FreshRSS

Normální zobrazení

Jsou dostupné nové články, klikněte pro obnovení stránky.
PředevčíremHlavní kanál
  • ✇Semiconductor Engineering
  • Real-World Applications Of Computational Fluid DynamicsEd Sperling
    More powerful chips are enabling chips to process more data faster, but they’re also having a revolutionary impact on how that data can be used. Simulations that used to take days or weeks now can be completed in a matter of hours, and multi-physics simulations that were implausible to even consider are now very much in the realm of what is possible. Parviz Moin, professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Center for Turbulence Research at Stanford University, talks about a future fi
     

Real-World Applications Of Computational Fluid Dynamics

5. Srpen 2024 v 09:15

More powerful chips are enabling chips to process more data faster, but they’re also having a revolutionary impact on how that data can be used. Simulations that used to take days or weeks now can be completed in a matter of hours, and multi-physics simulations that were implausible to even consider are now very much in the realm of what is possible. Parviz Moin, professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Center for Turbulence Research at Stanford University, talks about a future filled with “what if” scenarios, more grid points to capture tiny anomalies in wind or the behavior of jet engines, and much more detailed high-fidelity numerical simulations of waves, chemical reactions, and phase changes.

The post Real-World Applications Of Computational Fluid Dynamics appeared first on Semiconductor Engineering.

  • ✇Semiconductor Engineering
  • Chip Industry Week In ReviewThe SE Staff
    Rapidus and IBM are jointly developing mass production capabilities for chiplet-based advanced packages. The collaboration builds on an existing agreement to develop 2nm process technology. Vanguard and NXP will jointly establish VisionPower Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (VSMC) in Singapore to build a $7.8 billion, 12-inch wafer plant. This is part of a global supply chain shift “Out of China, Out of Taiwan,” according to TrendForce. Alphawave joined forces with Arm to develop an advanced
     

Chip Industry Week In Review

7. Červen 2024 v 09:01

Rapidus and IBM are jointly developing mass production capabilities for chiplet-based advanced packages. The collaboration builds on an existing agreement to develop 2nm process technology.

Vanguard and NXP will jointly establish VisionPower Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (VSMC) in Singapore to build a $7.8 billion, 12-inch wafer plant. This is part of a global supply chain shift “Out of China, Out of Taiwan,” according to TrendForce.

Alphawave joined forces with Arm to develop an advanced chiplet based on Arm’s Neoverse Compute Subystems for AI/ML. The chiplet contains the Neoverse N3 CPU core cluster and Arm Coherent Mesh Network, and will be targeted at HPC in data centers, AI/ML applications, and 5G/6G infrastructure.

ElevATE Semiconductor and GlobalFoundries will partner for high-voltage chips to be produced at GF’s facility in Essex Junction, Vermont, which GF bought from IBM. The chips are essential for semiconductor testing equipment, aerospace, and defense systems.

NVIDIA, OpenAI, and Microsoft are under investigation by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department for violation of antitrust laws in the generative AI industry, according to the New York Times.

Quick links to more news:

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


Global

Apollo Global Management will invest $11 billion in Intel’s Fab 34 in Ireland, thereby acquiring a 49% stake in Intel’s Irish manufacturing operations.

imec and ASML opened their jointly run High-NA EUV Lithography Lab in Veldhoven, the Netherlands. The lab will be used to prepare  the next-generation litho for high-volume manufacturing, expected to begin in 2025 or 2026.

Expedera opened a new semiconductor IP design center in India. The location, the sixth of its kind for the company, is aimed at helping to make up for a shortfall in trained technicians, researchers, and engineers in the semiconductor sector.

Foxconn will build an advanced computing center in Taiwan with NVIDIA’s Blackwell platform at its core. The site will feature GB200 servers, which consist of 64 racks and 4,608 GPUs, and will be completed by 2026.

Intel and its 14 partner companies in Japan will use Sharp‘s LCD plants to research semiconductor production technology, a cost reduction move that should also produce income for Sharp, according to Nikkei Asia.

Japan is considering legislation to support the commercial production of advanced semiconductors, per Reuters.

Saudi Arabia aims to establish at least 50 semiconductor design companies as part of a new National Semiconductor Hub, funded with over $266 million.

Air Liquide is opening a new industrial gas production facility in Idaho, which will produce ultra-pure nitrogen and other gases for Micron’s new fab.

Microsoft will invest 33.7 billion Swedish crowns ($3.2 billion) to expand its cloud and AI infrastructure in Sweden over a two-year period, reports Bloomberg. The company also will invest $1 billion to establish a new data center in northwest Indiana.

AI data centers could consume as much as 9.1% of the electricity generated in the U.S. by 2030, according to a white paper published by the Electric Power Research Institute. That would more than double the electricity currently consumed by data centers, though EPRI notes this is a worst case scenario and advances in efficiency could be a mitigating factor.


Markets and Money

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) announced global semiconductor sales increased 15.8% year-over-year in April, and the group projected a market growth of 16% in 2024. Conversely, global semiconductor equipment billings contracted 2% year-over-year to US$26.4 billion in Q1 2024, while quarter-over-quarter billings dropped 6% during the same period, according to SEMI‘s Worldwide Semiconductor Equipment Market Statistics (WWSEMS) Report.

Cadence completed its acquisition of BETA CAE Systems International, a provider of multi-domain, engineering simulation solutions.

Cisco‘s investment arm launched a $1 billion fund to aid AI startups as part of its AI innovation strategy. Nearly $200 million has already been earmarked.

The power and RF GaN markets will grow beyond US$2.45 billion and US$1.9 billion in 2029, respectively, according to Yole, which is offering a webinar on the topic.

The micro LED chip market is predicted to reach $580 million by 2028, driven by head-mounted devices and automotive applications, according to TrendForce. The cost of Micro LED chips may eventually come down due to size miniaturization.


In-Depth

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

More reporting this week:


Security

Scott Best, Rambus senior director of Silicon Security Products, delivered a keynote at the Hardwear.io conference this week (below), detailing a $60 billion reverse engineering threat for hardware in just three markets — $30 billion for printer consumables, $20 billion for rechargeable batteries with some type of authentication, and $10 billion for medical devices such as sonogram probes.


Photo source: Ed Sperling/Semiconductor Engineering

wolfSSL debuted wolfHSM for automotive hardware security modules, with its cryptographic library ported to run in automotive HSMs like Infineon’s Aurix Tricore TC3XX.

Cisco integrated AMD Pensando data processing units (DPUs) with its Hypershield security architecture for defending AI-scale data centers.

OMNIVISION released an intelligent CMOS image sensor for human presence detection, infrared facial authentication, and always-on technology with a single sensing camera. And two new image sensors for industrial and consumer security surveillance cameras.

Digital Catapult announced a new cohort of companies will join Digital Security by Design’s Technology Access Program, gaining access to an Arm Morello prototype evaluation hardware kit based on Capability Hardware Enhanced RISC Instructions (CHERI), to find applications across critical UK sectors.

University of Southampton researchers used formal verification to evaluate the hardware reliability of a RISC-V ibex core in the presence of soft errors.

Several institutions published their students’ master’s and PhD work:

  • Virginia Tech published a dissertation proposing sPACtre, a defense mechanism that aims to prevent Spectre control-flow attacks on existing hardware.
  • Wright State University published a thesis proposing an approach that uses various machine learning models to bring an improvement in hardware Trojan identification with power signal side channel analysis
  • Wright State University published a thesis examining the effect of aging on the reliability of SRAM PUFs used for secure and trusted microelectronics IC applications.
  • Nanyang Technological University published a Final Year Project proposing a novel SAT-based circuit preprocessing attack based on the concept of logic cones to enhance the efficacy of SAT attacks on complex circuits like multipliers.

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


Education and Training

Renesas and the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad (IIT Hyderabad) signed a three-year MoU to collaborate on VLSI and embedded semiconductor systems, with a focus on R&D and academic interactions to advance the “Make in India” strategy.

Charlie Parker, senior machine learning engineer at Tignis, presented a talk on “Why Every Fab Should Be Using AI.

Penn State and the National Sun Yat-Sen University (NSYSU) in Taiwan partnered to develop educational and research programs focused on semiconductors and photonics.

Rapidus and Hokkaido University partnered on education and research to enhance Japan’s scientific and technological capabilities and develop human resources for the semiconductor industry.

The University of Minnesota named Steve Koester its first “Chief Semiconductor Officer,” and launched a website devoted to semiconductor and microelectronics research and education.

The state of Michigan invested $10 million toward semiconductor workforce development.


Product News

Siemens reported breakthroughs in high-level C++ verification that will be used in conjunction with its Catapult software. Designers will be able to use formal property checking via the Catapult Formal Assert software and reachability coverage analysis through Catapult Formal CoverCheck.

Infineon released several products:

Augmental, an MIT Media Lab spinoff, released a tongue-based computer controller, dubbed the MouthPad.

NVIDIA revealed a new line of products that will form the basis of next-gen AI data centers. Along with partners ASRock Rack, ASUS, GIGABYTE, Ingrasys, and others, the NVIDIA GPUs and networking tech will offer cloud, on-premises, embedded, and edge AI systems. NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang showed off the company’s upcoming Rubin platform, which will succeed its current Blackwell platform. The new system will feature new GPUs, an Arm-based CPU and advanced networking with NVLink 6, CX9 SuperNIC and X1600 converged InfiniBand/Ethernet switch.

Intel showed off its Xeon 6 processors at Computex 2024. The company also unveiled architectural details for its Lunar Lake client computing processor, which will use 40% less SoC power, as well as a new NPU, and X2 graphic processing unit cores for gaming.


Research

imec released a roadmap for superconducting digital technology to revolutionize AI/ML.

CEA-Leti reported breakthroughs in three projects it considers key to the next generation of CMOS image sensors. The projects involved embedding AI in the CIS and stacking multiple dies to create 3D architectures.

Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT-CSAIL) used a type of generative AI, known as diffusion models, to train multi-purpose robots, and designed the Grasping Neural Process for more intelligent robotic grasping.

IBM and Pasqal partnered to develop a common approach to quantum-centric supercomputing and to promote application research in chemistry and materials science.

Stanford University and Q-NEXT researchers investigated diamond to find the source of its temperamental nature when it comes to emitting quantum signals.

TU Wien researchers investigated how AI categorizes images.

In Canada:

  • Simon Fraser University received funding of over $80 million from various sources to upgrade the supercomputing facility at the Cedar National Host Site.
  • The Digital Research Alliance of Canada announced $10.28 million to renew the University of Victoria’s Arbutus cloud infrastructure.
  • The Canadian government invested $18.4 million in quantum research at the University of Waterloo.

Events and Further Reading

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

Event Date Location
SNUG Europe: Synopsys User Group Jun 10 – 11 Munich
IEEE RAS in Data Centers Summit: Reliability, Availability and Serviceability Jun 11 – 12 Santa Clara, CA
AI for Semiconductors (MEPTEC) Jun 12 – 13 Online
3D & Systems Summit Jun 12 – 14 Dresden, Germany
PCI-SIG Developers Conference Jun 12 – 13 Santa Clara, CA
Standards for Chiplet Design with 3DIC Packaging (Part 1) Jun 14 Online
AI Hardware and Edge AI Summit: Europe Jun 18 – 19 London, UK
Standards for Chiplet Design with 3DIC Packaging (Part 2) Jun 21 Online
DAC 2024 Jun 23 – 27 San Francisco
RISC-V Summit Europe 2024 Jun 24 – 28 Munich
Leti Innovation Days 2024 Jun 25 – 27 Grenoble, France
Find All Upcoming Events Here

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.

  • ✇Semiconductor Engineering
  • Chip Industry Week In ReviewThe SE Staff
    Synopsys refocused its security priorities around chips, striking a deal to sell off its Software Integrity Group subsidiary to private equity firms Clearlake Capital Group and Francisco Partners for about $2.1 billion. That deal comes on the heels of Synopsys’ recent acquisition of Intrinsic ID, which develops physical unclonable function IP. Sassine Ghazi, Synopsys’ president and CEO, said in an interview that the sale of the software group “gives us the ability to have management bandwidth, c
     

Chip Industry Week In Review

10. Květen 2024 v 09:01

Synopsys refocused its security priorities around chips, striking a deal to sell off its Software Integrity Group subsidiary to private equity firms Clearlake Capital Group and Francisco Partners for about $2.1 billion. That deal comes on the heels of Synopsys’ recent acquisition of Intrinsic ID, which develops physical unclonable function IP. Sassine Ghazi, Synopsys’ president and CEO, said in an interview that the sale of the software group “gives us the ability to have management bandwidth, capital, and to double down on what we’re doing in our core business.”

The U.S. Commerce Department reportedly pulled export licenses from Intel and Qualcomm that permitted them to ship semiconductors to Huawei, the Financial Times reported. The move comes after advanced chips from Intel reportedly were used in new laptops and smartphones from the China-based company. 

Apple debuted its second-generation 3nm M4 chip with the launch of the new iPad Pro. The CPU and GPU each have up to 10 cores, with a neural engine capable of 38 TOPS, and a total of 28 billion transistors. Apple also is working with TSMC to develop its own AI processors for running software in data centers, reports The Wall Street Journal.

The U.S. is expected to triple its semiconductor manufacturing capacity by 2032, according to a new report by the Semiconductor Industry Association and Boston Consulting. By that year, the U.S. is projected to have 28% of global capacity for advanced logic manufacturing and over a quarter of total global capital expenditures.

Fig. 1: Source: Semiconductor Industry Association and Boston Consulting Group.

Quick links to more news:

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

Around The Globe

The U.S. Commerce Department plans to solicit bids from organizations interested in creating and managing a new CHIPS Manufacturing USA institute focused on digital twins in the semiconductor sector. The government will award up to $285 million to the selected proposal.

The U.S. National Science Foundation and Department of Energy announced the first 35 projects to be supported with computational time through the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) Pilot. The initial selected projects will gain access to several U.S. supercomputing centers and other resources, with the goal of advancing responsible AI research.

Through its new Federal AI Sandbox, MITRE is offering up its computing power to U.S. government agencies. “Our new Federal AI Sandbox will help level the playing field, making the high-quality compute power needed to train and test custom AI solutions available to any agency,” stated Charles Clancy, MITRE, senior vice president and chief technology officer, in the release.

Saudi Arabia’s $100 billion investment fund for semiconductor and AI technology pledged it would divest from China if requested by the U.S, reported Bloomberg.

Japan’s SoftBank is holding talks with UK-based AI Chip firm Graphcore about a possible acquisition, reports Bloomberg.

India’s chip industry is heating up. Mindgrove launched the country’s first SoC, named Secure IoT. The chip clocks at 700 MHz, and the company is touting its key security algorithms, secure boot, and on-chip OTP memory. Meanwhile, Lam Research is expanding its global semiconductor fabrication supply chain to include India.

Microsoft will build a $3.3 billion AI data center in Racine, Wisconsin, the same location as the failed Foxconn investment touted six years ago.

Markets And Money

The SIA announced first-quarter global semiconductor sales grew more than 15% YoY, still 5.7% below Q4 2023, but a big improvement over last year. Consider that the semiconductor materials market contracted 8.2% in 2023 to $66.7 billion, down from a record $72.7 billion in 2022, according to a new report from SEMI.

The demand for AI-powered consumer electronics will drive global AI chipset shipments to 1.3 billion by 2030, according to ABI Research.

TrendForce released several new industry reports this week. Among the highlights:

  • HBM prices are expected to increase by up to 10% in 2025, representing more than 30% of total DRAM value.
  • In Q2, DRAM contract prices rose 13% to 18%, while NAND flash prices increased 15% to 20%.
  • The top 10 design firms’ combined revenue increased 12% in 2023, with NVIDIA taking the lead for the first time.

A number of acquisitions were announced recently:

  • High-voltage IC company, Power Integrations, will purchase the assets of Odyssey Semiconductor Technologies, a developer of gallium nitride (GaN) transistors.
  • Mobix Labs agreed to buy RF design company RaGE Systems for $20 million in cash, stock, and incentives.
  • V-Tek, a packaging services and inspection company, acquired A&J Programming, a manufacturer of automated handling and programming equipment.

The global smartphone market grew 6% year-over-year, shipping 296.9 million units in Q124, according to a Counterpoint report.  Samsung toppled Apple for the top spot with a 20% share.

Automotive

U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether Tesla committed securities or wire fraud for misleading consumers and investors about its EV’s autopilot capabilities, according to Reuters.

The automotive ecosystem is undergoing a huge transformation toward software-defined vehicles, spurring new architectures that can be future-proofed and customized with software.

Infineon introduced a microcontroller for the automotive battery management sector, integrating high-precision analog and high-voltage subsystems on a single chip. Infineon also inked a deal with China’s Xiaomi to provide SiC power modules for Xiaomi’s new SU7 smart EV.

Keysight and ETAS are teaming up to embed ETAS fuzz testing software into Keysight’s automotive cybersecurity platform.

Also, Keysight’s device security research lab, Riscure Security Solutions, can now conduct vehicle type approval evaluations under United Nations R155/R156 regulations. Keysight acquired Riscure in March.

Two autonomous driving companies received big funding. British AI company Wayve received a $1.05 billion Series C investment from SoftBank, with contributions from NVIDIA and Microsoft. Hyundai spent an additional $475 million on Motional, according its recent earnings report.

The automotive imaging market grew to U.S. $5.7 billion in 2023 due to increased production, autonomy demand, and higher-resolution offerings.

Automotive Grade Linux (AGL), a collaborative cross-industry effort developing an open source platform for all Software-Defined Vehicles (SDVs), released cloud-native functionality, RISC-V architecture and flutter applications.

Security

SRAM security concerns are intensifying as a combination of new and existing techniques allow hackers to tap into data for longer periods of time after a device is powered down. This is particularly alarming as the leading edge of design shifts to heterogeneous systems in package, where chiplets frequently have their own memory hierarchy.

Machine learning is being used by hackers to find weaknesses in chips and systems, but it also is starting to be used to prevent breaches by pinpointing hardware and software design flaws.

txOne Networks, provider of Cyber-Physical Systems security, raised $51 million in Series B extension round of funding.

The U.S. Department of Justice charged a Russian national with his role as the creator, developer and administrator of the LockBit, a prolific ramsomware group, that allegedly stole $100 million in payments from 2,000 victims.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) launched “We Can Secure Our World,” a new public awareness program promoting “basic cyber hygiene” and the agency also issues a number of alerts/advisories.

Product News

Siemens unveiled its Solido IP Validation Suite software, an automated quality assurance product designed to work across all design IP types and formats. The suite includes Solido Crosscheck and IPdelta software, which both provide in-view, cross-view and version-to-version QA checks.

proteanTecs announced its lifecycle monitoring solution is being integrated into SAPEON’s new AI processors.

SpiNNcloud Systems revealed their SpiNNaker2 system, an event-based AI platform supercomputer containing chips that are a mesh of 152 ARM-based cores. The platform has the ability to emulate 10 billion neurons while still maintaining power efficiency and reliability.

Ansys partnered with Schrodinger to develop new computational materials. The collaboration will see Schrodinger’s molecular modeling technology used in Ansys’ simulation tools to evaluate performance ahead of the prototype phase.

Keysight introduced a pulse generator to its handheld radio frequency analyzer software options. The Option 357 pulse generator is downloadable on B- and C-Series FieldFox analyzers.

Education and Training

Semiconductor fever is hitting academia:

  • Penn State discussed its role in leading 15 universities to drive advances in chip integration and packaging.
  • Georgia Tech’s explained its research is happening at all the levels of the “semiconductor stack,” touting its 28,500 square feet of academic cleanroom space.
  • And in the past month Purdue University, Dassault Systems and Lam Research expanded an existing deal to use virtual twins and simulation tools in workforce development.

Arizona State University is beefing up their technology programs with a new bachelor’s and doctoral degree in robotics and autonomous systems.

Microsoft is partnering with Gateway Technical College in Wisconsin to create a Data Center Academy to train Wisconsinites for data center and STEM roles by 2030.

Research

Stanford-led researchers used ordinary-appearing glasses for an augmented reality headset, utilizing waveguide display techniques, holographic imaging, and AI.

UC Berkeley, LLNL, and MIT engineered a miniaturized on-chip energy storage and power delivery, using an atomic-scale approach to modify electrostatic capacitors.

ORNL and other researchers observed a “surprising isotope effect in the optoelectronic properties of a single layer of molybdenum disulfide” when they substituted heavier isotope of molybdenum in the crystal.

Three U.S. national labs are partnering with NVIDIA to develop advanced memory technologies for high performance computing.

In-Depth

In addition to this week’s Automotive, Security and Pervasive Computing newsletter, here are more top stories and tech talk from the week:

Events

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

Event Date Location
ASMC: Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Conference May 13 – 16 Albany, NY
ISES Taiwan 2024: International Semiconductor Executive Summit May 14 – 15 New Taipei City
Ansys Simulation World 2024 May 14 – 16 Online
Women In Semiconductors May 16 Albany, NY
European Test Symposium May 20 – 24 The Hague, Netherlands
NI Connect Austin 2024 May 20 – 22 Austin, Texas
ITF World 2024 (imec) May 21 – 22 Antwerp, Belgium
Embedded Vision Summit May 21 – 23 Santa Clara, CA
ASIP Virtual Seminar 2024 May 22 Online
Electronic Components and Technology Conference (ECTC) 2024 May 28 – 31 Denver, Colorado
Hardwear.io Security Trainings and Conference USA 2024 May 28 – Jun 1 Santa Clara, CA
Find All Upcoming Events Here

Upcoming webinars are here.

Further Reading

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

  • ✇Semiconductor Engineering
  • Chip Industry Week In ReviewThe SE Staff
    Synopsys refocused its security priorities around chips, striking a deal to sell off its Software Integrity Group subsidiary to private equity firms Clearlake Capital Group and Francisco Partners for about $2.1 billion. That deal comes on the heels of Synopsys’ recent acquisition of Intrinsic ID, which develops physical unclonable function IP. Sassine Ghazi, Synopsys’ president and CEO, said in an interview that the sale of the software group “gives us the ability to have management bandwidth, c
     

Chip Industry Week In Review

10. Květen 2024 v 09:01

Synopsys refocused its security priorities around chips, striking a deal to sell off its Software Integrity Group subsidiary to private equity firms Clearlake Capital Group and Francisco Partners for about $2.1 billion. That deal comes on the heels of Synopsys’ recent acquisition of Intrinsic ID, which develops physical unclonable function IP. Sassine Ghazi, Synopsys’ president and CEO, said in an interview that the sale of the software group “gives us the ability to have management bandwidth, capital, and to double down on what we’re doing in our core business.”

The U.S. Commerce Department reportedly pulled export licenses from Intel and Qualcomm that permitted them to ship semiconductors to Huawei, the Financial Times reported. The move comes after advanced chips from Intel reportedly were used in new laptops and smartphones from the China-based company. 

Apple debuted its second-generation 3nm M4 chip with the launch of the new iPad Pro. The CPU and GPU each have up to 10 cores, with a neural engine capable of 38 TOPS, and a total of 28 billion transistors. Apple also is working with TSMC to develop its own AI processors for running software in data centers, reports The Wall Street Journal.

The U.S. is expected to triple its semiconductor manufacturing capacity by 2032, according to a new report by the Semiconductor Industry Association and Boston Consulting. By that year, the U.S. is projected to have 28% of global capacity for advanced logic manufacturing and over a quarter of total global capital expenditures.

Fig. 1: Source: Semiconductor Industry Association and Boston Consulting Group.

Quick links to more news:

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

Around The Globe

The U.S. Commerce Department plans to solicit bids from organizations interested in creating and managing a new CHIPS Manufacturing USA institute focused on digital twins in the semiconductor sector. The government will award up to $285 million to the selected proposal.

The U.S. National Science Foundation and Department of Energy announced the first 35 projects to be supported with computational time through the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) Pilot. The initial selected projects will gain access to several U.S. supercomputing centers and other resources, with the goal of advancing responsible AI research.

Through its new Federal AI Sandbox, MITRE is offering up its computing power to U.S. government agencies. “Our new Federal AI Sandbox will help level the playing field, making the high-quality compute power needed to train and test custom AI solutions available to any agency,” stated Charles Clancy, MITRE, senior vice president and chief technology officer, in the release.

Saudi Arabia’s $100 billion investment fund for semiconductor and AI technology pledged it would divest from China if requested by the U.S, reported Bloomberg.

Japan’s SoftBank is holding talks with UK-based AI Chip firm Graphcore about a possible acquisition, reports Bloomberg.

India’s chip industry is heating up. Mindgrove launched the country’s first SoC, named Secure IoT. The chip clocks at 700 MHz, and the company is touting its key security algorithms, secure boot, and on-chip OTP memory. Meanwhile, Lam Research is expanding its global semiconductor fabrication supply chain to include India.

Microsoft will build a $3.3 billion AI data center in Racine, Wisconsin, the same location as the failed Foxconn investment touted six years ago.

Markets And Money

The SIA announced first-quarter global semiconductor sales grew more than 15% YoY, still 5.7% below Q4 2023, but a big improvement over last year. Consider that the semiconductor materials market contracted 8.2% in 2023 to $66.7 billion, down from a record $72.7 billion in 2022, according to a new report from SEMI.

The demand for AI-powered consumer electronics will drive global AI chipset shipments to 1.3 billion by 2030, according to ABI Research.

TrendForce released several new industry reports this week. Among the highlights:

  • HBM prices are expected to increase by up to 10% in 2025, representing more than 30% of total DRAM value.
  • In Q2, DRAM contract prices rose 13% to 18%, while NAND flash prices increased 15% to 20%.
  • The top 10 design firms’ combined revenue increased 12% in 2023, with NVIDIA taking the lead for the first time.

A number of acquisitions were announced recently:

  • High-voltage IC company, Power Integrations, will purchase the assets of Odyssey Semiconductor Technologies, a developer of gallium nitride (GaN) transistors.
  • Mobix Labs agreed to buy RF design company RaGE Systems for $20 million in cash, stock, and incentives.
  • V-Tek, a packaging services and inspection company, acquired A&J Programming, a manufacturer of automated handling and programming equipment.

The global smartphone market grew 6% year-over-year, shipping 296.9 million units in Q124, according to a Counterpoint report.  Samsung toppled Apple for the top spot with a 20% share.

Automotive

U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether Tesla committed securities or wire fraud for misleading consumers and investors about its EV’s autopilot capabilities, according to Reuters.

The automotive ecosystem is undergoing a huge transformation toward software-defined vehicles, spurring new architectures that can be future-proofed and customized with software.

Infineon introduced a microcontroller for the automotive battery management sector, integrating high-precision analog and high-voltage subsystems on a single chip. Infineon also inked a deal with China’s Xiaomi to provide SiC power modules for Xiaomi’s new SU7 smart EV.

Keysight and ETAS are teaming up to embed ETAS fuzz testing software into Keysight’s automotive cybersecurity platform.

Also, Keysight’s device security research lab, Riscure Security Solutions, can now conduct vehicle type approval evaluations under United Nations R155/R156 regulations. Keysight acquired Riscure in March.

Two autonomous driving companies received big funding. British AI company Wayve received a $1.05 billion Series C investment from SoftBank, with contributions from NVIDIA and Microsoft. Hyundai spent an additional $475 million on Motional, according its recent earnings report.

The automotive imaging market grew to U.S. $5.7 billion in 2023 due to increased production, autonomy demand, and higher-resolution offerings.

Automotive Grade Linux (AGL), a collaborative cross-industry effort developing an open source platform for all Software-Defined Vehicles (SDVs), released cloud-native functionality, RISC-V architecture and flutter applications.

Security

SRAM security concerns are intensifying as a combination of new and existing techniques allow hackers to tap into data for longer periods of time after a device is powered down. This is particularly alarming as the leading edge of design shifts to heterogeneous systems in package, where chiplets frequently have their own memory hierarchy.

Machine learning is being used by hackers to find weaknesses in chips and systems, but it also is starting to be used to prevent breaches by pinpointing hardware and software design flaws.

txOne Networks, provider of Cyber-Physical Systems security, raised $51 million in Series B extension round of funding.

The U.S. Department of Justice charged a Russian national with his role as the creator, developer and administrator of the LockBit, a prolific ramsomware group, that allegedly stole $100 million in payments from 2,000 victims.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) launched “We Can Secure Our World,” a new public awareness program promoting “basic cyber hygiene” and the agency also issues a number of alerts/advisories.

Product News

Siemens unveiled its Solido IP Validation Suite software, an automated quality assurance product designed to work across all design IP types and formats. The suite includes Solido Crosscheck and IPdelta software, which both provide in-view, cross-view and version-to-version QA checks.

proteanTecs announced its lifecycle monitoring solution is being integrated into SAPEON’s new AI processors.

SpiNNcloud Systems revealed their SpiNNaker2 system, an event-based AI platform supercomputer containing chips that are a mesh of 152 ARM-based cores. The platform has the ability to emulate 10 billion neurons while still maintaining power efficiency and reliability.

Ansys partnered with Schrodinger to develop new computational materials. The collaboration will see Schrodinger’s molecular modeling technology used in Ansys’ simulation tools to evaluate performance ahead of the prototype phase.

Keysight introduced a pulse generator to its handheld radio frequency analyzer software options. The Option 357 pulse generator is downloadable on B- and C-Series FieldFox analyzers.

Education and Training

Semiconductor fever is hitting academia:

  • Penn State discussed its role in leading 15 universities to drive advances in chip integration and packaging.
  • Georgia Tech’s explained its research is happening at all the levels of the “semiconductor stack,” touting its 28,500 square feet of academic cleanroom space.
  • And in the past month Purdue University, Dassault Systems and Lam Research expanded an existing deal to use virtual twins and simulation tools in workforce development.

Arizona State University is beefing up their technology programs with a new bachelor’s and doctoral degree in robotics and autonomous systems.

Microsoft is partnering with Gateway Technical College in Wisconsin to create a Data Center Academy to train Wisconsinites for data center and STEM roles by 2030.

Research

Stanford-led researchers used ordinary-appearing glasses for an augmented reality headset, utilizing waveguide display techniques, holographic imaging, and AI.

UC Berkeley, LLNL, and MIT engineered a miniaturized on-chip energy storage and power delivery, using an atomic-scale approach to modify electrostatic capacitors.

ORNL and other researchers observed a “surprising isotope effect in the optoelectronic properties of a single layer of molybdenum disulfide” when they substituted heavier isotope of molybdenum in the crystal.

Three U.S. national labs are partnering with NVIDIA to develop advanced memory technologies for high performance computing.

In-Depth

In addition to this week’s Automotive, Security and Pervasive Computing newsletter, here are more top stories and tech talk from the week:

Events

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

Event Date Location
ASMC: Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Conference May 13 – 16 Albany, NY
ISES Taiwan 2024: International Semiconductor Executive Summit May 14 – 15 New Taipei City
Ansys Simulation World 2024 May 14 – 16 Online
Women In Semiconductors May 16 Albany, NY
European Test Symposium May 20 – 24 The Hague, Netherlands
NI Connect Austin 2024 May 20 – 22 Austin, Texas
ITF World 2024 (imec) May 21 – 22 Antwerp, Belgium
Embedded Vision Summit May 21 – 23 Santa Clara, CA
ASIP Virtual Seminar 2024 May 22 Online
Electronic Components and Technology Conference (ECTC) 2024 May 28 – 31 Denver, Colorado
Hardwear.io Security Trainings and Conference USA 2024 May 28 – Jun 1 Santa Clara, CA
Find All Upcoming Events Here

Upcoming webinars are here.

Further Reading

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

  • ✇Semiconductor Engineering
  • Chip Industry Week In ReviewThe SE Staff
    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
     

Chip Industry Week In Review

19. Duben 2024 v 09:01

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:

Plus, check out these new stories and tech talks:


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:

Event Date Location
IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC) Apr 21 – 24 Denver, Colorado
MRS Spring Meeting & Exhibit Apr 22 – 26 Seattle, Washington
(note: Virtual held in May)
IEEE VLSI Test Symposium Apr 22 – 24 Tempe, AZ
TSMC North America Symposium Apr 24 Santa Clara, CA
Renesas Tech Day: Scalable AI Solutions for the Edge May 1 Boston
IEEE International Symposium on Hardware Oriented Security and Trust (HOST) May 6 – 9 Washington DC
MRS Spring Meeting & Exhibit May 7 – 9 Virtual
ASMC: Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Conference May 13 – 16 Albany, NY
ISES Taiwan 2024: International Semiconductor Executive Summit May 14 – 15 New Taipei City
Ansys Simulation World 2024 May 14 – 16 Online
NI Connect Austin 2024 May 20 – 22 Austin, Texas
ITF World 2024 (imec) May 21 – 22 Antwerp, Belgium
Electronic Components and Technology Conference (ECTC) 2024 May 28 – 31 Denver, Colorado
Hardwear.io Security Trainings and Conference USA 2024 May 28 – Jun 1 Santa Clara, CA
Find A Complete List Of Upcoming Events Here

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.

  • ✇Semiconductor Engineering
  • Chip Industry Week In ReviewThe SE Staff
    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
     

Chip Industry Week In Review

19. Duben 2024 v 09:01

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:

Plus, check out these new stories and tech talks:


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:

Event Date Location
IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC) Apr 21 – 24 Denver, Colorado
MRS Spring Meeting & Exhibit Apr 22 – 26 Seattle, Washington
(note: Virtual held in May)
IEEE VLSI Test Symposium Apr 22 – 24 Tempe, AZ
TSMC North America Symposium Apr 24 Santa Clara, CA
Renesas Tech Day: Scalable AI Solutions for the Edge May 1 Boston
IEEE International Symposium on Hardware Oriented Security and Trust (HOST) May 6 – 9 Washington DC
MRS Spring Meeting & Exhibit May 7 – 9 Virtual
ASMC: Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Conference May 13 – 16 Albany, NY
ISES Taiwan 2024: International Semiconductor Executive Summit May 14 – 15 New Taipei City
Ansys Simulation World 2024 May 14 – 16 Online
NI Connect Austin 2024 May 20 – 22 Austin, Texas
ITF World 2024 (imec) May 21 – 22 Antwerp, Belgium
Electronic Components and Technology Conference (ECTC) 2024 May 28 – 31 Denver, Colorado
Hardwear.io Security Trainings and Conference USA 2024 May 28 – Jun 1 Santa Clara, CA
Find A Complete List Of Upcoming Events Here

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.

❌
❌