Since the implementation of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) in 2023, the European Union has tightened its grip on Big Tech companies to force them to adopt a more open approach on the continent and break their monopoly. Among others, Apple has faced more scrutiny from EU lawmakers, forcing the iPhone maker to adopt an Android-like approach in the EU and allow practices such as sideloading, which were previously prohibited on its devices.

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.

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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
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Test, Measurement and Analytics
Manufacturing, Packaging and Materials

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

Enlarge / Features like Image Playground won't arrive in Europe at the same time as other regions. (credit: Apple)

Three major features in iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia will not be available to European users this fall, Apple says. They include iPhone screen mirroring on the Mac, SharePlay screen sharing, and the entire Apple Intelligence suite of generative AI features.

In a statement sent to Financial Times, The Verge, and others, Apple says this decision is related to the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA). Here's the full statement, which was attributed to Apple spokesperson Fred Sainz:

Two weeks ago, Apple unveiled hundreds of new features that we are excited to bring to our users around the world. We are highly motivated to make these technologies accessible to all users. However, due to the regulatory uncertainties brought about by the Digital Markets Act (DMA), we do not believe that we will be able to roll out three of these features — iPhone Mirroring, SharePlay Screen Sharing enhancements, and Apple Intelligence — to our EU users this year.

Specifically, we are concerned that the interoperability requirements of the DMA could force us to compromise the integrity of our products in ways that risk user privacy and data security. We are committed to collaborating with the European Commission in an attempt to find a solution that would enable us to deliver these features to our EU customers without compromising their safety.

It is unclear from Apple's statement precisely which aspects of the DMA may have led to this decision. It could be that Apple is concerned that it would be required to give competitors like Microsoft or Google access to user data collected for Apple Intelligence features and beyond, but we're not sure.

Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

The European Union’s Digital Markets Act took effect earlier this year with the goal of tackling anti-competitive behaviors from big tech companies, among other things. That’s why Apple rolled out a bunch of changes to the App Store, iOS, Safari web browser, and payment processing earlier this year… with most of those changes only applying […]

The post European Commission says Apple’s new App Store & payment rules still violate the DMA appeared first on Liliputing.

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.

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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

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