NuAxiSemiconductor trade intelligence

Most Read – xMCUs, NVHBM base dies, Qualcomm layoffs

What happened

This is a roundup of the site's most popular articles from the last week. No. 5: Google and Synaptics have introduced the xMCU – an MCU combining heterogeneous, AI-native compute and acceleration with integrated high-bandwidth custom DRAM scalable to hundreds of megabytes; the Astra SR200 Series targets AI wearables and battery-powered sensing devices, enabling larger AI models and richer multimodal workloads entirely on-device. No. 4: According to the Data Centers Processor Market Monitor, Q3 2026, agentic AI is reviving datacenter CPU demand, with CPU revenues up 35%, ahead of AI ASICs (+23%) and GPUs (+13%); GPU and AI ASIC designers are scaling back their roadmaps, sometimes drastically, in response to the sharp rise in DRAM prices. No. 3: London neocloud startup Nscale has had another setback to its IPO plans as Microsoft pulled out of a deal to be the anchor tenant on Nscale's Loughton, Essex, datacentre; neither party gave any reason for the pull-out, but UK Power Networks has told Nscale it cannot supply enough power for the site until the early to mid 2030s. No. 2: Per the Seoul Economic Daily, Nvidia has asked Samsung, Hynix and Micron to use base dies made on TSMC's 3nm node for its custom HBM called NVHBM; the base die contains the logic layer at the bottom of the HBM stack that handles the memory controller and interface, and the source's report of Nvidia's reason is truncated. No. 1: According to a memo from CEO Cristiano Amon to employees seen by Reuters, Qualcomm is to lay off staff worldwide, with notifications to start next month; the number involved is not known, the company had 52k employees in September 2025, and the memo describes the lay-offs as "a performance-focused reduction after annual reviews".