JEDEC and the Open Compute Project rolled out a new set of guidelines for standardizing chiplet characterization details, such as thermal properties, physical and mechanical requirements, and behavior specs. Those details have been a sticking point for commercial chiplets, because without them it’s not possible to choose the best chiplet for a particular application or workload. The guidelines are a prerequisite for a multi-vendor chiplet marketplace.

AMD, Broadcom, Cisco, Google, HPE, Intel, Meta, and Microsoft proposed a new high-speed, low-latency interconnect specification, Ultra Accelerator Link (UALink), between accelerators and switches in AI computing pods. The 1.0 specification will enable the connection of up to 1,024 accelerators within a pod and allow for direct loads and stores between the memory attached to accelerators.

Arm debuted a range of new CPUs, including the Cortex-X925 for on-device generative AI, and the Cortex-A725 with improved efficiency for AI and mobile gaming. It also announced the Immortalis-G925 GPU for flagship smartphones, and the Mali-G725/625 GPUs for consumer devices. Additionally, Arm announced Compute Subsystems (CSS) for Client to provide foundational computing elements for AI smartphone and PC SoCs, and it introduced KleidiAI, a set of compute kernels for developers of AI frameworks. The Armv9-A architecture also added support for the Scalable Matrix Extension to accelerate AI workloads.

TSMC said its 2nm process is on target to begin mass production in 2025. Meanwhile, Samsung is expected to release its 1nm plan next month, targeting mass production for 2026 — a year ahead of schedule, reports Business Korea.

CHIPs for America and NATCAST released a 2024 roadmap for the U.S. National Semiconductor Technology Center (NSTC), identifying priorities for facilities, research, workforce development, and membership.

China is investing CNY 344 billion (~$47.5 billion) into the third phase of its National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, also known as the Big Fund, to support its semiconductor sector and supply chain, according to numerous reports.

Malaysia plans to invest $5.3 billion in seed capital and support for semiconductor manufacturing in an effort to attract more than $100 billion in foreign investments, reports Reuters. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim announced the effort to create at least 10 companies focused on IC design, advanced packaging, and equipment manufacturing.

imec demonstrated a die-to-wafer hybrid bonding flow for Cu-Cu and SiCN-SiCN at pitches down to 2µm at the IEEE’s ECTC conference. This breakthrough could enable die and wafer-level optical interconnects.

The chip industry is racing to develop glass for advanced packaging, setting the stage for one of the biggest shifts in chip materials in decades — and one that will introduce a broad new set of challenges that will take years to fully resolve.

Quick links to more news:

In-Depth
Global
Product News
Markets and Money
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Research and Training
Quantum
Events and Further Reading

In-Depth

Semiconductor Engineering published its Systems & Design newsletter featuring these top stories:

• RISC-V Heralds New Era Of Cooperation
• AI For Data Management
• Trouble Ahead For IC Verification

Global

STMicroelectronics is building a fully integrated SiC facility in Catania, Italy.  The high-volume 200mm facility is projected to cost over $5 billion.

Siliconware Precision Industries Co. Ltd.(SPIL) broke ground on an RM 6 billion (~$1.3 billion) advanced packaging and testing facility in Malaysia. Also, Google will invest $2 billion in Malaysia for its first data center, and a Google Cloud hub to meet growing demand for cloud services and AI literacy programs, reports AP.

In an SEC filing, Applied Materials received additional subpoenas from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s (DoC) Bureau of Industry and Security related to shipments of advanced semiconductor equipment to China. This comes on the heels of similar subpoenas issued last year.

A Chinese contractor working for SK hynix was arrested in South Korea and is being charged with funneling more than 3,000 copies of a paper on solving process failure issues to Huawei, reports South Korea’s Union News.

VSORA, CEA-Grenoble, and Valeo were awarded $7 million from the French government to build low-latency, low-power AI inference co-processors for autonomous driving and other applications.

In the U.S., the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is investigating unexpected driving behaviors of vehicles equipped with Waymo‘s 5th Generation automated driving system (ADS), with details of nine new incidents on top of the first 22.

Product News

ASE introduced powerSIP, a power delivery platform designed to reduce signal and transmission loss while addressing current density challenges.

Infineon announced a roadmap for energy-efficient power supply units based on Si, SiC, and GaN to address the energy needs of AI data centers, featuring new 8 kW and 12 kW PSUs, in addition to the 3 kW and 3.3 kW units available today. The company also released its CoolSiC MOSFET 400 V family, specially developed for use in the AC/DC stage of AI servers, complementing the PSU roadmap.

Fig. 1: Infineon’s 8kW PSU. Source: Infineon

Infineon also introduced two new generations of high voltage (HV) and medium voltage (MV) CoolGaN TM devices, enabling customers to use GaN in voltage classes from 40 V to 700 V. The devices are built using Infineon’s 8-inch foundry processes.

Ansys launched Ansys Access on Microsoft Azure to provide pre-configured simulation products optimized for HPC on Azure infrastructure.

Foxconn Industrial Internet used Keysight Technology’s Open RAN Studio solution to certify an outdoor Open Radio Unit (O-RU).

Andes Technology announced an SoC and development board for the development and porting of large RISC-V applications.

MediaTek uncorked a pair of mobile chipsets built on a 4nm process that use an octa-core CPU consisting of 4X Arm Cortex-A78 cores operating at up to 2.5GHz paired with 4X Arm Cortex-A55 cores.

The NVIDIA H200 Blackwell platform is expected to begin shipping in Q3 of 2024 and will be available to data centers by Q4, according to TrendForce.

A room-temperature direct fusion hybrid bonding system from Be Semiconductor has shipped to the NHanced advanced packaging facility in North Carolina. The new system offers faster throughput for copper interconnects with submicron pad sizes, greater accuracy and reduced warpage.

Markets and Money

Frore Systems raised $80 million for its solid-state active cooling module, which removes heat from the top of a chip without fans. The device in systems ranging from notebooks and network edge gateways to data centers.

Axus Technology received $12.5 million in capital equity funding to make its chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) equipment for semiconductor wafer polishing, thinning, and cleaning, including of silicon carbide (SiC) wafers.

Elon Musk’s xAI announced a series B funding round of $6 billion.

Micron was ordered to pay $445 million in damages to Netlist for patent infringement of the company’s DDR4 memory module technology between 2021 and 2024.

Global revenue from AI semiconductors is predicted to total $71 billion in 2024, up 33% from 2023, according to Gartner. In 2025, it is expected to jump to $91.9 billion. The value of AI accelerators used in servers is expected to total $21 billion in 2024 and reach $33 billion by 2028.

NAND flash revenue was $14.71 billion in Q1 2024, an increase of 28.1%, according to TrendForce.

The optical transceiver market dipped from $11 billion in 2022 to $10.9 billion in 2023, but it is predicted to reach $22.4 billion by 2029, driven by AI, 800G applications, and the transition to 200G/lane ecosystem technologies, reports Yole.

Yole also found that ultra-wideband technical choices and packaging types used by NXP, Apple, and Qorvo vary considerably, ranging from 7nm to 90nm, with both CMOS and finFET transistors.

The global market share of GenAI-capable smartphones increased to 6% in Q1 2024 from 1.3% in the previous quarter, reports Counterpoint. The premium segment accounted for over 70% of sales with Samsung on top and contributing 58%. Meanwhile, global foldable smartphone shipments were up 49% YoY in Q1 2024, led by Huawei, HONOR, and Motorola.

Security

The National Science Foundation awarded Worcester Polytechnic Institute researcher Shahin Tajik almost $0.6 million to develop new technologies to address hardware security vulnerabilities.

The Hyperform consortium was formed to develop European sovereignty in post-quantum cryptography, funded by the French government and EU credits. Members include IDEMIA Secure Transactions, CEA Leti, and the French cybersecurity agency (ANSSI).

In security research:

• University of California Davis and University of Arizona researchers proposed a framework leveraging generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) models to automate the obfuscation process.
• Columbia University and Intel researchers presented a secure digital low dropout regulator that integrates an attack detector and a detection-driven protection scheme to mitigate correlation power analysis.
• Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) researchers analyzed threshold switch devices and their performance in hardware security.

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) seeks proposals for its AI Quantified program to develop technology to help deploy generative AI safely and effectively across the Department of Defense (DoD) and society.

Vanderbilt University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) partnered to develop dependable AI for national security applications.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a number of alerts/advisories.

Research and Training

New York continues to amp up their semiconductor offerings. NY CREATES and Raytheon unveiled a semiconductor workforce training program. And Syracuse  University is hosting a free virtual course focused on the semiconductor industry this summer.

In research news:

• A team of researchers at MIT and other universities found that extreme temperatures up to 500°C did not significantly degrade GaN materials or contacts.
• University of Cambridge researchers developed adaptive and eco-friendly sensors that can be directly and imperceptibly printed onto biological surfaces, such as a finger or flower petal.
• Researchers at Rice University and Hanyang University developed an elastic material that moves like skin and can adjust its dielectric frequency to stabilize RF communications and counter disruptive frequency shifts that interfere with electronics when a substrate is twisted or stretched, with potential for stretchable wearable electronic devices.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded $36 million to three projects chosen for their potential to revolutionize computing. The University of Texas at Austin-led project aims to create a next-gen open-source intelligent and adaptive OS. The Harvard University-led project targets sustainable computing. The University of Massachusetts Amherst-led project will develop computational decarbonization.

Quantum

Singapore will invest close to S$300 million (~$222 million) into its National Quantum Strategy to support the development and deployment of quantum technologies, including an initiative to design and build a quantum processor within the country.

Several quantum partnerships were announced:

• Riverlane and Alice & Bob will integrate Riverlane’s quantum error correction stack within Alice & Bob’s larger quantum computing system based on cat qubit technology.
• New York University and the University of Copenhagen will collaborate to explore the viability of hybrid superconductor-semiconductor quantum materials for the production of quantum chips and integration with CMOS processes.
• NXP, eleQtron, and ParityQC showed off a full-stack, ion-trap based quantum computer demonstrator for Germany’s DLR Quantum Computing Initiative.
• Photonic says it demonstrated distributed entanglement between quantum modules using optically-linked silicon spin qubits with a native telecom networking interface as part of a quantum internet effort with Microsoft.
• Classiq and HPE say they developed a rapid method for solving large-scale combinatorial optimization problems by combining quantum and classical HPC approaches.

Events and Further Reading

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

Upcoming webinars are here, including integrated SLM analytics solution, prototyping and validation of perception sensor systems, and improving PCB designs for performance and reliability.

Semiconductor Engineering’s latest newsletters:

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

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

President Biden will raise the tariff rate on Chinese semiconductors from 25% to 50% by 2025, among other measures to protect U.S. businesses from China’s trade practices. Also, as part of President Biden’s AI Executive Order, the Administration released steps to protect workers from AI risks, including human oversight of systems and transparency about what systems are being used.

Intel is in advanced talks with Apollo Global Management for the equity firm to provide more than $11 billion to build a fab in Ireland, reported the Wall Street Journal. Also, Intel’s Foundry Services appointed Kevin O’Buckley as the senior vice president and general manager.

Polar is slated to receive up to $120 million in CHIPS Act funding to establish an independent American foundry in Minnesota. The company expects to invest about $525 million in the expansion of the facility over the next two years, with a $75 million investment from the State of Minnesota.

Arm plans to develop AI chips for launch next year, reports Nikkei Asia.

South Korea is planning a support package worth more than 10 trillion won ($7.3 billion) aimed at chip materials, equipment makers, and fabless companies throughout the semiconductor supply chain, according to Reuters.

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Global

Edwards opened a new facility in Asan City, South Korea. The 15,000m² factory provides a key production site for abatement systems, and integrated vacuum and abatement systems for semiconductor manufacturing.

France’s courtship with mega-tech is paying off.  Microsoft is investing more than US $4 billion to expand its cloud computing and AI infrastructure, including bringing up to 25,000 advanced GPUs to the country by the end of 2025. The “Choose France” campaign also snagged US $1.3 billion from Amazon for cloud infrastructure expansion, genAI and more.

Toyota, Nissan, and Honda are teaming up on AI and chips for next-gen cars with support from Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, (METI), reports Nikkei Asia.

Meanwhile, IBM and Honda are collaborating on long-term R&D of next-gen technologies for software-defined vehicles (SDV), including chiplets, brain-inspired computing, and hardware-software co-optimization.

Siemens and Foxconn plan to collaborate on global manufacturing processes in electronics, information and communications technology, and electric vehicles (EV).

TSMC confirmed a Q424 construction start date for its first European plant in Dresden, Germany.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) plans to invest €7.8 billion (~$8.4B) in the AWS European Sovereign Cloud in Germany through 2040. The system is designed to serve public sector organizations and customers in highly regulated industries.

In-Depth

Semiconductor Engineering published its Low Power-High Performance newsletter this week, featuring these stories:

• • Will Domain-Specific ICs Become Ubiquitous?
  • Running More Efficient AI/ML Code With Neuromorphic Engines
  • Power/Performance Costs In Chip Security

And this week’s Test, Measurement & Analytics newsletter featured these stories:

• Using Predictive Maintenance To Boost IC Manufacturing Efficiency
• The Future Of Fault Coverage In Chips
• Doing More At Functional Test

Markets and Money

The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) awarded more than $1.2 million to 12 businesses in 8 states under the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program to fund R&D of products relating to cybersecurity, quantum computing, health care, semiconductor manufacturing, and other critical areas.

Engineering services and consulting company Infosys completed the acquisition of InSemi Technology, a provider of semiconductor design and embedded software development services.

The quantum market, which includes quantum networking and sensors alongside computing, is predicted to grow from $838 million in 2024 to $1.8 billion in 2029, reports Yole.

Shipments of OLED monitors reached about 200,000 units in Q1 2024, a year over year growth of 121%, reports TrendForce.

Global EV sales grew 18% in Q1 2024 with plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) sales seeing 46% YoY growth and battery electric vehicle (BEV) sales growing just 7%, according to Counterpoint. China leads global EV sales with 28% YoY growth, while the US grew just 2%. Tesla saw a 9% YoY drop, but topped BEV sales with a 19% market share. BYD grew 13% YoY and exported about 100,000 EVs with 152% YoY growth, mainly in Southeast Asia.

DeepX raised $80.5 million in Series C funding for its on-device NPU IP and AI SoCs tailored for applications including physical security, robotics, and mobility.

MetisX raised $44 million in Series A funding for its memory solutions built on Compute Express Link (CXL) for accelerating large-scale data processing applications.

Security

While security experts have been warning of a growing threat in electronics for decades, there have been several recent fundamental changes that elevate the risk.

Synopsys and the Ponemon Institute released a report showing 54% of surveyed organizations suffered a software supply chain attack in the past year and 20% were not effective in their response. And 52% said their development teams use AI tools to generate code, but only 32% have processes to evaluate it for license, security, and quality risks.

Researchers at Ruhr University Bochum and TU Darmstadt presented a solution for the automated generation of fault-resistant circuits (AGEFA) and assessed the security of examples generated by AGEFA against side-channel analysis and fault injection.

TXOne reported on operational technology security and the most effective method for preventing production interruptions caused by cyber-attacks.

CrowdStrike and NVIDIA are collaborating to accelerate the use of analytics and AI in cybersecurity to help security teams combat modern cyberattacks, including AI-powered threats.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) finalized its guidelines for protecting sensitive data, known as controlled unclassified information, aimed at organizations that do business with the federal government.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded BAE Systems a $12 million contract to solve thermal challenges limiting electronic warfare systems, particularly in GaN transistors.

Sigma Defense won a $4.7 million contract from the U.S. Army for an AI-powered virtual training environment, partnering with Brightline Interactive on a system that uses spatial computing and augmented intelligence workflows.

SkyWater’s advanced packaging operation in Florida has been accredited as a Category 1A Trusted Supplier by the Defense Microelectronics Activity (DMEA) of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD).

Videos of two CWE-focused sessions from CVE/FIRST VulnCon 2024 were made available on the CWE YouTube Channel.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a number of alerts/advisories.

Supercomputing

Supercomputers are battling for top dog.

The Frontier supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) retained the top spot on the Top500 list of the world’s fastest systems with an HPL score of 1.206 EFlop/s. The as-yet incomplete Aurora system at Argonne took second place, becoming the world’s second exascale system at 1.012 EFlop/s. The Green500 list, which tracks energy efficiency of compute, saw three new entrants take the top places.

Cerebras Systems, Sandia National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Los Alamos National Laboratory used Cerebras’ second generation Wafer Scale Engine to perform atomic scale molecular dynamics simulations at the millisecond scale, which they claim is 179X faster than the Frontier supercomputer.

UT Austin‘s Stampede3 Supercomputer is now in full production, serving the open science community through 2029.

Education and Training

SEMI announced the SEMI University Semiconductor Certification Programs to help alleviate the workforce skills gap. Its first two online courses are designed for new talent seeking careers in the industry, and experienced workers looking to keep their skills current.  Also, SEMI and other partners launched a European Chip Skills Academy Summer School in Italy.

Siemens created an industry credential program for engineering students that supplements a formal degree by validating industry knowledge and skills. Nonprofit agency ABET will provide accreditation. The first two courses are live at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder) and a series is planned with Pennsylvania State University (Penn State).

Syracuse University launched a $20 million Center for Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing, with co-funding from Onondaga County.

Starting young is a good thing.  An Arizona school district, along with the University Of Arizona,  is creating a semiconductor program for high schoolers.

Product News

Siemens and Sony partnered to enable immersive engineering via a spatial content creation system, NX Immersive Designer, which includes Sony’s XR head-mounted display. The integration of hardware and software gives designers and engineers natural ways to interact with a digital twin. Siemens also extended its Xcelerator as a Service portfolio with solutions for product engineering and lifecycle management, cloud-based high-performance simulation, and manufacturing operations management. It will be available on Microsoft Azure, as well.

Advantest announced the newest addition to its portfolio of power supplies for the V93000 EXA Scale SoC test platform. The DC Scale XHC32 power supply offers 32 channels with single-instrument total current of up to 640A.

Fig. 1: Advantest’s DC Scale XHC32. Source: Advantest

Infineon released its XENSIV TLE49SR angle sensors, which can withstand stray magnetic fields of up to 8 mT, ideal for applications of safety-critical automotive chassis systems.

Google debuted its sixth generation Cloud TPU, 4.7X faster and 67% more energy-efficient than the previous generation, with double the high-bandwidth memory.

X-Silicon uncorked a RISC-V vector CPU, coupled with a Vulkan-enabled GPU ISA and AI/ML acceleration in a single processor core, aimed at embedded and IoT applications.

IBM expanded its Qiskit quantum software stack, including the stable release of its SDK for building, optimizing, and visualizing quantum circuits.

Northeastern University announced the general availability of testing and integration solutions for Open RAN through the Open6G Open Testing and Integration Center (Open 6G OTIC).

Research

The University of Glasgow received £3 million (~$3.8M) from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)’s Strategic Equipment Grant scheme to help establish “Analogue,” an Automated Nano Analysing, Characterisation and Additive Packaging Suite to research silicon chip integration and packaging.

EPFL researchers developed scalable photonic ICs, based on lithium tantalate.

DISCO developed a way to increase the diameter of diamond wafers that uses the KABRA process, a laser ingot slicing method.

CEA-Leti developed two complementary approaches for high performance photon detectors — a mercury cadmium telluride-based avalanche photodetector and a superconducting single photon detector.

Toshiba demonstrated storage capacities of over 30TB with two next-gen large capacity recording technologies for hard disk drives (HDDs): Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) and Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording (MAMR).

Caltech neuroscientists reported that their brain-machine interface (BMI) worked successfully in a second human patient, following 2022’s first instance, proving the device is not dependent on one particular brain or one location in a brain.

Linköping University researchers developed a cheap, sustainable battery made from zinc and lignin, while ORNL researchers developed carbon-capture batteries.

Events and Further Reading

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

Upcoming webinars are here.

Semiconductor Engineering’s latest newsletters:

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

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

By Adam Kovac, Karen Heyman, and Liz Allan.

India approved the construction of two fabs and a packaging house, for a total investment of about $15.2 billion, according to multiple sources. One fab will be jointly owned by Tata and Taiwan’s Powerchip. The second fab will be a joint investment between CG Power, Japan’s Renesas Electronics, and Thailand’s Stars Microelectronics. Tata will run the packaging facility, as well. India expects these efforts will add 20,000 advanced technology jobs and 60,000 indirect jobs, according to the Times of India. The country has been talking about building a fab for at least the past couple of decades, but funding never materialized.

The U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) issued a CHIPS Act-based Notice of Funding Opportunity for R&D to establish and accelerate domestic capacity for advanced packaging substrates and substrate materials. The U.S. Secretary of Commerce said the government is prioritizing CHIPS Act funding for projects that will be operational by 2030 and anticipates America will produce 20% of the world’s leading-edge logic chips by the end of the decade.

The top three foundries plan to implement backside power delivery as soon as the 2nm node, setting the stage for faster and more efficient switching in chips, reduced routing congestion, and lower noise across multiple metal layers. But this novel approach to optimizing logic performance depends on advances in lithography, etching, polishing, and bonding processes.

Intel spun out Altera as a standalone FPGA company, the culmination of a rebranding and reorganization of its former Programmable Solutions Group. The move follows Intel’s decision to keep Intel Foundry at arm’s length, with a clean line between the foundry and the company’s processor business.

Multiple new hardware micro-architecture vulnerabilities were published in the latest Common Weakness Enumeration release this week, all related to transient execution (CWE 1420-1423).

The U.S. Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD) published a technical report calling for the adoption of memory safe programming languages, aiming to reduce the attack surface in cyberspace and anticipate systemic security risk with better diagnostics. The DoC also is seeking information ahead of an inquiry into Chinese-made connected vehicles “to understand the extent of the technology in these cars that can capture wide swaths of data or remotely disable or manipulate connected vehicles.”

Quick links to more news:

Design and Power
Manufacturing and Test
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Events

Design and Power

Micron began mass production of a new high-bandwidth chip for AI. The company said the HBM3E will be a key component in NVIDIA’s H2000 Tensor Core GPUs, set to begin shipping in the second quarter of 2024. HBM is a key component of 2.5D advanced packages.

Samsung developed a 36GB HBM3E 12H DRAM, saying it sets new records for bandwidth. The company achieved this by using advanced thermal compression non-conductive film, which allowed it to cram 12 layers into the area normally taken up by 8. This is a novel way of increasing DRAM density.

Keysight introduced QuantumPro, a design and simulation tool, plus workflow, for quantum computers. It combines five functionalities into the Advanced Design System (ADS) 2024 platform. Keysight also introduced its AI Data Center Test Platform, which includes pre-packaged benchmarking apps and dataset analysis tools.

Synopsys announced a 1.6T Ethernet IP solution, including 1.6T MAC and PCS Ethernet controllers, 224G Ethernet PHY IP, and verification IP.

Tenstorrent, Japan’s Leading-Edge Semiconductor Technology Center (LSTC) , and Rapidus are co-designing AI chips. LSTC will use Tenstorrent’s RISC-V and Chiplet IP for its forthcoming edge 2nm AI accelerator.

This week’s Systems and Design newsletter features these top stories:

• 2.5D Integration: Big Chip Or Small PCB: Defining whether a 5D device is a PCB shrunk to fit into a package or a chip that extends beyond the limits of a single die can have significant design consequences.
• Commercial Chiplets: Challenges of establishing a commercial chiplet.
• Accellera Preps New Standard For Clock-Domain Crossing: New standard aims to streamline the clock-domain crossing flow.
• Thinking Big: From Chips To Systems: Aart de Geus discusses the shift from chips to systems, next-generation transistors, and what’s required to build multi-die devices.
• Integration challenges for RISC-V: Modifying the source code allows for democratization of design, but it adds some hurdles for design teams (video).

Demand for high-end AI servers is driven by four American companies, which will account for 60% of global demand in 2024, according to Trendforce. NVIDIA is projected to continue leading the market, with AMD closing the gap due its lower cost model.

The EU consortium PREVAIL is accepting design proposals as it seeks to develop next-gen edge-AI technologies. Anchors include CEA-Leti, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, imec, and VTT, which will use their 300mm fabrication, design, and test facilities to validate prototypes.

Siemens joined an initiative to expand educational opportunities in the semiconductor space around the world. The Semiconductor Education Alliance was launched by Arm in 2023 and focuses on helping teach skills in IC design and EDA.

Q-CTRL announced partnerships with six firms that it says will expand access to its performance-management software and quantum technologies. Wolfram, Aqarios, and qBraid will integrate Q-CTRL’s Fire Opal technology into their products, while Qblox, Keysight, and Quantware will utilize Q-CTRL’s Boulder Opal hardware system.

NTT, Red Hat, NVIDIA, and Fujitsu teamed up to provide data pipeline acceleration and contain orchestration technologies targeted at real-time AI analysis of massive data sets at the edge.

Manufacturing and Test

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Office of Electricity launched the American-Made Silicon Carbide (SiC)  Packaging Prize. This $2.25 million contest invites competitors to propose, design, build, and test state-of-the-art SiC semiconductor packaging prototypes.

Applied Materials introduced products and solutions for patterning issues in the “angstrom era,” including line edge roughness, tip-to-tip spacing limitations, bridge defects, and edge placement errors.

imec reported progress made in EUV processes, masks and metrology in preparation for high-NA EUV. It also identified advanced node lithography and etch related processes that contribute the most to direct emissions of CO2, along with proposed solutions.

proteanTecs will participate in the Arm Total Design ecosystem, which now includes more than 20 companies united around a charter to accelerate and simplify the development of custom SoCs based on Arm Neoverse compute subsystems.

NikkeiAsia took an in-depth look at Japan’s semiconductor ecosystem and concluded it is ripe for revival with investments from TSMC, Samsung, and Micron, among others. TrendForce came to a similar conclusion, pointing to the fast pace of Japan’s resurgence, including the opening of TSMC’s fab.

‍FormFactor closed its sale of its Suzhou and Shanghai companies to Grand Junction Semiconductor for $25M in cash.

The eBeam Initiative celebrated its 15th anniversary and welcomed a new member, FUJIFILM. The group also uncorked its fourth survey of its members technology using deep learning in the photomask-to-wafer manufacturing flow.

Automotive

Apple shuttered its electric car project after 10 years of development. The chaotic effort cost the company billions of dollars, according to The New York Times.

Infineon released new automotive programmable SoCs with fifth-gen human machine interface (HMI) technology, offering improved sensitivity in three packages. The MCU offers up to 84 GPIOs and 384 KB of flash memory. The company also released automotive and industrial-grade 750V G1 discrete SiC MOSFETs aimed at applications such as EV charging, onboard chargers, DC-DC converters, energy, solid state circuit breakers, and data centers.

Cadence expanded its Tensilica IP portfolio to boost computation for automotive sensor fusion applications. Vision, radar, lidar, and AI processing are combined in a single DSP for multi-modal, sensor-based system designs.

Ansys will continue translating fast computing into fast cars, as the company’s partnership with Oracle Red Bull Racing was renewed. The Formula 1 team uses Ansys technology to improve car aerodynamics and ensure the safety of its vehicles.

Lazer Sport adopted Siemens’ Xcelerator portfolio to connect 3D design with 3D printing for prototyping and digital simulation of its sustainable KinetiCore cycling helmet.

The chair of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) suggested automakers that sell internet-connected cars should be subject to a telecommunications law aiming to protect domestic violence survivors, reports CNBC. This is due to emerging cases of stalking through vehicle location tracking technology and remote control of functions like locking doors or honking the horn.

BYD‘s CEO said the company does not plan to enter the U.S. market because it is complicated and electrification has slowed down, reports Yahoo Finance. Meanwhile, the first shipment of BYD vehicles arrived in Europe, according to DW News.

Ascent Solar Technologies’ solar module products will fly on NASA’s upcoming Lightweight Integrated Solar Array and AnTenna (LISA-T) mission.

Security

Researchers at Texas A&M University and the University of Delaware proposed the first red-team attack on graph neural network (GNN)-based techniques in hardware security.

A panel of four experts discuss mounting concerns over quantum security, auto architectures, and supply chain resiliency.

Synopsys released its ninth annual Open Source Security and Risk Analysis report, finding that 74% of code bases contained high-risk open-source vulnerabilities, up 54% since last year.

President Biden issued an executive order to prevent the large-scale transfer of Americans’ personal data to countries of concern. Types of data include genomic, biometric, personal health, geolocation, financial, and other personally identifiable information, which bad actors can use to track and scam Americans.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) 2.0 to provide a comprehensive view for managing cybersecurity risk.

The EU Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) published a study on best practices for cyber crisis management, saying the geopolitical situation continues to impact the cyber threat landscape and planning for threats and incidents is vital for crisis management.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $45 million to protect the energy sector from cyberattacks.

The National Security Agency (NSA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and others published an advisory on Russian cyber actors using compromised routers.  Also the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), and partners advised of tactics used by Russian Foreign Intelligence Service cyber actors to gain initial access into a cloud environment.

CISA, the FBI, and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) updated an advisory concerning the ALPHV Blackcat ransomware as a service (RaaS), which primarily targets the healthcare sector.

CISA also published a guide to support university cybersecurity clinics and issued other alerts.

Pervasive Computing and AI

Renesas expanded its RZ family of MPUs with a single-chip AI accelerator that offers 10 TOPS per watt power efficiency and delivers AI inference performance of up to 80 TOPS without a cooling fan. The chip is aimed at next-gen robotics with vision AI and real-time control.

Infineon launched dual-phase power modules to help data centers meet the power demands of AI GPU platforms. The company also released a family of solid-state isolators to deliver faster switching with up to 70% lower power dissipation.

Fig. 1: Infineon’s dual phase power modules: Source: Infineon

Amber Semiconductor announced a reference design for brushless motor applications using its AC to DC conversion semiconductor system to power ST‘s STM32 MCUs.

Micron released its universal flash storage (UFS) 4.0 package at just 9×13 mm, built on 232-layer 3D NAND and offering up to 1 terabyte capacity to enable next-gen phone designs and larger batteries.

LG and Meta teamed up to develop extended reality (XR) products, content, services, and platforms within the virtual space.

Microsoft and Mistral AI partnered to accelerate AI innovation and to develop and deploy Mistral’s next-gen large language models (LLMs).

Microsoft’s vice chair and president announced the company’s AI access principles, governing how it will operate AI datacenter infrastructure and other AI assets around the world.

Singtel and VMware partnered to enable enterprises to manage their connectivity and cloud infrastructure through the Singtel Paragon platform for 5G and edge cloud.

Keysight was selected as the Test Partner for the Deutsche Telekom Satellite NB-IoT Early Adopter Program, providing an end-to-end NB-IoT NTN testbed that allows designers and developers to validate reference designs for solutions using 3GPP Release 17 (Rel-17) NTN standards.

Global server shipments are predicted to increase by 2.05% in 2024, with AI servers accounting for about 12%, reports TrendForce. Also, the smartphone camera lens market is expected to rebound in 2024 with 3.8% growth driven by AI-smartphones, to reach about 4.22 billion units, reports TrendForce.

Yole released a smartphone camera comparison report with a focus on iPhone evolution and analysis of the structure, design, and teardown of each camera module, along with the CIS dimensions, technology node, and manufacturing processes.

Counterpoint released a number of 2023 reports on smartphone shipments by country and operator migrations to 5G.

Events

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

Upcoming webinars are here, including topics such as digital twins, power challenges in data centers, and designing for 112G interface compliance.

Further Reading and Newsletters

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

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