Samsung and Synopsys collaborated on the first production tapeout of a high-performance mobile SoC design, including CPUs and GPUs, using the Synopsys.ai EDA suite on Samsung Foundry’s gate-all-around (GAA) process. Samsung plans to begin mass production of 2nm process GAA chips in 2025, reports BusinessKorea.

UMC developed the first radio frequency silicon on insulator (RF-SOI)-based 3D IC process for chips used in smartphones and other 5G/6G mobile devices. The process uses wafer-to-wafer bonding technology to address radio frequency interference between stacked dies and reduces die size by 45%.

Fig. 1: UMC’s 3D IC solution for RFSOI technology. Source: UMC

The first programmable chip capable of shaping, splitting, and steering beams of light is now being produced by Skywater Technology and Lumotive. The technology is critical for advancing lidar-based systems used in robotics, automotive, and other 3D sensing applications.

Driven by demand for AI chips, SK hynix revealed it has already booked its entire production of high-bandwidth memory chips for 2024 and is nearly sold out of its production capacity for 2025, reported the Korea Times, while SEMI reported that silicon wafer shipments declined in Q1 2024, quarter over quarter, a 13% drop, attributed to continued weakness in IC fab utilization and inventory adjustments.

PCI-SIG published the CopprLink Internal and External Cable specifications to provide PCIe 5.0 and 6.0 signaling at 32 and 64 GT/s and leverage standard connector form factors for applications including storage, data centers, AI/ML, and disaggregated memory.

The U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) launched the CHIPS Women in Construction Framework to boost the participation of women and economically disadvantaged people in the workforce, aiming to support on-time and successful completion of CHIPS Act-funded projects. Intel and Micron adopted the framework.

Quick links to more news:

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In-Depth
Education and Training
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Markets and Money

The SiC wafer processing equipment market is growing rapidly, reports Yole. SiC devices will exceed $10B by 2029 at a CAGR of 25%, and the SiC manufacturing tool market is projected to reach $5B by 2026.

imec.xpand launched a €300 million (~$321 million) fund that will invest in semiconductor and nanotechnology startups with the potential to push semiconductor innovation beyond traditional applications and drive next-gen technologies.

Blaize raised $106 million for its programmable graph streaming processor architecture suite and low-code/no-code software platform for edge AI.

Guerrilla RF completed the acquisition of Gallium Semiconductor‘s portfolio of GaN power amplifiers and front-end modules.

About 90% of connected cars sold in 2030 will have embedded 5G capability, reported Counterpoint. Also, about 75% of laptop PCs sold in 2027 will be AI laptop PCs with advanced generative AI, and the global high-level OS (HLOS) or advanced smartwatch market is predicted to grow 15% in 2024.

Global

Powerchip Semiconductor opened a new 300mm facility in northwestern Taiwan targeting the production of AI semiconductors. The facility is expected to produce 50,000 wafers per month at 55, 40, and 28nm nodes.

Taiwan-based KYEC Semiconductor will withdraw its China operations by the third quarter due to increasing geopolitical tensions, reports the South China Morning Post.

Japan will expand its semiconductor export restrictions to China related to four technologies: Scanning electron microscopes, CMOS, FD-SOI, and the outputs of quantum computers, according to TrendForce.

IBM will invest CAD$187 million (~US$137M in Canada’s semiconductor industry, with the bulk of the investment focused on advanced assembly, testing, and packaging operations.

Microsoft will invest US$2.2 billion over the next four years to build Malaysia’s digital infrastructure, create AI skilling opportunities, establish an AI Center of Excellence, and enhance cybersecurity.

In-Depth

New stories and tech talks published by Semiconductor Engineering this week:

• Multi-Die Design Pushes Complexity To The Max
• Design Considerations In Photonics
• Overlay Optimization In Advanced IC Substrates
• Fundamental Issues In Computer Vision Still Unresolved
• Sensor Fusion Challenges In Automotive

Security

Infineon collaborated with ETAS to integrate the ESCRYPT CycurHSM 3.x automotive security software stack into its next-gen AURIX MCUs to optimize security, performance, and functionality.

Synopsys released Polaris Assist, an AI-powered application security assistant on its Polaris Software Integrity Platform, combining LLM technology with application security knowledge and intelligence.

In security research:

• UT Dallas, Intel, NXP, and TI published a framework for early anomaly detection in AMS components of automotive SoCs.
• The University of Central Florida said that LLMs can be harnessed to automatically rectify security-relevant vulnerabilities inherent in hardware designs within the semiconductor context.
• Western University leveraged hardware security modules for enhanced intra-domain security.
• A team in India proposed a post-quantum secure PUF-based cross-domain authentication mechanism for Internet of Drones.

U.S. President Biden signed a National Security Memorandum to enhance the resilience of critical infrastructure, and the White House announced key actions taken since Biden’s AI Executive Order, including measures to mitigate risk.

CISA and partners published a fact sheet on pro-Russia hacktivists who seek to compromise industrial control systems and small-scale operational technology systems in North American and European critical infrastructure sectors. CISA issued other alerts including two Microsoft vulnerabilities.

Education and Training

The U.S. National Institute for Innovation and Technology (NIIT) and the Department of Labor (DoL) partnered to celebrate the inaugural Youth Apprenticeship Week on May 5 to 11, highlighting opportunities in critical industries such as semiconductors and advanced manufacturing.

SUNY Poly received an additional $4 million from New York State for its Semiconductor Processing to Packaging Research, Education, and Training Center.

The University of Pennsylvania launched an online Master of Science in Engineering in AI degree.

The American University of Armenia celebrated its 10-year collaboration with Siemens, which provides AUA’s Engineering Research Center with annual research grants.

Product News

Renesas and SEGGER Embedded Studio launched integrated code generator support for its 32-bit RISC-V MCU. 

Rambus introduced a family of DDR5 server Power Management ICs (PMICs), including an extreme current device for high-performance applications.

Fig. 2: Rambus’ server PMIC on DDR5 RDIMM. Source: Rambus

Keysight added capabilities to Inspector, part of the company’s recently acquired device security research and test lab Riscure, that are designed to test the robustness of post-quantum cryptography (PQC) and help device and chip vendors identify and fix hardware vulnerabilities. Keysight also validated new conformance test cases for narrowband IoT non-terrestrial networks standards.

Ansys’ RedHawk-SC and Totem power integrity platforms were certified for TSMC‘s N2 nanosheet-based process technology, while its RaptorX solution for on-chip electromagnetic modeling was certified for TSMC’s N5 process.

Netherlands-based athleisure brand PREMIUM INC selected CLEVR to implement Siemens’ Mendix Digital Lifecycle Management for Fashion & Retail solution.

Micron will begin shipping high-capacity DRAM for AI data centers.

Microchip uncorked radiation-tolerant SoC FPGAs for space applications that uses a real-time Linux-capable RISC-V-based microprocessor subsystem.

Quantum

University of Chicago researchers developed a system to boost the efficiency of quantum error correction using a framework based on quantum low-density party-check (qLDPC) codes and new hardware involving reconfigurable atom arrays.

PsiQuantum will receive AUD $940 million (~$620 million) in equity, grants, and loans from the Australian and Queensland governments to deploy a utility-scale quantum computer in the regime of 1 million physical qubits in Brisbane, Australia.

Japan-based RIKEN will co-locate IBM’s Quantum System Two with its Fugaku supercomputer for integrated quantum-classical workflows in a heterogeneous quantum-HPC hybrid computing environment. Fugaku is currently one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers.

QuEra Computing was awarded a ¥6.5 billion (~$41 million) contract by Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) to deliver a gate-based neutral-atom quantum computer alongside AIST’s ABCI-Q supercomputer as part of a quantum-classical computing platform.

Novo Holdings, the controlling stakeholder of pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, plans to boost the quantum technology startup ecosystem in Denmark with DKK 1.4 billion (~$201 million) in investments.

The University of Sydney received AUD $18.4 million (~$12 million) from the Australian government to help grow the quantum industry and ecosystem.

The European Commission plans to spend €112 million (~$120 million) to support AI and quantum research and innovation.

Research

Intel researchers developed a 300-millimeter cryogenic probing process to collect high-volume data on the performance of silicon spin qubit devices across whole wafers using CMOS manufacturing techniques.

EPFL researchers used a form of ML called deep reinforcement learning (DRL) to train a four-legged robot to avoid falls by switching between walking, trotting, and pronking.=

The University of Cambridge researchers developed tiny, flexible nerve cuff devices that can wrap around individual nerve fibers without damaging them, useful to treat a range of neurological disorders.

Argonne National Laboratory and Toyota are exploring a direct recycling approach that carefully extracts components from spent batteries. Argonne is also working with Talon Metals on a process that could increase the number of EV batteries produced from mined nickel ore.

Events

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

Upcoming webinars are here.

Further Reading

Read the latest special reports and top stories, or check out the latest newsletters:

Systems and Design
Low Power-High Performance
Test, Measurement and Analytics
Manufacturing, Packaging and Materials
Automotive, Security and Pervasive Computing

The post Chip Industry Week In Review appeared first on Semiconductor Engineering.

A new candidate is making waves in the Democratic primaries: nobody. Organizers had urged Democrats to vote "uncommitted" in the Michigan primary on Tuesday, a way to show President Joe Biden that his foreign policy risked losing a crucial swing state. Around 13 percent of Democratic primary voters did, exceeding organizers' expectations.

The campaign was led by Arab Americans angry with U.S. military involvement in Gaza and Yemen. Other voters were motivated by a lesser-known side of Biden's foreign policy: The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) also campaigned for uncommitted votes in order to protest Biden's support for Armenia's enemy Azerbaijan.

"We didn't deliver the bulk of those votes, clearly, but we were part of it, and we were happy to be a part of it," says Aram Hamparian, executive director of ANCA. Armenians are looking to organize similar campaigns in Nevada and Pennsylvania, two other swing states with robust diaspora communities, according to Hamparian.

The U.S. Census counts 17,000 Armenian Americans in Michigan, although it may be an undercount, as the Armenian Community Center in Dearborn says that there are 50,000 Armenian Americans in the state. Both the Armenian and Arab communities in the state date back more than a century.

The Armenian uncommitted campaign went public on February 20, when ANCA board member Dzovinar Hatsakordzian published an op-ed in The Armenian Weekly announcing that she would vote "uncommitted" in the Michigan primary.

"I was surprised with the reaction of the community," Hatsakordzian tells Reason. "When we started, we didn't think that they would be open to the idea, but [the support] was overwhelming."

Armenian Americans "tend to align along with the area they live in" in terms of party politics, but "they'll cross a party line if they feel like there's a very stark issue before them," Hamparian says. "The military aid to Azerbaijan is our chief complaint about Biden."

In September 2023, the Azerbaijani military stormed the Armenian-majority territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, driving out almost the entire population, an act that many outside observers have called ethnic cleansing or even genocide. It was the ugly coda to a long, brutal conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

During the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh had attempted to declare their independence from Azerbaijan, leading to a war that involved atrocities and mass displacement on both sides. (The territory is also called Artsakh in Armenian.) The conflict froze in the mid-1990s and restarted with an Azerbaijani offensive in September 2020.

"If they do not leave our lands of their own free will, we will chase them away like dogs and we are doing that," Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in an October 2020 speech. Aliyev also stated that he would welcome Nagorno-Karabakh's Armenians as fellow citizens, a claim that Armenians were inclined to disbelieve after Azerbaijani troops beheaded two elderly Armenian men on camera.

Azerbaijan's wars have been funded, in part, by the American taxpayer. Congress initially tried to stay out of the conflict, banning military aid to Azerbaijan in 1992. A decade later, the U.S. government reversed course, hoping to gain a new strategic ally, because Azerbaijan is located between Iran and Russia and along key air routes to Afghanistan.

Every president since George W. Bush has waived the congressional aid restrictions, and Washington provided $164 million in "security assistance" to the Azerbaijani military between 2002 and 2020. Most of that aid, over $100 million, came during Donald Trump's presidency.

After the 2020 offensive, then-candidate Biden demanded an end to the aid. But after he took office, Biden continued to sign off on the security assistance programs.

"The bulk of military aid to Azerbaijan went under Trump, and the [2020 offensive] took place in the last months of Trump's presidency, so he bears heavy responsibility for that," Hamparian says, but "having witnessed the war, [Biden] continued the military aid."

There was a particularly strong sense of whiplash within the Armenian-American community in April 2021. That month, Biden recognized the World War I–era mass murder of Armenians in Turkey as a genocide, a move that Armenian Americans have long called for. A few days later, Biden went back on his campaign promise and approved additional aid to Azerbaijan.

The Biden administration announced its genocide recognition with massive media fanfare, while it quietly notified Congress about the military aid. Biden was behaving "as if somehow Armenians will not notice that he's arming a genocidal state in the same week that he's recognizing a genocidal crime," Hamparian says.

U.S. military aid, which mostly focuses on border security, is not a make-or-break issue for the Azerbaijani army. Between 2010 and 2020, the majority of Azerbaijan's weapons came from Russia, with smaller contributions from Israel, Belarus, and Turkey. Russia also supplied nearly all of Armenia's weapons in the same period.

In addition to selling weapons to both sides, Russia has had peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh since November 2020. Those troops have largely not acted to protect the local population.

However small U.S. aid was in the grand scheme of things, Hamparian believes that the very existence of that aid was "morally emboldening" to Azerbaijani leaders, who thought they had an American green light.

Then came the starvation siege. In late 2022 and early 2023, the Azerbaijani army gradually cut off Nagorno-Karabakh's access to the outside world. Severe shortages set in. Azerbaijan was even rumored to be building a concentration camp for Armenian men, a rumor that New Lines journalists were able to corroborate using satellite imagery.

Her voice filled with emotion, Hatsakordzian describes the Armenian-American message to the Biden administration at the time: "We went to them, and we said we know this is going to end with ethnic cleansing…Why is my taxpayer money going to fund a genocidal country such as Azerbaijan?"

Those fears came true in September 2023, when the Azerbaijani army overran the territory, leading to a mass Armenian exodus. The Biden administration then paused military aid to Azerbaijan, and the Senate moved to make it a two-year suspension. At the time, Hamparian called Washington's actions "a day late and a dollar short."

Hatsakordzian says that she does not currently plan to vote for Biden, and that in order to win back her vote, "he can sanction Azerbaijan, he can stop sending weapons to Azerbaijan, and take concrete actions to stop the genocide that is going on."

Some Armenian Americans also sympathize with Arab Americans' campaign against the Biden administration.

The two campaigns "share the exact same frustrations" with U.S. foreign policy, says Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy in the Arab World Now, a Washington-based nonprofit. She is an Armenian American whose own family escaped to Jerusalem in the wake of the Armenian genocide, before fleeing again due to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Whitson compares Armenian-American grievances with U.S. support for Azerbaijan to Palestinian-American grievances with U.S. support for Israel: "You have a strong diaspora community that's deeply opposed to an abusive regime, and they find their own government supporting it."

ANCA has been more circumspect about its stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hatsakordzian and Hamparian emphasize that Armenians have good relations with their Arab and Jewish neighbors alike. Yet Hamparian supports, on principle, the other efforts to pressure the Biden administration in the primaries.

"Everyone who voted 'uncommitted' went to the polls trying to bring accountability to our foreign policy system, and that's a good thing," Hamparian says. "Exercises like this remind [politicians] that foreign policy doesn't start and end at the State Department. It's the property of the American people."

The post The Armenian-Azerbaijani Conflict Comes to Michigan appeared first on Reason.com.