of semiconductor buyers report that it takes at least four months to get from purchasing an accelerator system to generating their first production AI token. The finding comes from The Futurum Group’s “1H 2026 Data Center Semiconductor Decision […]
Andy Patrizio · Aug 31, 2026 · 2 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
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
Samsung and SK hynix Take Different Paths to Next-Gen AI Memory
Samsung and SK hynix are pursuing decidedly different strategies to overcome the bandwidth, power, and thermal limitations facing high bandwidth memory (HBM) as AI accelerators become increasingly powerful. At Hot Chips 2026, Samsung outlined a roadmap that moves from conventional HBM to custom HBM and ultimately to a more radical architecture called zHBM. SK hynix, […]
Andy Patrizio · Aug 25, 2026 · 3 min
Gartner Forecasts Semiconductor Revenue to Surge 92% in 2026
Worldwide semiconductor revenue is forecast to reach about $1.6 trillion in 2026 as the AI infrastructure buildout creates exceptional demand for memory and other data center components, according to Gartner. The research firm expects semiconductor revenue to increase 92% in 2026, from $809 billion in 2025. Gartner forecasts another sizable gain in 2027, when worldwide […]
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
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
Japan Boosts Funding for Advanced Chip Manufacturing
Japan is preparing to provide another ¥150 billion ($944 million) to Rapidus, the country’s effort to establish a domestic source of cutting-edge logic chips and reduce its reliance on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), according to a Bloomberg report. Rapidus, established in 2022, is developing an advanced semiconductor manufacturing operation in Chitose, Hokkaido. The company […]
Andy Patrizio · Aug 24, 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
Kioxia, SanDisk Unveil Faster QLC Flash Aimed at AI Infrastructure
Kioxia and SanDisk have introduced their 9th-generation 2Tb QLC 3D flash memory, combining an updated CMOS design with their existing memory-array technology. The new architecture is intended to increase storage performance while improving power efficiency and allowing NAND technology to scale more cost-effectively. It is designed, not surprisingly, to address the rapidly expanding storage requirements […]
Andy Patrizio · Aug 14, 2026 · 1 min
AI Infrastructure Spending to Top $1T by 2030
Two market research reports have come to the same conclusion: the AI infrastructure market. He will soon surpass the $1 trillion mark. The only difference between the two is how far the market will go. One report by Dell’Oro Group says the worldwide data center IT semiconductors and components market is poised to reach $1.8 […]
Andy Patrizio · Aug 14, 2026 · 3 min