On October 30, local time, Siemens announced that the company had signed an agreement to acquire Altair Engineering, a leading software provider in the industrial simulation and analytics market. This move strengthens Siemens’ position as a leading technology company and its leadership in the industrial software field.

Siemens AG stated that the combination of Altair’s capabilities in simulation, high-performance computing, data science, and artificial intelligence with Siemens Xcelerator will create the world’s most comprehensive AI-driven design and simulation product portfolio.

This transaction is expected to increase Siemens’ digital business revenue by more than 8%, adding approximately 600 million EUR to the 7.3 billion EUR digital business revenue reported in Siemens’ fiscal year 2023.

The transaction is anticipated to close in the second half of 2025. Altair, an information technology company headquartered in Troy, Michigan, USA, was listed on the Nasdaq in 2017.

Altair primarily provides software and cloud solutions in the fields of simulation and analytics, data science, artificial intelligence (AI), and high-performance computing (HPC). Its main products include HyperWorks, a simulation platform for structural analysis, fluid dynamics, and multidisciplinary optimization; SolidThinking, an innovative solution for product design supporting industrial design and engineering analysis; and Altair Smart Learning, a tool for machine learning and AI.

Originally an engineering consulting firm, Altair gradually expanded into the EDA field, adopting an acquisition strategy similar to other major players in the EDA industry. In 2017, Altair acquired Runtime Design Automation, a company providing tools for CPU, GPU, and system-on-chip (SoC) design engineers who rely on EDA tools.

In 2022, Altair announced the acquisition of Concept Engineering, a supplier of automatic schematic generation tools and electronic circuit and harness visualization platforms. In August 2024, Altair announced the acquisition of all outstanding shares of Metrics Design Automation Inc. (Metrics), further expanding its influence in the EDA sector.

In addition to Siemens’acquisition of Altair, the well-known EDA company Cadence has made successive acquisitions of Invecas and BETA CAE Systems. Notably, another EDA giant, Synopsys, acquired Ansys for as much as 35 billion USD, setting a new record in the industry and attracting wide attention.

Meanwhile, in recent years, facing the global wave of mergers and acquisitions in the EDA industry, Chinese EDA companies have been catching up. Through mergers and acquisitions, they are accelerating their growth. According to incomplete statistics, several domestic companies, including Empyrean, Semitronix, X-EPIC, Primarius, Rigoron, and S2C, have implemented acquisition strategies to expand and enrich their technology product lines, enhancing their core competitiveness and market influence.

(Photo credit: Siemens)

Amid concerns on its HBM progress and yield issues on advanced nodes, Samsung has released its full Q3 2024 financial results, with the quarterly revenue reaching KRW 79.1 trillion won (approximately $57.35 billion), hitting an all-time high. However, its semiconductor business remains lackluster, as the DS Division recorded a quarterly operating profit of 3.86 trillion won, marking a 40% decline from the previous quarter.

According to a report by CNBC, while demand for memory chips driven by AI and traditional server products provided some support, Samsung noted that “inventory adjustments negatively impacted mobile demand.” The company also highlighted challenges with “the increasing supply of legacy products in China.”

Samsung continues to face challenges in its most advanced wafer foundry processes. According to TrendForce, the company has yet to solidify its reputation as a reliable partner for cutting-edge nodes, which may hinder its ability to secure orders from top IC design houses and potentially delay its efforts to expand capacity.

Losses in Foundry and System Chip Lead to Profit Drop in DS Division, while Memory Remains Strong

On October 31, Samsung Electronics reported Q3 consolidated revenue of KRW 79.1 trillion, an increase of 7% from the previous quarter, on the back of the launch effects of new smartphone models and increased sales of high-end memory products. According to Business Korea, the Q3 revenue exceeded its previous revenue record of KRW 77.78 trillion, set in Q1 2022.

However, operating profit declined to KRW 9.18 trillion, largely due to one-off costs, including the provision of incentives in the Device Solutions (DS) Division, according to its press release.

In terms of the DS Division, which encompasses the memory and foundry business, it posted KRW 29.27 trillion in consolidated revenue and KRW 3.86 trillion in operating profit in the third quarter, marking almost a 50% drop from the prior quarter’s KRW 6.45 trillion.

According the Korean Economic Daily, Samsung attributed the weaker profit to higher-than-anticipated one-time expenses totaling around KRW 1.5 trillion, which included employee performance bonuses, as well as escalating losses in its foundry and system chip divisions, each estimated at over KRW 1.5 trillion.

On the other hand, the company noted that its memory chip business performed better than anticipated, with an estimated profit of around KRW 7 trillion for the quarter, the Korean Economic Daily notes.

Memory business sales reached KRW 22.27 trillion, more than doubling from the previous year, driven by increased demand for high-end chips used in AI devices and servers, such as HBM, DDR5, and server SSDs, according to Samsung.

Key Takeaways for 2025 Outlook

In the fourth quarter, Samsung notes that while memory demand for mobile and PC may encounter softness, growth in AI will keep demand at robust levels.

As for the Foundry Business, Samsung claims that the unit successfully met its order targets — particularly in sub-5nm technologies — and released the 2nm GAA process design kit (PDK), enabling customers to proceed with their product designs. It notes that the Foundry Business will strive to acquire customers by improving the process maturity of its 2nm GAA technology.

Looking ahead to 2025, for DRAM, Samsung plans to expand the sales of HBM3E and the portion of high-end products such as DDR5 modules with 128GB density or higher for servers and LPDDR5X for mobile, PC, servers, and so on. For NAND, it will proactively respond to the high-density trend based on QLC products — including 64TB and 128TB SSDs — and solidify leadership in the PCIe Gen5 market by accelerating the tech migration from V6 to V8.

The Foundry Business, on the other hand, aims to expand revenue through ongoing yield improvements in advanced technology while securing major customers through successful 2nm mass production. In addition, integrating advanced nodes and packaging solutions to further develop the HBM buffer die is expected to help acquire new customers in the AI and HPC sectors, according to Samsung.

(Photo credit: Samsung)

According to a report from TechNews, Samsung is expanding its use of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors in its Galaxy flagship phones, while its own Exynos processors are primarily utilized in mid- to low-end smartphones, tablets, and home appliances.

However, Exynos processors may no longer be used even in home appliances, as Samsung is reported considering installing Qualcomm’s processors in these devices, according to the report from SEDaily.

The report from SEDaily pointed out that since Samsung needs to install expensive Qualcomm processors in the Galaxy S25 series of smartphones set to launch in 2025, it plans to actively use Qualcomm products in home appliances to achieve related cost efficiencies.

The report indicated that, according to Yoo Mi-young, Vice President and Head of the Software Development Team in the Digital Appliances (DA) Division, Samsung is currently developing new products aimed at launching home appliances that utilize large-scale language models, or edge computing, in 2025. Additionally, Samsung is working on its own low-power, high-performance neural network processing unit chip.

Furthermore, the report noted that the home appliance most affected will be the refrigerator, as the latest Samsung refrigerators feature AI that can identify ingredients and recommend recipes. To support this AI function, powerful processors will be needed.

According to the report, Samsung has been developing Exynos 2500 series processors in the past. However, due to performance and yield issues, sources indicate that Samsung’s Galaxy S25/S25+/Ultra and other mobile phones will use Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite processor.

The report indicated that the price of the Snapdragon 8 Elite processor is approximately twice that of the Exynos. Therefore, Samsung is reportedly planning to actively incorporate Qualcomm chips into home appliances to help share costs, which also aligns with the trend toward smart home devices.

According to the report, the price of the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon processor has increased by 20%, so Samsung’s cost burden has also increased significantly. With the trend toward smart home appliances, actively expanding the use of Qualcomm chips in these products is expected to help reduce Qualcomm’s mobile AP purchase prices.

Read more

• [News] Samsung Rumored to Abandon Exynos 2500, Equipping Entire S25 Series with Snapdragon
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(Photo credit: Samsung)

According to a report from Tom’s Hardware, while major tech companies are investing heavily in datacenter GPUs, the lifespan of these GPUs may only be 1 to 3 years, depending on their utilization rates.

The report, citing a general architect at Alphabet, noted that because GPUs are under heavy workload of AI training and inference, they tend to wear out more quickly than other components.

According to the report, in datacenters operated by cloud service providers (CSPs), the utilization rate of GPUs for AI workloads ranges from approximately 60% to 70%.

The report indicated that, citing the words from the general architect at Alphabet, at this utilization rate, a GPU can typically survive for 1 to 2 years, or up to 3 years. While the report stated that this claim cannot be considered 100% accurate and requires further confirmation, it highlighted that modern datacenter GPUs for AI and HPC applications consume and dissipate 700W of power or more, which is significant stress for chips.

One way to extend the life of the GPUs is to reduce the utilization rate, according to the report. However, to reduce the utilization rate implies that the GPUs will lose value more gradually and it will take longer to return their capital, which isn’t ideal for business. Therefore, the report pointed out that most cloud service providers will use their GPUs at a high utilization rate.

The report also references a study conducted by Meta, which describes training its Llama 3 405B model on a cluster powered by 16,384 NVIDIA H100 80GB GPUs. According to the report, in that study, the model flop utilization (MFU) rate of the cluster was about 38% (using BF16), while during a 54-day pre-training snapshot, out of 419 unforeseen disruptions, 148 (30.1%) were caused by GPU failures (including NVLink fails) and 72 (17.2%) were due to HBM3 memory failures.

This result carried out by Meta, according to the report, is quite favorable for NVIDIA’s H100 GPUs. If GPUs and their memory fail at Meta’s rate, the annualized failure rate will be about 9%, and in 3 years, it will be about 27%. However, GPUs will likely fail more frequently after a year of heavy use, as the report pointed out.

(Photo credit: NVIDIA)

Ahead of Intel’s upcoming Q3 financial announcement on October 31st, the market has speculated that it may suffer another quarter of revenue decline, while the company might reportedly incur a loss over USD 3 billion this year.

However, the struggling giant might have made a significant misstep as early as three years ago, when Pat Gelsinger took over as Intel’s CEO, and soon damaged the relationship with TSMC by offending the foundry leader, according to an in-depth report by Reuters.

Sweet Deal Canceled upon Bold Remarks

According to the report, Intel used to enjoy a favorable arrangement with TSMC, as the latter was producing chips that Intel could not manufacture in-house. Citing several people familiar with the deal, TSMC was offering Intel substantial discounts.

However, rather than carefully fostering the relationship, Gelsinger made controversial statements, one after another, and strained ties with TSMC by highlighting Taiwan’s delicate situation with China, the report notes.

According to Reuters, TSMC decided to revoke Intel’s discount as a counterattack. Citing sources familiar with the situation, instead of offering approximately 40% off on the $23,000, 3nm wafers used to manufacture Intel’s chips, TSMC now asked Intel to pay the full price. The move significantly shrink Intel’s margins.

To recap, Reuters states that in May 2021, just months after Gelsinger took the throne of Intel’s CEO, he highlighted the ongoing US-China conflict and warned that the industry shouldn’t become too reliant on TSMC. “You don’t want all of your eggs in the basket of a Taiwan fab,” he said, implying that companies need to look for other supplier alternatives.

TSMC certainly does not like the comments. According to a previous report by Wccftech, TSMC founder Morris Chang responded by saying that he was taken aback by Gelsinger’s rudeness towards TSMC when they met back in 2015.

Later that December, Gelsinger further advocated for U.S. investment in domestic chipmakers, stating at a tech conference that Taiwan is not a stable place, according to Reuters.

When asked by Reuters about this previously undisclosed incident, Intel stated that TSMC remains an important partner and that they maintain a “healthy business relationship today.” TSMC also told Reuters that Intel is a valued customer.

Still Lagging behind as 18A Challenges Remain

TSMC founder Morris Chang used to say that Gelsinger’s previous remarks were made from an emotional standpoint, which failed to clarify how Intel intends to surpass TSMC technologically in the years ahead. Now, Intel’s push to reclaim its manufacturing edge through a new chip-production process, known as 18A, has encountered delays and technical hurdles, with some potential clients hesitating to adopt it.

According a previous report by Reuters, Broadcom’s initial tests with Intel’s 18A (1.8nm-class) process did not meet expectations, creating additional pressure on the semiconductor giant’s efforts to catch up with TSMC in the foundry sector.

The report noted that Broadcom tested Intel’s 18A by producing wafers with typical design patterns. However, its engineers and executives were said to be disappointed with the results, regarding the process as “not ready for high-volume production.”

Read more

• [News] Former Intel Directors Urges the Company to Spin off its Fab Business
• [News] Intel Reportedly Aims to Raise Billions through Sale of Minority Stake in Altera

(Photo credit: Intel)