GlobalFoundries launches 7nm-class FDX Fusion node with double density of 22FDX, targeting automotive and edge AI markets for 2028 production.
On Oct. 12, 2026, Texas Instruments (TI) debuted new products at the Open Compute Project (OCP) Global Summit, including the ADC34DSO75, described as the industry's first ADC enabling 24/7, low-power, event-based remote monitoring at nanosecond resolution (a 3-gigasamples-per-second ADC, thousands of times faster than current solutions per TI), the LMI800PS, described as the industry's first 800V isolated hot-swap controller (replacing a discrete solution requiring five integrated circuits with a single package, reducing board area by more than 60%), and the LMK6B, a bulk acoustic wave-based oscillator delivering 9.6fs jitter at 625MHz. TI states these analog solutions address data center operators' challenges around power instability, inadequate real-time monitoring and signal degradation as AI workloads increase, and TI is also showcasing 800VDC power solutions in NVIDIA's MGX AI Factory Ecosystem. This is a product launch news item with no price or capacity change.
Global Technology said on Oct. 12 that it has begun co-developing ultraviolet (UV) curing light source units for ADST's active alignment equipment; ADST is a subsidiary of Sungho Electronics. The equipment is used to manufacture CPO systems and high-speed optical transceivers. The project will cover UV-curing LED driver ICs, UV LED light source modules, and control units. Active alignment equipment performs optical alignment in CPO mass-production processes, positioning fibers, lenses, and optical devices with sub-micrometer accuracy before securing them with UV-curable adhesive; UV output and exposure time must be precisely controlled to minimize shrinkage and positional displacement during curing. Global Technology noted that domestic equipment manufacturers have largely relied on imports for these UV curing light sources. This is the companies' second collaboration, following their micro-LED partnership for next-generation displays. The two companies plan to build a domestic mass-production ecosystem and localize key equipment components; after development is completed, they are considering deploying the light source units in ADST's equipment. Sungho Electronics, ADST's parent company, is a strategic investor in Global Technology. Industry participants expect CPO commercialization to accelerate in 2027 or 2028 when 1.6T-class equipment adoption begins.
Keysight Technologies, the University of Glasgow, the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), and MPI Corporation have developed a new approach to broadband characterisation of next-generation sub-terahertz (sub-THz) semiconductor devices. The four organisations demonstrated continuous on-wafer characterisation of indium phosphide high-electron-mobility transistors (InP HEMTs) from near DC to 250 GHz in a single sweep, simplifying broadband measurements for advanced semiconductor research and design. The setup combined Keysight's PNA-X Vector Network Analyzer, Single-Sweep 250 GHz Frequency Extender, and Precision Source/Measure Unit (SMU); the University of Glasgow's InP HEMT devices and on-wafer calibration standards; MPI Corporation's broadband on-wafer probing technology and calibration software; and NPL's high-frequency metrology and calibration methodologies. This enabled continuous measurement from near DC to 250 GHz with a single probe touchdown, eliminating multiple setup changes, with built-in source filtering and broadband source power calibration helping ensure signal purity at the probe-tip. This is a measurement-technology collaboration demonstration and serves as research and design background; it has no bearing on prices, capacity, or policy.
On Oct. 8, Amazon unveiled a new lineup of premium tablets, developed under the codename Kittyhawk, switching from its proprietary Fire OS to Google's Android OS and featuring the Alexa+ AI voice assistant. The Alexa Tablet lineup is priced between $230 and $550, well above the roughly $180 price of the Fire HD 10, previously Amazon's top-tier Fire tablet; the highest-end 128GB model costs $550, competing directly with Apple's iPad starting at $450 and Samsung Electronics' Galaxy Tab lineup starting at $550. The lineup comprises three models: the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro (11.95-inch IPS LCD, 2,800×1,840 resolution, 3:2 aspect ratio, 280 ppi, available with a standard LCD or a Nanomatte display developed with Corning, with the display supplier not disclosed, using MediaTek's 4-nm Dimensity 8400), the Alexa Tablet 11 (11-inch IPS LCD, 2,560×1,600, 16:10, 276 ppi) and the Alexa Tablet 8 (8.7-inch IPS LCD, 1,340×800, 5:3, 180 ppi), the latter two using the eight-core MT8189 tablet processor; the application processors are supplied by Taiwan-based MediaTek. Alexa+ access is limited to Amazon Prime members and subscribers to a separate Alexa+ plan. According to IDC, in the second quarter of this year Apple held 34% of the global tablet market and Samsung Electronics 17.5%, while Amazon's share fell sharply to 1.9% from 8% a year earlier, and global tablet shipments declined 12% year over year to 33.6 million units. The source does not state the cause of the launch event itself; the article notes Fire OS had faced persistent criticism over its limited app ecosystem and that Amazon's strategy of selling devices at or below cost had weakened hardware competitiveness.
At an online technical seminar held on October 8, LG Display's CTO Choi Young-seok said the company plans to prioritize its next-generation OLED patterning technology FLiPP for IT products such as laptops and monitors, while leaving open the possibility of future smartphone applications. LG Display will spend about a year reviewing how existing LCD and OLED production equipment can be reused or modified to reduce capital investment. FLiPP remains in the technology development stage, with mass production targeted for the coming years; development began in July 2025 and has been demonstrated on an eighth‑generation glass substrate. Compared with conventional FMM, FLiPP increases panel utilization rate from 75% to more than 93% for a 23.5‑inch panel, improves organic emissive material utilization from 40% to 74%, reduces deposition time by about 40%, raises the aperture ratio to 65% from 42%, and can increase luminance by 1.6 times, extend lifespan by 2.4 times, or reduce power consumption by 13% depending on design priorities. LG Display will initially focus on IT OLED applications, including laptops and monitors. The source does not state the cause for this prioritization.
A team including researchers at KAIST and South Korean startup TDS Innovation published a paper, "Spatially deterministic nucleation of 2D semiconductors by etching flux," in Nature on October 7, demonstrating a way to control where 2D semiconductor crystals begin growing: the etching-flux-mediated single-centred nucleation (EF-SCN) process uses oxygen released from an oxide barrier to create a lateral etching flux that suppresses nucleation everywhere within each patterned growth region except at its geometric center. FETs built with the process reported higher charge-carrier mobility than previously reported for selectively grown MoS₂ transistors; in a separate test across a two-centimeter substrate, the process produced single crystals at 397 of 400 patterned sites, a yield of 99.3 percent, which is not yet a demonstration of commercial chip production. Paper co-author Kibum Kang is co-CEO of TDS Innovation, which develops equipment and materials for 2D semiconductor devices. TDS's Jony Jung said the firm is aiming to enable commercial use of 2D semiconductors around 2030, and that accelerating demand from AI, including physical AI and robotics, could help bring adoption forward, although production timing will depend on further validation; the paper does not say when 2D semiconductors made this way will appear in production chips.
Toshiba launched a 3300V SiC MOSFET module rated at 800A for demanding power conversion. Vishay introduced 650V superjunction MOSFET modules with a wide operating temperature range. Skyworks qualified the Si829x automotive isolated gate driver for SiC and IGBT applications.
Diodes Incorporated (Nasdaq: DIOD) announced on October 9, 2026 that it will exhibit at electronica (November 10–13) for the first time, at Hall C6, Booth 211. The company will showcase its expanding analog and power portfolio under the theme "More than diodes," with four demonstration platforms covering mains-to-48V conversion, 48V-to-lower-voltage conversion, motor control, and circuit protection, targeting automotive, data center, and industrial applications. The 48V power tree demonstration will illustrate power conversion from a 48V input to 12V and then to lower-voltage rails including 5V and 3.3V. Diodes will also use its presence at electronica 2026 to unveil the latest in power-conversion technology addressing the requirements of data center and AI computing infrastructure. This is a trade-show exhibition/product showcase plan with no price, capacity, or supply-demand changes reported.
Global PC shipments cratered due to rising prices hammering demand, with Omdia reporting a 21.2% year-on-year decline to 58.1 million units in Q3 2026 and IDC estimating a 20.1% decline to 62.7 million units; IDC also noted a 9.1% quarter‑on‑quarter drop from Q2 2026. The downturn follows AI‑fueled component shortages that have driven costs soaring, as DRAM and SSDs now account for nearly 40% of a PC’s component costs (up from ~15%) after more than fourfold price increases, while shortages of processors, graphics cards and other integrated circuits add pressure. Major vendors saw declines: Lenovo 22.6%, HP ~31%, Dell 25%, Apple 11% (IDC). Omdia forecasts a further 24% YoY decline in Q4 2026 and a 7% decline across 2027.
Navitas Semiconductor and Microchip Technology have developed an 800V DC-to-6V DC reference design for AI data center rack power systems, based on the Open Compute Project (OCP) 800 V DC architecture. The platform combines Navitas GaNFast™ gallium nitride power devices with Microchip digital power control and hardware security technologies. The primary power stage uses 16 NV6034 devices, each rated at 650 V with 17 mΩ on-resistance, in a stacked half-bridge configuration, with the GaN FETs in a DFN 8×8 mm dual-side-cooled package. Control uses Microchip's dsPIC33AK256MPS306 family digital signal controller (200 MHz 32-bit processor, double-precision floating-point unit, 78 ps high-resolution PWM, and 12-bit ADCs operating at up to 40 MSPS). The platform targets peak efficiency of up to 96% at full load while switching at 1 MHz, with a stated power density of 2,100 W/in³; the architecture directly converts 800 V DC to 6 V DC, combining the conventional 800 V-to-50 V and 50 V-to-6 V stages into a single converter, in an implementation approximately 20% thinner than a mobile phone and intended for close integration with GPU boards. Security is integrated through Microchip's TA100 CryptoAuthentication™ device, and the dsPIC33AK platform also supports cryptographic functions associated with CNSA Suite 2.0 post-quantum cryptography algorithms. The reference platform will include evaluation hardware, software, and design documentation, and will be showcased at Microchip's OCP Event in San Jose, California, from October 12 to 15, 2026.
PC shipments dropped by 20.1% year-over-year in the third quarter of 2026, a decline of 15.8 million units, due to chip shortages.
A technical article by Joan Mampel, applications engineer at Monolithic Power Systems (MPS), presents a practical design combining a stacked-output topology with a weighted feedback network to improve cross-regulation in multi-output flyback converters. The design is centered on the MPX2002 (an all-in-one flyback controller with integrated 650-V primary control circuitry and a secondary 150-V synchronous rectification driver, using capacitive isolation to replace the optocoupler and quasi-resonant operation) and generates four output rails from an 85 V AC to 265 V AC input: a main regulated +5 V output, a stacked +12 V output, a post-regulated +3.3 V output (produced by the MP2332H fully integrated synchronous buck converter stepping down the +12 V rail, at approximately 1.2 MHz switching frequency with the MPL-AL4020-2R2 inductor), and a low-current -12 V auxiliary output (generated by a dedicated transformer winding feeding the MP2015A LDO, which withstands a 2.5 V to 24 V input range). Key design parameters given include: a 62 µF/450 V input bulk capacitor selected (minimum DC bus voltage explicitly limited to 85 V DC, maximum ambient temperature 90°C, maximum output power 25 W), a primary-to-secondary turns ratio N_PS1=12 for the +5 V output (maximum duty cycle limit of 45%, resulting in a 41.62% maximum primary duty cycle at minimum input voltage), N_PS2=8 for the +12 V output, N_PS4=4 for the -12 V output, a 70 kHz switching frequency, a 479 µH magnetizing inductance, a calculated maximum rated peak current of 1.32 A, an average input current at low line of 0.33 A, and a worst-case input peak current of 1.99 A, with weighted feedback achieving 70% regulation for the +5 V output and 30% for the +12 V output. The article states that experimental results were used to evaluate the achieved cross-regulation, output voltage accuracy, and overall converter performance, and validates the architecture as a practical approach for multi-output auxiliary supplies. This is background design-technical content, not a price, capacity, inventory, or policy event.
This is a technical commentary article by Bhanu Pandey, a product engineer for Calibre Design Solutions at Siemens Digital Industries Software, addressing the 'floating net' structural defect in analog and mixed-signal (AMS) verification. Citing the most recent Wilson Research Group / Siemens EDA Functional Verification Study, the article states that first-silicon success rates have hit a historic low, with nearly 68% of designs requiring two or more spins, and that AMS verification remains a primary source of these re-spins. It explains how floating nets arise (a node disconnected from all low-impedance paths in power-down modes, its voltage determined by trapped charge on parasitic capacitances, drifting over time due to leakage currents, potentially causing latch-up or permanent physical damage) and lists three reasons SPICE simulation misses the defect: convergence artifacts (gmin stepping) that mask it, the time-scale problem, and testbench coverage limits. A case study of a design with an internally labeled 'VICTIM' net shows the defect was masked in simulation but in silicon caused a massive current spike that damaged the output stage, leading to a costly field failure and a subsequent re-spin. The article advocates automated structural analysis (e.g., the Calibre Insight Analyzer) to detect floating nets before fabrication and shift reliability verification left. It contains no pricing, supply-demand, capacity or procurement information and is background technical content.
VONK has launched the NEYA 3.0 Hydrogen Power Conversion Platform, the latest generation of its power-conversion platform for large-scale hydrogen electrolysis. The platform features a standardized architecture to improve grid interaction, installation efficiency, system integration, and maintenance. VONK will publicly present NEYA 3.0 at the Hydrogen Technology World Expo Europe in Hamburg from 20 to 22 October 2026, showcasing it at stand 5F32.
According to a report by Chosun.biz (published 8 October 2026), AMD CEO Lisa Su is visiting South Korea to secure additional supply of HBM memory for AI accelerators, saying 'We are going to talk about our broader partnership' with Samsung executives; Samsung, meanwhile, reportedly 'hopes to turn its memory supply relationship with AMD into foundry' orders for logic chips. The visit comes a little less than seven months after the two companies signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding (MOU) this March, effective for three years and covering four areas: supply of next-generation memory products including HBM4 and advanced DDR5; co-development and optimization of memory solutions for AI and high-performance computing systems; exploration of foundry manufacturing opportunities for future AMD platforms; and co-optimization of advanced packaging and related semiconductor technologies. Samsung has become a principal supplier of HBM4 for AMD's Instinct MI400-series accelerators; expanding collaboration beyond memory supply is considerably more complicated, as it involves considerable efforts to design chips for Samsung Foundry's process technologies and risks associated with a product ramp at a new contract chipmaker — AMD's most recent Annual Report states that transitioning production of some products to new manufacturers may cause delayed product introductions, lower yields or poorer performance. AMD has already started shipments of its Instinct MI455 accelerators with 432GB of HBM4 onboard as well as rack-scale Helios AI systems to interested parties; Su said 'Samsung Electronics and SK hynix are key supply-chain partners for AMD,' that 'AI demand is extremely high' so AMD is planning its long-term supply chain with partners, and that 'It is important to plan three to five years ahead with our partners.' The article concludes that AMD is negotiating for more memory supply and whether it will take the risk of adopting Samsung Foundry beyond niche programmable chips 'only time will tell.'
The industry is shifting to mmWave frequencies above 30GHz and adopting waveguide technologies to address signal loss. Traditional interconnects are becoming obsolete, prompting a transition to GaN as a viable alternative to GaAs in high-frequency applications.
Microsoft opened pre-orders for the Surface Laptop Ultra on October 7, a model featuring up to 128GB of unified memory, highlighting a potential new source of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) demand as PC makers bring larger AI models and autonomous agents onto local devices. But the opportunity comes as PC shipments decline and memory manufacturers prioritize server customers, raising questions about whether high-capacity PCs can secure enough supply to become a meaningful growth market.
Omnivision has introduced the OG05D, a 5-Mpixel global-shutter CMOS image sensor with a 2.2 µm pixel size, offering one of the smallest global-shutter pixel sizes with HDR in its class. It is designed for industrial machine vision applications, including compact AI cameras and humanoid robotics, particularly data-collection devices for robotics training. The sensor delivers up to 146 fps in linear mode without crypto, making it 143% faster than the previous-generation sensor; it reaches 130 fps in linear mode with crypto and 60 fps in both 3-exposure HDR and single-exposure dual conversion gain (DCG) HDR. It uses Nyxel NIR technology to achieve QE of more than 55% at 850 nm and more than 35% at 940 nm. The OG05D has a 1/2.525-in. optical format and comes in a compact 56-pin CSP. The image sensor is sampling now, with mass production scheduled for Q4 2026.
Qorvo has introduced the QPX0252 four-channel beamformer IC, which operates from 7.9 GHz to 12 GHz for use in X-band phased-array radar systems. The device supports four radiating antenna elements, with dual-beam receive and single-beam transmit operation. Its high transmit output power directly drives compatible Qorvo front-end modules (FEMs), such as the QPF5012, eliminating the need for external driver amplifiers. Diwakar Vishakhadatta, VP of Defense & Aerospace Products at Qorvo, said the QPX0252 was developed as part of the X-band front-end architecture. According to Qorvo's system analysis, in high-power radar systems the combination of the Qorvo FEM with the QPX0252 operating in a high-linearity mode achieves up to 20 dB higher cascaded input P1dB than other market offerings. QPX0252 samples and evaluation kits are available now. The source does not state the cause.
Whose chips are really inside the hottest new products? We open them up and show you, one part at a time.
iPhone DuoFirst-pass BOM: 37 parts, 12 brands and 16 public MPNs; A20 Pro, C2, N1 and the power/RF chains are located, while the NAND brand stays unconfirmed.See the full teardownAll teardowns| Analog | $0.68 | −5.9% |
|---|---|---|
| Connector | $0.75 | +0.2% |
| CPU | $386.74 | −21.3% |
| DDR4 | $88.40 | −0.2% |
| DDR52026-W13 | $14.89 | −11.2% |
| GPU | $478.20 | +8.2% |
| MCU | $0.68 | −61.7%Unusual |
| MLCC | $0.01 | +54.0%Unusual |
| MOSFET | $0.12 | −82.8%Unusual |
| PMIC2026-W13 | $0.44 | −12.5% |
| SSD/HDD | $288.43 | n/a |