Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology proposed a new EUV litho technology using only four reflective mirrors and a new method of illumination optics that it claims will use 1/10 the power and cost half as much as existing EUV technology from ASML.

Applied Materials may not receive expected U.S. funding to build a $4 billion research facility in Sunnyvale, CA, due to internal government disagreements over how to fund chip R&D, according to Bloomberg.

SEMI published a position paper this week cautioning the European Union against imposing additional export controls to allow companies, encouraging them to  be “as free as possible in their investment decisions to avoid losing their agility and relevance across global markets.” SEMI’s recommendations on outbound investments are in response to the European Economic Security Strategy and emphasize the need for a transparent and predictable regulatory framework.

The U.S. may restrict China’s access to HBM chips and the equipment needed to make them, reports Bloomberg. Today those chips are manufactured by two Korean-based companies, Samsung and SK hynix, but U.S.-based Micron expects to begin shipping 12-high stacks of HBM3E in 2025, and is currently working on HBM4.

Synopsys executive chair and founder Dr. Aart de Geus was named the winner of the Semiconductor Industry Association’s Robert N. Noyce Award. De Geus was selected due to his contributions to EDA technology over a career spanning more than four decades.

The top three foundries plan to implement high-NA EUV lithography as early as 2025 for the 18 angstrom generation, but the replacement of single exposure high-NA (0.55) over double patterning with standard EUV (NA = 0.33) depends on whether it provides better results at a reasonable cost per wafer.

Quick links to more news:

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

Global

Belgium-based Imec released part 2 of its chiplets series, addressing testing strategies and standardization efforts, as well as guidelines and research “towards efficient ESD protection strategies for advanced 3D systems-on-chip.”

Also in Belgium, BelGan, maker of GaN chips, filed for bankruptcy according to the Brussels Times.

TSMC‘s Dresden, Germany, plant will break ground this month.

The UK will dole out more than £100 million (~US $128 million) in funding to develop five new quantum research hubs in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Oxford, and London.

MassPhoton is opening Hong Kong‘s first ultra-high vacuum GaN epitaxial wafer pilot line and will establish a GaN research center.

Infineon completed the sale of its manufacturing sites in the Philippines and South Korea to ASE.

Israel-based RAAAM Memory Technologies received a €5.25 million grant from the European Innovation Council (EIC) to support the development and commercialization of its innovative memory solutions. This funding will enable RAAAM to advance its research in high-performance and energy-efficient memory technologies, accelerating their integration into various applications and markets.

In-Depth

Semiconductor Engineering published its Automotive, Security and Pervasive Computing newsletter this week, featuring these top stories and video:

• Chip Security Now Depends On Widening Supply Chain
• Defining Chip Threat Models To Determining Security Risks
• Post-Quantum Computing Threatens Fundamental Transport Protocols

And:

• Where Power Savings Really Count
• Making Electronics More Efficient (video)

Market Reports and Earnings

The semiconductor equipment industry is on a positive trajectory in 2024, with moderate revenue growth observed in Q2 after a subdued Q1, according to a new report from Yole Group. Wafer Fab Equipment revenue is projected to grow by 1.3% year-on-year, despite a 12% drop in Q1. Test equipment lead times are normalizing, improving order conditions. Key areas driving growth include memory and logic capital expenditures and high-bandwidth memory demand.

Worldwide silicon wafer shipments increased by 7% in Q2 2024, according to SEMI‘s latest report. This growth is attributed to robust demand from multiple semiconductor sectors, driven by advancements in AI, 5G, and automotive technologies.

The RF GaN market is projected to grow to US $2 billion by 2029, a 10% CAGR, according to Yole Group.

Counterpoint released their Q2 smartphone top 10 report.

Renesas completed their acquisition of EDA firm Altium, best known for its EDA platform and freeware CircuitMaker package.

It’s earnings season and here are recently released financials in the chip industry:

AMD  Advantest   Amkor   Ansys  Arteris   Arm   ASE   ASM   ASML
Cadence  IBM   Intel   Lam Research   Lattice   Nordson   NXP   Onsemi 
Qualcomm   Rambus  Samsung    SK Hynix   STMicro   Teradyne    TI  
Tower  TSMC    UMC  Western Digital

Industry stock price impacts are here.

Education and Training

Rochester Institute of Technology is leading a new pilot program to prepare community college students in areas such as cleanroom operations, new materials, simulation, and testing processes, with the intent of eventual transfer into RIT’s microelectronic engineering program.

Purdue University inked a deal with three research institutions — University of Piraeus, Technical University of Crete, and King’s College London —to develop joint research programs for semiconductors, AI and other critical technology fields.

The European Chips Skills Academy formed the Educational Leaders Board to help bridge the talent gap in Europe’s microelectronics sector.  The Board includes representatives from universities, vocational training providers, educators and research institutions who collaborate on strategic initiatives to strengthen university networks and build academic expertise through ECSA training programs.

Security

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is encouraging Apple users to review and apply this week’s recent security updates.

Microsoft Azure experienced a nearly 10 hour DDoS attack this week, leading to global service disruption for many customers.  “While the initial trigger event was a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack, which activated our DDoS protection mechanisms, initial investigations suggest that an error in the implementation of our defenses amplified the impact of the attack rather than mitigating it,” stated Microsoft in a release.

NIST published:

• “Recommendations For Increasing U.S. Participation and Leadership in Standards Development,” a report outlining cybersecurity recommendations and mitigation strategies.
• Final guidance documents and software to help improve the “safety, security and trustworthiness of AI systems.”
• Cloud Computing Forensic Reference Architecture guide.

Delta Air Lines plans to seek damages after losing $500 million in lost revenue due to security company CrowdStrike‘s software update debacle.  And shareholders are also angry.

Recent security research:

• Physically Secure Logic Locking With Nanomagnet Logic (UT Dallas)
• WBP: Training-time Backdoor Attacks through HW-based Weight Bit Poisoning (UCF)
• S-Tune: SOT-MTJ Manufacturing Parameters Tuning for Secure Next Generation of Computing ( U. of Arizona, UCF)
• Diffie Hellman Picture Show: Key Exchange Stories from Commercial VoWiFi Deployments (CISPA, SBA Research, U. of Vienna)

Product News

Lam Research introduced a new version of its cryogenic etch technology designed to enhance the manufacturing of 3D NAND for AI applications. This technology allows for the precise etching of high aspect ratio features, crucial for creating 1,000-layer 3D NAND.

Fig.1: 3D NAND etch. Source: Lam Research

Alphawave Semi launched its Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express Die-to-Die IP. The subsystem offers 8 Tbps/mm bandwidth density and supports operation at 24 Gbps for D2D connectivity.

Infineon introduced a new MCU series for industrial and consumer motor controls, as well as power conversion system applications. The company also unveiled its new GoolGaN Drive product family of integrated single switches and half-bridges with integrated drivers.

Rambus released its DDR5 Client Clock Driver for next-gen, high-performance desktops and notebooks. The chips include Gen1 to Gen4 RCDs, power management ICs, Serial Presence Detect Hubs, and temperature sensors for leading-edge servers.

SK hynix introduced its new GDDR7 graphics DRAM. The product has an operating speed of 32Gbps, can process 1.5TB of data per second and has a 50% power efficiency improvement compared to the previous generation.

Intel launched its new Lunar Lake Ultra processors. The long awaited chips will be included in more than 80 laptop designs and has more than 40 NPU tera operations per second as well as over 60 GPU TOPS delivering more than 100 platform TOPS.

Brewer Science achieved recertification as a Certified B Corporation, reaffirming its commitment to sustainable and ethical business practices.

Panasonic adopted Siemens’ Teamcenter X cloud product lifecycle management solution, citing Teamcenter X’s Mendix low-code platform, improved operational efficiency and flexibility for its choice.

Keysight validated its 5G NR FR1 1024-QAM demodulation test cases for the first time. The 5G NR radio access technology supports eMBB and was validated on the 3GPP TS 38.521-4 test specification.

Research

In a 47-page deep-dive report, the Center for Security and Emerging Technology delved into all of the scientific breakthroughs from 1980 to present that brought EUV lithography to commercialization, including lessons learned for the next emerging technologies.

Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute developed a high-performance X-ray tomography technique using burst ptychography, achieving a resolution of 4nm. This method allows for non-destructive imaging of integrated circuits, providing detailed views of nanostructures in materials like silicon and metals.

MIT signed a four-year agreement with the Novo Nordisk Foundation Quantum Computing Programme at University of Copenhagen, focused on accelerating quantum computing hardware research.

MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) developed a mechanically flexible wafer-scale integrated photonics fabrication platform. This enables the creation of flexible photonic circuits that maintain high performance while being bendable and stretchable. It offers significant potential for integrating photonic circuits into various flexible substrate applications in wearable technology, medical devices, and flexible electronics.

The Naval Research Lab identified a new class of semiconductor nanocrystals with bright ground-state excitons, emphasizing an important advancement in optoelectronics.

Researchers from National University of Singapore developed a novel method, known as tension-driven CHARM3D,  to fabricate 3D self-healing circuits, enabling the 3D printing of free-standing metallic structures without the need for support materials and external pressure.

Find more research in our Technical Papers library.

Events and Further Reading

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

Upcoming webinars are here, including topics such as quantum safe cryptography, analytics for high-volume manufacturing, and mastering EMC simulations for electronic design.

Find Semiconductor Engineering’s latest newsletters here:

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.

Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology proposed a new EUV litho technology using only four reflective mirrors and a new method of illumination optics that it claims will use 1/10 the power and cost half as much as existing EUV technology from ASML.

Applied Materials may not receive expected U.S. funding to build a $4 billion research facility in Sunnyvale, CA, due to internal government disagreements over how to fund chip R&D, according to Bloomberg.

SEMI published a position paper this week cautioning the European Union against imposing additional export controls to allow companies, encouraging them to  be “as free as possible in their investment decisions to avoid losing their agility and relevance across global markets.” SEMI’s recommendations on outbound investments are in response to the European Economic Security Strategy and emphasize the need for a transparent and predictable regulatory framework.

The U.S. may restrict China’s access to HBM chips and the equipment needed to make them, reports Bloomberg. Today those chips are manufactured by two Korean-based companies, Samsung and SK hynix, but U.S.-based Micron expects to begin shipping 12-high stacks of HBM3E in 2025, and is currently working on HBM4.

Synopsys executive chair and founder Dr. Aart de Geus was named the winner of the Semiconductor Industry Association’s Robert N. Noyce Award. De Geus was selected due to his contributions to EDA technology over a career spanning more than four decades.

The top three foundries plan to implement high-NA EUV lithography as early as 2025 for the 18 angstrom generation, but the replacement of single exposure high-NA (0.55) over double patterning with standard EUV (NA = 0.33) depends on whether it provides better results at a reasonable cost per wafer.

Quick links to more news:

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

Global

Belgium-based Imec released part 2 of its chiplets series, addressing testing strategies and standardization efforts, as well as guidelines and research “towards efficient ESD protection strategies for advanced 3D systems-on-chip.”

Also in Belgium, BelGan, maker of GaN chips, filed for bankruptcy according to the Brussels Times.

TSMC‘s Dresden, Germany, plant will break ground this month.

The UK will dole out more than £100 million (~US $128 million) in funding to develop five new quantum research hubs in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Oxford, and London.

MassPhoton is opening Hong Kong‘s first ultra-high vacuum GaN epitaxial wafer pilot line and will establish a GaN research center.

Infineon completed the sale of its manufacturing sites in the Philippines and South Korea to ASE.

Israel-based RAAAM Memory Technologies received a €5.25 million grant from the European Innovation Council (EIC) to support the development and commercialization of its innovative memory solutions. This funding will enable RAAAM to advance its research in high-performance and energy-efficient memory technologies, accelerating their integration into various applications and markets.

In-Depth

Semiconductor Engineering published its Automotive, Security and Pervasive Computing newsletter this week, featuring these top stories and video:

• Chip Security Now Depends On Widening Supply Chain
• Defining Chip Threat Models To Determining Security Risks
• Post-Quantum Computing Threatens Fundamental Transport Protocols

And:

• Where Power Savings Really Count
• Making Electronics More Efficient (video)

Market Reports and Earnings

The semiconductor equipment industry is on a positive trajectory in 2024, with moderate revenue growth observed in Q2 after a subdued Q1, according to a new report from Yole Group. Wafer Fab Equipment revenue is projected to grow by 1.3% year-on-year, despite a 12% drop in Q1. Test equipment lead times are normalizing, improving order conditions. Key areas driving growth include memory and logic capital expenditures and high-bandwidth memory demand.

Worldwide silicon wafer shipments increased by 7% in Q2 2024, according to SEMI‘s latest report. This growth is attributed to robust demand from multiple semiconductor sectors, driven by advancements in AI, 5G, and automotive technologies.

The RF GaN market is projected to grow to US $2 billion by 2029, a 10% CAGR, according to Yole Group.

Counterpoint released their Q2 smartphone top 10 report.

Renesas completed their acquisition of EDA firm Altium, best known for its EDA platform and freeware CircuitMaker package.

It’s earnings season and here are recently released financials in the chip industry:

AMD  Advantest   Amkor   Ansys  Arteris   Arm   ASE   ASM   ASML
Cadence  IBM   Intel   Lam Research   Lattice   Nordson   NXP   Onsemi 
Qualcomm   Rambus  Samsung    SK Hynix   STMicro   Teradyne    TI  
Tower  TSMC    UMC  Western Digital

Industry stock price impacts are here.

Education and Training

Rochester Institute of Technology is leading a new pilot program to prepare community college students in areas such as cleanroom operations, new materials, simulation, and testing processes, with the intent of eventual transfer into RIT’s microelectronic engineering program.

Purdue University inked a deal with three research institutions — University of Piraeus, Technical University of Crete, and King’s College London —to develop joint research programs for semiconductors, AI and other critical technology fields.

The European Chips Skills Academy formed the Educational Leaders Board to help bridge the talent gap in Europe’s microelectronics sector.  The Board includes representatives from universities, vocational training providers, educators and research institutions who collaborate on strategic initiatives to strengthen university networks and build academic expertise through ECSA training programs.

Security

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is encouraging Apple users to review and apply this week’s recent security updates.

Microsoft Azure experienced a nearly 10 hour DDoS attack this week, leading to global service disruption for many customers.  “While the initial trigger event was a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack, which activated our DDoS protection mechanisms, initial investigations suggest that an error in the implementation of our defenses amplified the impact of the attack rather than mitigating it,” stated Microsoft in a release.

NIST published:

• “Recommendations For Increasing U.S. Participation and Leadership in Standards Development,” a report outlining cybersecurity recommendations and mitigation strategies.
• Final guidance documents and software to help improve the “safety, security and trustworthiness of AI systems.”
• Cloud Computing Forensic Reference Architecture guide.

Delta Air Lines plans to seek damages after losing $500 million in lost revenue due to security company CrowdStrike‘s software update debacle.  And shareholders are also angry.

Recent security research:

• Physically Secure Logic Locking With Nanomagnet Logic (UT Dallas)
• WBP: Training-time Backdoor Attacks through HW-based Weight Bit Poisoning (UCF)
• S-Tune: SOT-MTJ Manufacturing Parameters Tuning for Secure Next Generation of Computing ( U. of Arizona, UCF)
• Diffie Hellman Picture Show: Key Exchange Stories from Commercial VoWiFi Deployments (CISPA, SBA Research, U. of Vienna)

Product News

Lam Research introduced a new version of its cryogenic etch technology designed to enhance the manufacturing of 3D NAND for AI applications. This technology allows for the precise etching of high aspect ratio features, crucial for creating 1,000-layer 3D NAND.

Fig.1: 3D NAND etch. Source: Lam Research

Alphawave Semi launched its Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express Die-toDie IP. The subsystem offers 8 Tbps/mm bandwidth density and supports operation at 24 Gbps for D2D connectivity.

Infineon introduced a new MCU series for industrial and consumer motor controls, as well as power conversion system applications. The company also unveiled its new GoolGaN Drive product family of integrated single switches and half-bridges with integrated drivers.

Rambus released its DDR5 Client Clock Driver for next-gen, high-performance desktops and notebooks. The chips include Gen1 to Gen4 RCDs, power management ICs, Serial Presence Detect Hubs, and temperature sensors for leading-edge servers.

SK hynix introduced its new GDDR7 graphics DRAM. The product has an operating speed of 32Gbps, can process 1.5TB of data per second and has a 50% power efficiency improvement compared to the previous generation.

Intel launched its new Lunar Lake Ultra processors. The long awaited chips will be included in more than 80 laptop designs and has more than 40 NPU tera operations per second as well as over 60 GPU TOPS delivering more than 100 platform TOPS.

Brewer Science achieved recertification as a Certified B Corporation, reaffirming its commitment to sustainable and ethical business practices.

Panasonic adopted Siemens’ Teamcenter X cloud product lifecycle management solution, citing Teamcenter X’s Mendix low-code platform, improved operational efficiency and flexibility for its choice.

Keysight validated its 5G NR FR1 1024-QAM demodulation test cases for the first time. The 5G NR radio access technology supports eMBB and was validated on the 3GPP TS 38.521-4 test specification.

Research

In a 47-page deep-dive report, the Center for Security and Emerging Technology delved into all of the scientific breakthroughs from 1980 to present that brought EUV lithography to commercialization, including lessons learned for the next emerging technologies.

Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute developed a high-performance X-ray tomography technique using burst ptychography, achieving a resolution of 4nm. This method allows for non-destructive imaging of integrated circuits, providing detailed views of nanostructures in materials like silicon and metals.

MIT signed a four-year agreement with the Novo Nordisk Foundation Quantum Computing Programme at University of Copenhagen, focused on accelerating quantum computing hardware research.

MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) developed a mechanically flexible wafer-scale integrated photonics fabrication platform. This enables the creation of flexible photonic circuits that maintain high performance while being bendable and stretchable. It offers significant potential for integrating photonic circuits into various flexible substrate applications in wearable technology, medical devices, and flexible electronics.

The Naval Research Lab identified a new class of semiconductor nanocrystals with bright ground-state excitons, emphasizing an important advancement in optoelectronics.

Researchers from National University of Singapore developed a novel method, known as tension-driven CHARM3D,  to fabricate 3D self-healing circuits, enabling the 3D printing of free-standing metallic structures without the need for support materials and external pressure.

Find more research in our Technical Papers library.

Events and Further Reading

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

Upcoming webinars are here, including topics such as quantum safe cryptography, analytics for high-volume manufacturing, and mastering EMC simulations for electronic design.

Find Semiconductor Engineering’s latest newsletters here:

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.

SK hynix and TSMC plan to collaborate on HBM4 development and next-generation packaging technology, with plans to mass produce HBM4 chips in 2026. The agreement is an early indicator for just how competitive, and potentially lucrative, the HBM market is becoming. SK hynix said the collaboration will enable breakthroughs in memory performance with increased density of the memory controller at the base of the HBM stack.

Intel assembled the industry’s first high-NA EUV lithography system. “Compared to 0.33NA EUV, high-NA EUV (or 0.55NA EUV) can deliver higher imaging contrast for similar features, which enables less light per exposure, thereby reducing the time required to print each layer and increasing wafer output,” Intel said.

Fig. 1: Bigger iron — Intel’s brand new high-NA EUV machinery. Source: Intel

Samsung is slated to receive $6.4 billion in CHIPS ACT funding from the U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) as part of a $40 billion expansion of its Austin, Texas, manufacturing facility, along with an R&D fab, a pair of leading-edge logic fabs, and an advanced packaging plant in nearby Taylor, Texas.

Micron and the U.S. government next week will announce $6.1 billion in CHIPS Act funding for the development of advanced memory chips in New York and Idaho, according to AP News.

Cadence unveiled its Palladium Z3 Emulation and Protium X3 FPGA Prototyping systems, targeted at multi-billion-gate designs with 2X increase in capacity and a 1.5X performance increase compared to previous-generation systems. Cadence also teamed up with MemVerge to enable seamless support for AWS Spot instances for long-running high-memory EDA jobs, and extended its hybrid cloud environment solutions through a collaboration with NetApp.

Fig. 2: At CadenceLive Silicon Valley, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang (r.) discussed accelerated computing and generative AI with Cadence CEO Anirudh Devgan. Source: Semiconductor Engineering

Quick links to more news:

Global
Markets and Money
In-Depth
Security
Education and Workforce
Product and Standards
Research
Quantum
Events
Further Reading

Global

After Taiwan’s recent 7.2 magnitude earthquake, TSMC reached more the 70% tool recovery in its fabs within the first 10 hours and full recovery by the end of the third day, according to this week’s earnings call. Some wafers in process were scrapped but the company expects the lost production to be recovered in the second quarter.  Also in the call, TSMC said they expect their “customers to share some of the higher cost” of the overseas fabs and higher electricity costs.

Advantest‘s regional headquarters in Taiwan donated $2.2 million New Taiwan dollars ($680,000 US) for aid to victims and reconstruction efforts related to the Taiwan earthquake that struck on April 3.

Japan’s exports grew by more than 7% YoY in March, driven by an 11.3% increase in shipments of electronics and semiconductor manufacturing equipment, much of it to China, according to NikkeiAsia.

China‘s IC output grew 40% in the first quarter, primarily driven by EVs and smartphones, according to the South China Morning Post.

In the U.S., the Biden Administration released a notice of funding opportunity of $50 million targeted at small businesses pursuing advances in metrology research and technology. Also, the U.S. Department of Energy announced a $33 million funding opportunity for smart manufacturing technologies.

Germany‘s Fraunhofer IIS launched its On-Board Processor (FOBP) for the German Space Agency’s Heinrich Hertz communication satellite. FOBP can be controlled and reprogrammed from Earth and will be used to investigate creation of hybrid communication networks.

Markets and Money

RISC-V startup Rivos raised more than $250 million in capital investments to tape out its first power-optimized chips for data analytics and generative AI applications.

Silvaco filed to go public on Nasdaq. The company also received a $5 million convertible note investment from Microchip.

Microchip acquired Neuronix AI Labs to provide AI-enabled FPGA solutions for large-scale, high-performance edge applications.

The advanced packaging market saw a modest 4% increase in revenues in Q4 2023 versus the previous quarter, with a projected decline of 13% QoQ in the first quarter of 2024, reports Yole. Overall, the market is expected to increase from $38 billion in 2023 to $69.5 billion in 2029 with a CAGR of 10.7%.

TSMC’s CoWoS total capacity will increase by 150% in 2024 due to demand for NVIDIA’s Blackwell Platform, reports TrendForce.

ASML saw a nearly 40% drop in new litho equipment sales QoQ in Q1 2024 and a 61% drop in net bookings as manufacturers reduced investments in new capital equipment during the recent semiconductor market slump.

Global PC shipments rose about 3% YoY in Q1 2024, and that same growth is expected for full year 2024, reports Counterpoint. Manufacturers are predicted to promote AI PCs as semiconductor companies prepare to launch SoCs featuring higher TOPS.

The GenAI smartphone market share is predicted to reach 11% by 2024 and 43% by 2027, reports Counterpoint. Samsung likely will lead in 2024, but Apple may overtake it in 2025.

The RF GaN market is expected to exceed $2 billion by 2029, fueled by the defense and telecom infrastructure sectors, reports Yole.

In-Depth

Semiconductor Engineering published its Manufacturing, Packaging & Materials newsletter this week. Top articles include:

• Electromigration Concerns Grow In Advanced Packages
• What Works Best For Chiplets
• Enabling Advanced Devices With Atomic Layer Processes

Plus, check out these new stories and tech talks:

• Architecting Chips For High-Performance Computing
• Future-Proofing Automotive V2X
• Secure Movement Of Data In Test
• Challenges With Chiplets and Power Delivery

Security

In security research:

• Seoul National University, Sandia National Laboratories, Texas A&M University, and Applied Materials demonstrated a memristor crossbar architecture for encryption and decryption.
• Robert Bosch, Forschungszentrum Julich, and Newcastle University investigated techniques for error detection and correction in in-memory computing.
• The University of Florida introduced an automated framework that can help identify security assets for a design at the register-transfer level (RTL).

DARPA conducted successful in-air tests of AI flying an F-16 autonomously versus a human-piloted F-16 in visual-range combat scenarios.

The National Security Agency’s Artificial Intelligence Security Center (NSA AISC) published joint guidance on deploying AI systems securely with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and international partners. CISA also issued other alerts.

Products and Standards

Samsung uncorked LPDDR5X DRAM built on a 12nm process that supports up to 10.7 Gbps and expands the single package capacity of mobile DRAM up to 32 GB.

Keysight revealed its next-generation RF circuit simulation tool that supports multi-physics co-design of circuit, electromagnetic, and electrothermal simulations across Cadence, Synopsys, and Keysight platforms.

Renesas released its FemtoClock family of ultra-low jitter clock generators and jitter attenuators with 8 and 12 outputs, enabling clock tree designs for high-speed interconnect systems in telecom and data center switches, routers, medical imaging, and more.

Movellus expanded its droop response solutions with Aeonic Generate AWM3, which responds to voltage droops within 1 to 2 clock cycles while providing enhanced observability for droop profiling and enabling fine-grained dynamic frequency scaling.

Efabless announced the second version of its Python-based open-source EDA software for construction of customizable flows using proprietary or open-source tools.

Faraday Technology licensed Arm’s Cortex-A720AE IP to use in the development of AI-enabled vehicle ASICs. Also, Untether AI teamed up with Arm to enable its inference acceleration technology to be implemented alongside the latest-generation Automotive Enhanced technology from Arm for ADAS and autonomous vehicle applications.

FOXESS used Infineon’s 1,200V CoolSiC MOSFETs and EiceDRIVER gate drivers for industrial energy storage applications, aiming to promote green energy.

Emotors adopted Siemens’ Simcenter solutions for NVH testing of next-gen automotive e-drives.

SiTime debuted a family of clock generators for AI datacenter applications with clock, oscillator, and resonator in an integrated chip.

JEDEC published the JESD79-5C DDR5 SDRAM standard, which includes a DRAM data integrity improvement called Per-Row Activation Counting (PRAC) that precisely counts DRAM activations on a wordline granularity and alerts the system to pause traffic and designate time for mitigation measures when an excessive number of activations are detected.

The LoRa Alliance launched its roadmap for the development of the LoRaWAN open standard for IoT communications, referring to long-range radio (LoRa) low-power wide-area networks (LPWANs).

Education and Workforce

Texas A&M introduced a new Master of Science program for microelectronics and semiconductors, which will begin in fall 2025.

The Cornell NanoScale Science and Technology Facility (CNF) is partnering with Tompkins Cortland Community College and Penn State to offer a free Microelectronics and Nanomanufacturing Certificate Program to veterans and their dependents.

Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) has more than 700 researchers and 25 research group focused on the chip industry, but the number is projected to grow significantly due to the Dutch government’s recent investment.

Research

Intel announced a large-scale neuromorphic system based on its Loihi 2 processor. Initially deployed at Sandia National Laboratories, it aims to support research for future brain-inspired AI. Intel is also collaborating with Seekr on next-gen LLM and foundation models.

Los Alamos National Lab, HPE, and NVIDIA collaborated on the design and installation of Venado, the Lab’s new supercomputer. “Venado adds to our cutting-edge supercomputing that advances national security and basic research, and it will accelerate how we integrate artificial intelligence into meeting those challenges,” said Thom Mason, director of Los Alamos National Laboratory in a release.

Penn State is partnering with Morgan Advanced Materials on a five-year, multi-million-dollar research project to advance silicon carbide (SiC) technology. Morgan will become a founding member of the Penn State Silicon Carbide Innovation Alliance. Also, Coherent secured CHIPS Act funding of $15 million for research into high-voltage, high-power silicon carbide and single-crystal diamond semiconductors.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) researchers found a more efficient way to extract lithium from waste liquids leached from mining sites, oil fields, and used batteries.

Quantum

Quantinuum said it reached an inherent 99.9% 2-qubit gate fidelity in its commercial quantum computer, a point at which quantum error correction protocols can be used to greatly reduce error rates.

D-Wave Quantum uncorked a fast-anneal feature to speed up computations on its quantum processing units, which reduces the impact of external disturbances.

MIT researchers outlined a new conceptual model for a quantum computer that aims to make writing code for them easier.

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University, Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munich, and Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid researchers proposed a method that harnesses the structure of light to tweak the properties of quantum materials.

Events

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

Upcoming webinars are here.

Further Reading

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

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

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

SK hynix and TSMC plan to collaborate on HBM4 development and next-generation packaging technology, with plans to mass produce HBM4 chips in 2026. The agreement is an early indicator for just how competitive, and potentially lucrative, the HBM market is becoming. SK hynix said the collaboration will enable breakthroughs in memory performance with increased density of the memory controller at the base of the HBM stack.

Intel assembled the industry’s first high-NA EUV lithography system. “Compared to 0.33NA EUV, high-NA EUV (or 0.55NA EUV) can deliver higher imaging contrast for similar features, which enables less light per exposure, thereby reducing the time required to print each layer and increasing wafer output,” Intel said.

Fig. 1: Bigger iron — Intel’s brand new high-NA EUV machinery. Source: Intel

Samsung is slated to receive $6.4 billion in CHIPS ACT funding from the U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) as part of a $40 billion expansion of its Austin, Texas, manufacturing facility, along with an R&D fab, a pair of leading-edge logic fabs, and an advanced packaging plant in nearby Taylor, Texas.

Micron and the U.S. government next week will announce $6.1 billion in CHIPS Act funding for the development of advanced memory chips in New York and Idaho, according to AP News.

Cadence unveiled its Palladium Z3 Emulation and Protium X3 FPGA Prototyping systems, targeted at multi-billion-gate designs with 2X increase in capacity and a 1.5X performance increase compared to previous-generation systems. Cadence also teamed up with MemVerge to enable seamless support for AWS Spot instances for long-running high-memory EDA jobs, and extended its hybrid cloud environment solutions through a collaboration with NetApp.

Fig. 2: At CadenceLive Silicon Valley, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang (r.) discussed accelerated computing and generative AI with Cadence CEO Anirudh Devgan. Source: Semiconductor Engineering

Quick links to more news:

Global
Markets and Money
In-Depth
Security
Education and Workforce
Product and Standards
Research
Quantum
Events
Further Reading

Global

After Taiwan’s recent 7.2 magnitude earthquake, TSMC reached more the 70% tool recovery in its fabs within the first 10 hours and full recovery by the end of the third day, according to this week’s earnings call. Some wafers in process were scrapped but the company expects the lost production to be recovered in the second quarter.  Also in the call, TSMC said they expect their “customers to share some of the higher cost” of the overseas fabs and higher electricity costs.

Advantest‘s regional headquarters in Taiwan donated $2.2 million New Taiwan dollars ($680,000 US) for aid to victims and reconstruction efforts related to the Taiwan earthquake that struck on April 3.

Japan’s exports grew by more than 7% YoY in March, driven by an 11.3% increase in shipments of electronics and semiconductor manufacturing equipment, much of it to China, according to NikkeiAsia.

China‘s IC output grew 40% in the first quarter, primarily driven by EVs and smartphones, according to the South China Morning Post.

In the U.S., the Biden Administration released a notice of funding opportunity of $50 million targeted at small businesses pursuing advances in metrology research and technology. Also, the U.S. Department of Energy announced a $33 million funding opportunity for smart manufacturing technologies.

Germany‘s Fraunhofer IIS launched its On-Board Processor (FOBP) for the German Space Agency’s Heinrich Hertz communication satellite. FOBP can be controlled and reprogrammed from Earth and will be used to investigate creation of hybrid communication networks.

Markets and Money

RISC-V startup Rivos raised more than $250 million in capital investments to tape out its first power-optimized chips for data analytics and generative AI applications.

Silvaco filed to go public on Nasdaq. The company also received a $5 million convertible note investment from Microchip.

Microchip acquired Neuronix AI Labs to provide AI-enabled FPGA solutions for large-scale, high-performance edge applications.

The advanced packaging market saw a modest 4% increase in revenues in Q4 2023 versus the previous quarter, with a projected decline of 13% QoQ in the first quarter of 2024, reports Yole. Overall, the market is expected to increase from $38 billion in 2023 to $69.5 billion in 2029 with a CAGR of 10.7%.

TSMC’s CoWoS total capacity will increase by 150% in 2024 due to demand for NVIDIA’s Blackwell Platform, reports TrendForce.

ASML saw a nearly 40% drop in new litho equipment sales QoQ in Q1 2024 and a 61% drop in net bookings as manufacturers reduced investments in new capital equipment during the recent semiconductor market slump.

Global PC shipments rose about 3% YoY in Q1 2024, and that same growth is expected for full year 2024, reports Counterpoint. Manufacturers are predicted to promote AI PCs as semiconductor companies prepare to launch SoCs featuring higher TOPS.

The GenAI smartphone market share is predicted to reach 11% by 2024 and 43% by 2027, reports Counterpoint. Samsung likely will lead in 2024, but Apple may overtake it in 2025.

The RF GaN market is expected to exceed $2 billion by 2029, fueled by the defense and telecom infrastructure sectors, reports Yole.

In-Depth

Semiconductor Engineering published its Manufacturing, Packaging & Materials newsletter this week. Top articles include:

• Electromigration Concerns Grow In Advanced Packages
• What Works Best For Chiplets
• Enabling Advanced Devices With Atomic Layer Processes

Plus, check out these new stories and tech talks:

• Architecting Chips For High-Performance Computing
• Future-Proofing Automotive V2X
• Secure Movement Of Data In Test
• Challenges With Chiplets and Power Delivery

Security

In security research:

• Seoul National University, Sandia National Laboratories, Texas A&M University, and Applied Materials demonstrated a memristor crossbar architecture for encryption and decryption.
• Robert Bosch, Forschungszentrum Julich, and Newcastle University investigated techniques for error detection and correction in in-memory computing.
• The University of Florida introduced an automated framework that can help identify security assets for a design at the register-transfer level (RTL).

DARPA conducted successful in-air tests of AI flying an F-16 autonomously versus a human-piloted F-16 in visual-range combat scenarios.

The National Security Agency’s Artificial Intelligence Security Center (NSA AISC) published joint guidance on deploying AI systems securely with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and international partners. CISA also issued other alerts.

Products and Standards

Samsung uncorked LPDDR5X DRAM built on a 12nm process that supports up to 10.7 Gbps and expands the single package capacity of mobile DRAM up to 32 GB.

Keysight revealed its next-generation RF circuit simulation tool that supports multi-physics co-design of circuit, electromagnetic, and electrothermal simulations across Cadence, Synopsys, and Keysight platforms.

Renesas released its FemtoClock family of ultra-low jitter clock generators and jitter attenuators with 8 and 12 outputs, enabling clock tree designs for high-speed interconnect systems in telecom and data center switches, routers, medical imaging, and more.

Movellus expanded its droop response solutions with Aeonic Generate AWM3, which responds to voltage droops within 1 to 2 clock cycles while providing enhanced observability for droop profiling and enabling fine-grained dynamic frequency scaling.

Efabless announced the second version of its Python-based open-source EDA software for construction of customizable flows using proprietary or open-source tools.

Faraday Technology licensed Arm’s Cortex-A720AE IP to use in the development of AI-enabled vehicle ASICs. Also, Untether AI teamed up with Arm to enable its inference acceleration technology to be implemented alongside the latest-generation Automotive Enhanced technology from Arm for ADAS and autonomous vehicle applications.

FOXESS used Infineon’s 1,200V CoolSiC MOSFETs and EiceDRIVER gate drivers for industrial energy storage applications, aiming to promote green energy.

Emotors adopted Siemens’ Simcenter solutions for NVH testing of next-gen automotive e-drives.

SiTime debuted a family of clock generators for AI datacenter applications with clock, oscillator, and resonator in an integrated chip.

JEDEC published the JESD79-5C DDR5 SDRAM standard, which includes a DRAM data integrity improvement called Per-Row Activation Counting (PRAC) that precisely counts DRAM activations on a wordline granularity and alerts the system to pause traffic and designate time for mitigation measures when an excessive number of activations are detected.

The LoRa Alliance launched its roadmap for the development of the LoRaWAN open standard for IoT communications, referring to long-range radio (LoRa) low-power wide-area networks (LPWANs).

Education and Workforce

Texas A&M introduced a new Master of Science program for microelectronics and semiconductors, which will begin in fall 2025.

The Cornell NanoScale Science and Technology Facility (CNF) is partnering with Tompkins Cortland Community College and Penn State to offer a free Microelectronics and Nanomanufacturing Certificate Program to veterans and their dependents.

Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) has more than 700 researchers and 25 research group focused on the chip industry, but the number is projected to grow significantly due to the Dutch government’s recent investment.

Research

Intel announced a large-scale neuromorphic system based on its Loihi 2 processor. Initially deployed at Sandia National Laboratories, it aims to support research for future brain-inspired AI. Intel is also collaborating with Seekr on next-gen LLM and foundation models.

Los Alamos National Lab, HPE, and NVIDIA collaborated on the design and installation of Venado, the Lab’s new supercomputer. “Venado adds to our cutting-edge supercomputing that advances national security and basic research, and it will accelerate how we integrate artificial intelligence into meeting those challenges,” said Thom Mason, director of Los Alamos National Laboratory in a release.

Penn State is partnering with Morgan Advanced Materials on a five-year, multi-million-dollar research project to advance silicon carbide (SiC) technology. Morgan will become a founding member of the Penn State Silicon Carbide Innovation Alliance. Also, Coherent secured CHIPS Act funding of $15 million for research into high-voltage, high-power silicon carbide and single-crystal diamond semiconductors.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) researchers found a more efficient way to extract lithium from waste liquids leached from mining sites, oil fields, and used batteries.

Quantum

Quantinuum said it reached an inherent 99.9% 2-qubit gate fidelity in its commercial quantum computer, a point at which quantum error correction protocols can be used to greatly reduce error rates.

D-Wave Quantum uncorked a fast-anneal feature to speed up computations on its quantum processing units, which reduces the impact of external disturbances.

MIT researchers outlined a new conceptual model for a quantum computer that aims to make writing code for them easier.

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University, Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munich, and Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid researchers proposed a method that harnesses the structure of light to tweak the properties of quantum materials.

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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