BAE Systems and GlobalFoundries are teaming up to strengthen the supply of chips for national security programs, aligning technology roadmaps and collaborating on innovation and manufacturing. Focus areas include advanced packaging, GaN-on-silicon chips, silicon photonics, and advanced technology process development.

Onsemi plans to build a $2 billion silicon carbide production plant in the Czech Republic. The site would produce smart power semiconductors for electric vehicles, renewable energy technology, and data centers.

The global chip manufacturing industry is projected to boost capacity by 6% in 2024 and 7% in 2025, reaching 33.7 million 8-inch (200mm) wafers per month, according to SEMI‘s latest World Fab Forecast report. Leading-edge capacity for 5nm nodes and below is expected to grow by 13% in 2024, driven by AI demand for data center applications. Additionally, Intel, Samsung, and TSMC will begin producing 2nm chips using gate-all-around (GAA) FETs next year, boosting leading-edge capacity by 17% in 2025.

At the IEEE Symposium on VLSI Technology & Circuits, imec introduced:

• Functional CMOS-based CFETs with stacked bottom and top source/drain contacts.
• CMOS-based 56Gb/s zero-IF D-band beamforming transmitters to support next-gen short-range, high-speed wireless services at frequencies above 100GHz.
• ADCs for base stations and handsets, a key step toward scalable, high-performance beyond-5G solutions, such as cloud-based AI and extended reality apps.

Quick links to more news:

Global
In-Depth
Market Reports
Education and Training
Security
Product News
Research
Events and Further Reading

Global

Wolfspeed postponed plans to construct a $3 billion chip plant in Germany, underscoring the EU‘s challenges in boosting semiconductor production, reports Reuters. The North Carolina-based company cited reduced capital spending due to a weakened EV market, saying it now aims to start construction in mid-2025, two years later than 0riginally planned.

Micron is building a pilot production line for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) in the U.S., and considering HBM production in Malaysia to meet growing AI demand, according to a Nikkei report. The company is expanding HBM R&D facilities in Boise, Idaho, and eyeing production capacity in Malaysia, while also enhancing its largest HBM facility in Taichung, Taiwan.

Kioxia restored its Yokkaichi and Kitakami plants in Japan to full capacity, ending production cuts as the memory market recovers, according to Nikkei. The company, which is focusing on NAND flash production, has secured new bank credit support, including refinancing a ¥540 billion loan and establishing a ¥210 billion credit line. Kioxia had reduced output by more than 30% in October 2022 due to weak smartphone demand.

Europe’s NATO Innovation Fund announced its first direct investments, which includes semiconductor materials. Twenty-three NATO allies co-invested in this over $1B fund devoted to address critical defense and security challenges.

The second meeting of the U.S.–India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET) was held in New Delhi, with various funding and initiatives announced to support semiconductor technology, next-gen telecommunications, connected and autonomous vehicles, ML, and more.

Amazon announced investments of €10 billion in Germany to drive innovation and support the expansion of its logistics network and cloud infrastructure.

Quantum Machines opened the Israeli Quantum Computing Center (IQCC) research facility, backed by the Israel Innovation Authority and located at Tel Aviv University. Also, Israel-based Classiq is collaborating with NVIDIA and BMW, using quantum computing to find the optimal automotive architecture of electrical and mechanical systems.

Global data center vacancy rates are at historic lows, and power availability is becoming less available, according to a Siemens report featured on Broadband Breakfast. The company called for an influx of financing to find new ways to optimize data center technology and sustainability.

In-Depth

Semiconductor Engineering published its Manufacturing, Packaging & Materials newsletter this week, featuring these top stories:

• Single Vs. Multi-Patterning Advancements For EUV
• Precise Control Of Copper Plating And CMP
• Ruthenium Interconnects On Tap
• Opportunities Grow For GPU Acceleration

More reporting this week:

• IC Industry’s Growing Role In Sustainability
• What’s Missing In Test

Market Reports

Renesas completed its acquisition of Transphorm and will immediately start offering GaN-based power products and reference designs to meet the demand for wide-bandgap (WBG) chips.

Revenues for the top five wafer fab equipment (WFE) companies fell 9% YoY in Q1 2024, according to Counterpoint. This was offset partially by increased demand for NAND and DRAM, which increased 33% YoY, and strong growth in sales to China, which were up 116% YoY.

The SiC power devices industry saw robust growth in 2023, primarily driven by the BEV market, according to TrendForce. The top five suppliers, led by ST with a 32.6% market share and onsemi in second place, accounted for 91.9% of total revenue. However, the anticipated slowdown in BEV sales and weakening industrial demand are expected to significantly decelerate revenue growth in 2024. 

About 30% of vehicles produced globally will have E/E architectures with zonal controllers by 2032, according to McKinsey & Co. The market for automotive micro-components and logic semiconductors is predicted to reach $60 billion in 2032, and the overall automotive semiconductor market is expected to grow from $60 billion to $140 billion in the same period, at a 10% CAGR.

The automotive processor market generated US$20 billion in revenue in 2023, according to Yole. US$7.8 billion was from APUs and FPGAs and $12.2 billion was from MCUs. The ADAS and infotainment processors market was worth US$7.8 billion in 2023 and is predicted to grow to $16.4 billion by 2029 at a 13% CAGR. The market for ADAS sensing is expected to grow at a 7% CAGR.

Security

The CHERI Alliance was established to drive adoption of memory safety and scalable software compartmentalization via the security technology CHERI, or Capability Hardware Enhanced RISC Instructions. Founding members include Capabilities Limited, Codasip, the FreeBSD Foundation, lowRISC, SCI Semiconductor, and the University of Cambridge.

In security research:

• Japan and China researchers explored a NAND-XOR ring oscillator structure to design an entropy source architecture for a true random number generator (TRNG).
• University of Toronto and Carleton University researchers presented a survey examining how hardware is applied to achieve security and how reported attacks have exploited certain defects in hardware.
• University of North Texas and Texas Woman’s University researchers explored the potential of hardware security primitive Physical Unclonable Functions (PUF) for mitigation of visual deepfakes.
• Villanova University researchers proposed the Boolean DERIVativE attack, which generalizes Boolean domain leakage.

Post-quantum cryptography firm PQShield raised $37 million in Series B funding.

Former OpenAI executive, Ilya Sutskever, who quit over safety concerns, launched Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI).

EU industry groups warned the European Commission that its proposed cybersecurity certification scheme (EUCS) for cloud services should not discriminate against Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, reported Reuters.

Cyber Europe tested EU cyber preparedness in the energy sector by simulating a series of large-scale cyber incidents in an exercise organized by the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA).

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

Education and Training

New York non-profit NY CREATES and South Korea’s National Nano Fab Center partnered to develop a hub for joint research, aligned technology services, testbed support, and an engineer exchange program to bolster chips-centered R&D, workforce development, and each nation’s high-tech ecosystem.

New York and the Netherlands agreed on a partnership to promote sustainability within the semiconductor industry, enhance workforce development, and boost semiconductor R&D.

Rapidus is set to send 200 engineers to AI chip developer Tenstorrent in the U.S. for training over the next five years, reports Nikkei. This initiative, led by Japan’s Leading-edge Semiconductor Technology Center (LSTC), aims to bolster Japan’s AI chip industry.

Product News

UMC announced its 22nm embedded high voltage (eHV) technology platform for premium smartphone and mobile device displays. The 22eHV platform reduces core device power consumption by up to 30% compared to previous 28nm processes. Die area is reduced by 10% with the industry’s smallest SRAM bit cells.​

Alphawave Semi announced a new 9.2 Gbps HBM3E sub-system silicon platform capable of 1.2 terabytes per second. Based on the HBM3E IP, the sub-system is aimed at addressing the demand for ultra-high-speed connectivity in high-performance compute applications.

Movellus introduced the Aeonic Power product family for on-die voltage regulation, targeting the challenging area of power delivery.

Cadence partnered with Semiwise and sureCore to develop new cryogenic CMOS circuits with possible quantum computing applications. The circuits are based on modified transistors found in the Cadence Spectre Simulation Platform and are capable of processing analog, mixed-signal, and digital circuit simulation and verification at cryogenic temperatures.

Renesas launched R-Car Open Access (RoX), an integrated development platform for software-defined vehicles (SDVs), designed for Renesas R-Car SoCs and MCUs with tools for deployment of AI applications, reducing complexity and saving time and money for car OEMs and Tier 1s.

Infineon released industry-first radiation-hardened 1 and 2 Mb parallel interface ferroelectric-RAM (F-RAM) nonvolatile memory devices, with up to 120 years of data retention at 85-degree Celsius, along with random access and full memory write at bus speeds. Plus, a CoolGaN Transistor 700 V G4 product family for efficient power conversion up to 700 V, ideal for consumer chargers and notebook adapters, data center power supplies, renewable energy inverters, and more.

Ansys adopted NVIDIA’s Omniverse application programming interfaces for its multi-die chip designers. Those APIs will be used for 5G/6G, IoT, AI/ML, cloud computing, and autonomous vehicle applications. The company also announced ConceptEV, an SaaS solution for automotive concept design for EVs.

Fig. 1: Field visualization of 3D-IC with Omniverse. Source: Ansys

QP Technologies announced a new dicing saw for its manufacturing line that can process a full cassette of 300mm wafers 7% faster than existing tools, improving throughput and productivity.

NXP introduced its SAF9xxx of audio DSPs to support the demand for AI-based audio in software-defined vehicles (SDVs) by using Cadence’s Tensilica HiFi 5 DSPs combined with dedicated neural-network engines and hardware-based accelerators.

Avionyx, a provider of software lifecycle engineering in the aerospace and safety-critical systems sector, partnered with Siemens and will leverage its Polarion application lifecycle management (ALM) tool. Also, Dovetail Electric Aviation adopted Siemens Xcelerator to support sustainable aviation.

Research

Researchers from imec and KU Leuven released a +70 page paper “Selecting Alternative Metals for Advanced Interconnects,” addressing interconnect resistance and reliability.

A comprehensive review article — “Future of plasma etching for microelectronics: Challenges and opportunities” — was created by a team of experts from the University of Maryland, Lam Research, IBM, Intel, and many others.

Researchers from the Institut Polytechnique de Paris’s Laboratory of Condensed Matter for Physics developed an approach to investigate defects in semiconductors. The team “determined the spin-dependent electronic structure linked to defects in the arrangement of semiconductor atoms,” the first time this structure has been measured, according to a release.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory-led researchers developed a small enclosed chamber that can hold all the components of an electrochemical reaction, which can be paired with transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to generate precise views of a reaction at atomic scale, and can be frozen to stop the reaction at specific time points. They used the technique to study a copper catalyst.

The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) approved a clinical trial to test a device with 1,024 nanoscale sensors that records brain activity during surgery, developed by engineers at the University of California San Diego (UC San Diego).

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, Gregory Haley, and Liz Allan.

Cadence plans to acquire BETA CAE Systems for $1.24 billion, the latest volley in a race to sell multi-physics simulation and analysis across a broad set of customers with deep pockets. Cadence said the deal opens the door to structural analysis for the automotive, aerospace, industrial, and health care sectors. Under the terms of the agreement, 60% of the purchase would be paid in cash, and the remainder in stock.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service reported that North Korea was targeting cyberattacks at domestic semiconductor equipment companies, using a “living off the land” approach, in which the attacker uses minimal malware to attack common applications installed on the server. That makes it more difficult to spot an attack. According to the government, “In December last year, Company A, and in February this year, Company B, had their configuration management server and security policy server hacked, respectively, and product design drawings and facility site photos were stolen.”

As the memory market goes, so goes the broader chip industry. Last quarter, and heading into early 2024, both markets began showing signs of sustainable growth. DRAM revenue jumped 29.6% in Q4 for a total of $17.46 billion. TrendForce attributed some of that to  new efforts to stockpile chips and strategic production control. NAND flash revenue was up 24.5% in Q4, with solid growth expected to continue into the first part of this year, according to TrendForce. Revenue for the sector topped $11.4 billion in Q4, and it’s expected to grow another 20% this quarter. SSD prices rebounded in Q4, as well, up 15% to $23.1 billion. Across the chip industry, sales grew 15.2% in January compared to the same period in 2023, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). This is the largest increase since May 2022, and that trend is expected to continue throughout 2024 with double-digit growth compared to 2023.

Marvell said it is working with TSMC to develop a technology platform for the rapid deployment of analog, mixed-signal, and foundational IP. The company plans to sell both custom and commercial chiplets at 2nm.

The Dutch government is concerned that ASML, the only maker of EUV/high-NA EUV lithography equipment in the world, is considering leaving the Netherlands, according to De Telegraaf.

Quick links to more news:

Design and Power
Manufacturing and Test
Automotive and Batteries
Security
Pervasive Computing and AI
Events

Design and Power

AMD appears to have hit a roadblock with the U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) over a new AI chip it designed for the Chinese market, as reported by Bloomberg. U.S. officials told the company the new chip is too powerful to be sold without a license.

JEDEC released its new memory standard as a free download on its website. The JESD239 Graphics Double Data Rate SGRAM can reach speeds of 192 GB/s and improve signal-to-noise ratio.

Accellera rolled out its IEEE Std. 1800‑2023 Standard for SystemVerilog—Unified Hardware Design, Specification, and Verification Language, which is now available for free download. The decision to offer it at no cost is due to Accellera’s participation in the IEEE GET Program, which was founded in 2010 with the intention of providing  open access to some standards. Accellera also announced it had approved for release the Verilog-AMS 2023 standard, which offers enhancements to analog constructs, dynamic tolerance for event control statements, and other upgrades.

Chiplets are a hot topic these days. Six industry experts discuss chiplet standards, interoperability, and the need for highly customized AI chiplets.

Optimizing EDA hardware for the cloud can shorten the time required for large and complex simulations, but not all workloads will benefit equally, and much more can be done to improve those that can.

Flex Logix is developing InferX DSP for use with existing EFLX eFPGA from 40nm to 7nm. InferX achieves about 30 times the DSP performance/mm² than eFPGA.

The number of challenges is growing in power semiconductors, just as it is in traditional chips. This tech talk looks at integrating power semiconductors with other devices, different packaging impacts, and how these devices will degrade over time.

Vultr announced it will use NVIDIA’s HGX H100 GPU clusters to expand its Seattle-based cloud data center. The company said the expansion, which will be powered by hydroelectricity, will make the facility one of the cleanest, most power efficient data centers in the country.

Amazon Web Services will expand its presence in Saudi Arabia, announcing a new $5.3 billion infrastructure region in the country that will launch in 2026. The new region will offer developers, entrepreneurs and companies access to healthcare, education and other services.

Google is teaming up with the Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator (GESDA) to launch the XPRIZE Quantum Applications, with a $5 million in prizes for winners who can demonstrate ways to use quantum computing to solve real-world problems. Teams must submit a proposal that includes analysis of how long their algorithm would need to run before reaching a solution to a problem, such as improving drug development or designing new battery materials.

South Korea’s nepes corporation has turned to Siemens EDA for solutions in the development of advanced 3D-IC packages. The deal will see nepes incorporating several Siemens technologies, including the Calibre nmPlatform, Hyperlynx software and Xpedition Substrate Integrator software.

Siemens also formalized a partnership with Nuclei System Technology in which the pair of companies will work together on solution support for Nuclei’s RISC-V processor cores. The collaboration will allow clients to monitor CPU program execution in real-time via Nuclei’s RISC-V CPU Ips.

Keysight and ETS-Lindgren announced a breakthrough test solution for cellular devices using non-terrestrial networks. The solution is capable of measuring and validating the performance of both the transmitter and receiver of devices capable of supporting the network.

Nearly fifty companies raised $800 million for power electronics, data center interconnects, and more last month.

Manufacturing and Test

SEMI Europe issued a position statement to the European Union, warning against additional export controls or rules on foreign investment. SEMI argued that free trade partnerships are a better method for ensuring security than bans or restrictions.

Revenues for the top five wafer fab equipment manufacturers declined 1% YoY in 2023 to $93.5 billion, according to Counterpoint Research. The drop was attributed to weak spending on memory, inventory adjustments, and low demand in consumer electronics. The tide is changing, though.

Bruker closed two acquisitions. One involved Chemspeed Technologies, a Switzerland-based provider of automated laboratory R&D and QC workflow solutions. The second involved Phasefocus, an image processing company based in the UK.

A Swedish company, SCALINQ, released a commercially available large-scale packaging solution capable of controlling quantum devices with hundreds of qubits.

Solid Sands, a provider of testing and qualification technology for compilers and libraries, will partner with California-based Emprog to establish a representative presence in the U.S.

Automotive

Tesla halted production at its Brandenberg, Germany, gigafactory after an environmental activist group attacked an electricity pylon, reports the Guardian.

Stellantis will invest €5.6 billion (~$6.1B) in South America to support more than 40 new products, decarbonization technologies, and business opportunities.

The amount of data being collected, processed, and stored in vehicles is exploding, and so is the value of that data. That raises questions that are still not fully answered about how that data will be used, by whom, and how it will be secured.

While industry experts expect many benefits of V2X technology, technological and social hurdles to cross. But there is progress.

Infineon released its next-gen silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFET trench technology with 650V and 1,200V options improving stored energies and charges by up to 20%, ideal for power semiconductor applications such as photovoltaics, energy storage, DC EV charging, motor drives, and industrial power supplies.

Hyundai selected Ansys to supply structural simulation solutions for vehicle body system analysis, providing end-to-end, predictively accurate capabilities for virtual performance validation.

ION Mobility used the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio for styling, mechanical engineering, and electric battery pack development for its ION M1-S electric motorbike.

Ethernovia sampled a family of automotive PHY transceivers that scale from 10 Gbps to 1 Gbps over 15 meters of automotive cabling.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved Waymo’s plan to expand its driverless robotaxi services to Los Angeles and other cities near San Francisco, reports Reuters.

By 2027, next-gen battery EVs (BEVs) will on average be cheaper to produce than comparable gas-powered cars, reports Gartner. But the firm noted that average cost of EV accident repair will rise by 30%, and 15% of EV companies founded in the last decade will be acquired or bankrupt.

University of California San Diego (UCSD) researchers developed a cathode material for solid-state lithium-sulfur batteries that is electrically conductive and structurally healable.

ION Storage Systems announced its anodeless and compressionless solid-state batteries (SSBs) achieved 125 cycles with under 5% capacity degradation in performance. ION has been working with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to test its SSB before expanding into markets such as EVs, energy storage, consumer electronics, and aerospace.

Security

Advanced process nodes and higher silicon densities are heightening DRAM’s susceptibility to Rowhammer attacks, as reduced cell spacing significantly decreases the hammer count needed for bit flips. A multi-layered, system-level approach is crucial to DRAM protection.

Researchers at Bar-Ilan University and Rafael Defense Systems proposed an analytical electromagnetic model for IC shielding against hardware attacks.

Keysight acquired the IP of Firmalyzer, whose firmware security analysis technology will be integrated into the Keysight IoT Security Assessment and Automotive Security solutions, providing analysis into what is happening inside the IoT device itself.

Flex Logix joined the Intel Foundry U.S. Military Aerospace Government (USMAG) Alliance, ensuring U.S. defense industrial base and government customers have access to the latest technology, enabling successful designs for mission critical programs.

The EU Council presidency and European Parliament reached a provisional agreement on a Cyber Solidarity Act and an amendment to the Cybersecurity Act (CSA) concerning managed security services.

The EU Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) and partners updated the compendium on elections cybersecurity in response to issues such as AI deep fakes, hacktivists-for-hire, the sophistication of threat actors, and the current geopolitical context.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) launched efforts to help secure the open source software ecosystem; updated its Public Safety Communications and Cyber Resiliency Toolkit; and issued other alerts including security advisories for VMware, Apple, and Cisco.

Pervasive Computing and AI

Johns Hopkins University engineers used natural language prompts and ChatGPT4 to produce detailed instructions to build a spiking neural network (SNN) chip. The neuromorphic accelerators could power real-time machine intelligence for next-gen embodied systems like autonomous vehicles and robots.

The global AI hardware market size was estimated at $53.71 billion in 2023, and is expected to reach about $473.53 billion by 2033, at a compound annual growth rate of 24.5%, reports Precedence Research.

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researchers and partners built compact chips capable of converting light into microwaves, which could improve navigation, communication, and radar systems.

Fig. 1: NIST researchers test a chip for converting light into microwave signals. Pictured is the chip, which is the fluorescent panel that looks like two tiny vinyl records. The gold box to the left of the chip is the semiconductor laser that emits light to the chip. Credit: K. Palubicki/NIST

The Indian government is investing 103 billion rupees ($1.25B) in AI projects, including computing infrastructure and large language models (LLMs).

Infineon is collaborating with Qt Group, bringing Qt’s graphics framework to Infineon’s graphics-enabled TRAVEO T2G cluster MCUs to optimize graphical user interface (GUI) development.

Keysight leveraged fourth-generation AMD EPYC CPUs to develop a new benchmarking methodology to test mobile and 5G private network performance. The method uses realistic traffic generation to uncover a CPU’s true power and scalability while observing bandwidth requirements.

The AI industry is pushing a nuclear power revival, reports NBC, and Amazon bought a nuclear-powered data center in Pennsylvania from Talen Energy for $650 million, according to WNEP.

Bank of America was awarded 644 patents in 2023 for technology including information security, AI, machine learning (ML), online and mobile banking, payments, data analytics, and augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR).

Mistral AI’s large language model, Mistral Large, became available in the Snowflake Data Cloud for customers to securely harness generative AI with their enterprise data.

China’s smartphone unit sales declined 7% year over year in the first six weeks of 2024, with Apple declining 24%, reports Counterpoint.

Shipments of LCD TV panels are expected to reach 55.8 million units in Q1 2024, a 5.3% quarter over quarter increase, reports TrendForce. And an estimated 5.8 billion LED lamps and luminaires are expected to reach the end of their lifespan in 2024, triggering a wave of secondary replacements and boosting total LED lighting demand to 13.4 billion units.

Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) researchers mined high-purity gold from electrical and electronic waste.

The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and the University of Utah launched a National Data Platform pilot project, aimed at making access to and use of scientific data open and equitable.

Events

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

Upcoming webinars are here.

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

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