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

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

By Adam Kovac, Karen Heyman, and Liz Allan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quick links to more news:

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

Design and Power

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Manufacturing and Test

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Automotive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Security

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pervasive Computing and AI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Events

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

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

Further Reading and Newsletters

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

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

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

A technical paper titled “WhisperFuzz: White-Box Fuzzing for Detecting and Locating Timing Vulnerabilities in Processors” was published by researchers at Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Texas A&M University, and
Technische Universität Darmstadt.

Abstract:

“Timing vulnerabilities in processors have emerged as a potent threat. As processors are the foundation of any computing system, identifying these flaws is imperative. Recently fuzzing techniques, traditionally used for detecting software vulnerabilities, have shown promising results for uncovering vulnerabilities in large-scale hardware designs, such as processors. Researchers have adapted black-box or grey-box fuzzing to detect timing vulnerabilities in processors. However, they cannot identify the locations or root causes of these timing vulnerabilities, nor do they provide coverage feedback to enable the designer’s confidence in the processor’s security.
To address the deficiencies of the existing fuzzers, we present WhisperFuzz–the first white-box fuzzer with static analysis–aiming to detect and locate timing vulnerabilities in processors and evaluate the coverage of microarchitectural timing behaviors. WhisperFuzz uses the fundamental nature of processors’ timing behaviors, microarchitectural state transitions, to localize timing vulnerabilities. WhisperFuzz automatically extracts microarchitectural state transitions from a processor design at the register-transfer level (RTL) and instruments the design to monitor the state transitions as coverage. Moreover, WhisperFuzz measures the time a design-under-test (DUT) takes to process tests, identifying any minor, abnormal variations that may hint at a timing vulnerability. WhisperFuzz detects 12 new timing vulnerabilities across advanced open-sourced RISC-V processors: BOOM, Rocket Core, and CVA6. Eight of these violate the zero latency requirements of the Zkt extension and are considered serious security vulnerabilities. Moreover, WhisperFuzz also pinpoints the locations of the new and the existing vulnerabilities.”

Find the technical paper here. Published February 2024 (preprint).

Borkar, Pallavi, Chen Chen, Mohamadreza Rostami, Nikhilesh Singh, Rahul Kande, Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi, Chester Rebeiro, and Jeyavijayan Rajendran. “WhisperFuzz: White-Box Fuzzing for Detecting and Locating Timing Vulnerabilities in Processors.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2402.03704 (2024).

Related Reading
RISC-V Micro-Architectural Verification
Verifying a processor is much more than making sure the instructions work, but the industry is building from a limited knowledge base and few dedicated tools.
What’s Required To Secure Chips
There is no single solution, and the most comprehensive security may be too expensive.

The post White-Box Fuzzer With Static Analysis To Detect And Locate Timing Vulnerabilities In RISC-V Processors  appeared first on Semiconductor Engineering.