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

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

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

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

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

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

Quick links to more news:

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

Global

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In-Depth

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

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

And:

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

Market Reports and Earnings

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

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

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

Counterpoint released their Q2 smartphone top 10 report.

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

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

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

Industry stock price impacts are here.

Education and Training

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

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

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

Security

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

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

NIST published:

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

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

Recent security research:

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

Product News

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Research

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

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

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

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

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

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

Find more research in our Technical Papers library.

Events and Further Reading

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

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

Find Semiconductor Engineering’s latest newsletters here:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quick links to more news:

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

Global

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In-Depth

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

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

And:

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

Market Reports and Earnings

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

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

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

Counterpoint released their Q2 smartphone top 10 report.

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

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

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

Industry stock price impacts are here.

Education and Training

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

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

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

Security

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

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

NIST published:

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

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

Recent security research:

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

Product News

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Research

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

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

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

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

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

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

Find more research in our Technical Papers library.

Events and Further Reading

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

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

Find Semiconductor Engineering’s latest newsletters here:

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

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

A new technical paper titled “Experimental demonstration of magnetic tunnel junction-based computational random-access memory” was published by researchers at University of Minnesota and University of Arizona, Tucson.

Abstract

“The conventional computing paradigm struggles to fulfill the rapidly growing demands from emerging applications, especially those for machine intelligence because much of the power and energy is consumed by constant data transfers between logic and memory modules. A new paradigm, called “computational random-access memory (CRAM),” has emerged to address this fundamental limitation. CRAM performs logic operations directly using the memory cells themselves, without having the data ever leave the memory. The energy and performance benefits of CRAM for both conventional and emerging applications have been well established by prior numerical studies. However, there is a lack of experimental demonstration and study of CRAM to evaluate its computational accuracy, which is a realistic and application-critical metric for its technological feasibility and competitiveness. In this work, a CRAM array based on magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) is experimentally demonstrated. First, basic memory operations, as well as 2-, 3-, and 5-input logic operations, are studied. Then, a 1-bit full adder with two different designs is demonstrated. Based on the experimental results, a suite of models has been developed to characterize the accuracy of CRAM computation. Scalar addition, multiplication, and matrix multiplication, which are essential building blocks for many conventional and machine intelligence applications, are evaluated and show promising accuracy performance. With the confirmation of MTJ-based CRAM’s accuracy, there is a strong case that this technology will have a significant impact on power- and energy-demanding applications of machine intelligence.”

Find the technical paper here. Published July 2024.  Find the University of Minnesota’s news release here.

Lv, Y., Zink, B.R., Bloom, R.P. et al. Experimental demonstration of magnetic tunnel junction-based computational random-access memory. npj Unconv. Comput. 1, 3 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44335-024-00003-3.

The post MTJ-Based CRAM Array appeared first on Semiconductor Engineering.

JEDEC and the Open Compute Project rolled out a new set of guidelines for standardizing chiplet characterization details, such as thermal properties, physical and mechanical requirements, and behavior specs. Those details have been a sticking point for commercial chiplets, because without them it’s not possible to choose the best chiplet for a particular application or workload. The guidelines are a prerequisite for a multi-vendor chiplet marketplace.

AMD, Broadcom, Cisco, Google, HPE, Intel, Meta, and Microsoft proposed a new high-speed, low-latency interconnect specification, Ultra Accelerator Link (UALink), between accelerators and switches in AI computing pods. The 1.0 specification will enable the connection of up to 1,024 accelerators within a pod and allow for direct loads and stores between the memory attached to accelerators.

Arm debuted a range of new CPUs, including the Cortex-X925 for on-device generative AI, and the Cortex-A725 with improved efficiency for AI and mobile gaming. It also announced the Immortalis-G925 GPU for flagship smartphones, and the Mali-G725/625 GPUs for consumer devices. Additionally, Arm announced Compute Subsystems (CSS) for Client to provide foundational computing elements for AI smartphone and PC SoCs, and it introduced KleidiAI, a set of compute kernels for developers of AI frameworks. The Armv9-A architecture also added support for the Scalable Matrix Extension to accelerate AI workloads.

TSMC said its 2nm process is on target to begin mass production in 2025. Meanwhile, Samsung is expected to release its 1nm plan next month, targeting mass production for 2026 — a year ahead of schedule, reports Business Korea.

CHIPs for America and NATCAST released a 2024 roadmap for the U.S. National Semiconductor Technology Center (NSTC), identifying priorities for facilities, research, workforce development, and membership.

China is investing CNY 344 billion (~$47.5 billion) into the third phase of its National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, also known as the Big Fund, to support its semiconductor sector and supply chain, according to numerous reports.

Malaysia plans to invest $5.3 billion in seed capital and support for semiconductor manufacturing in an effort to attract more than $100 billion in foreign investments, reports Reuters. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim announced the effort to create at least 10 companies focused on IC design, advanced packaging, and equipment manufacturing.

imec demonstrated a die-to-wafer hybrid bonding flow for Cu-Cu and SiCN-SiCN at pitches down to 2µm at the IEEE’s ECTC conference. This breakthrough could enable die and wafer-level optical interconnects.

The chip industry is racing to develop glass for advanced packaging, setting the stage for one of the biggest shifts in chip materials in decades — and one that will introduce a broad new set of challenges that will take years to fully resolve.

Quick links to more news:

In-Depth
Global
Product News
Markets and Money
Security
Research and Training
Quantum
Events and Further Reading

In-Depth

Semiconductor Engineering published its Systems & Design newsletter featuring these top stories:

• RISC-V Heralds New Era Of Cooperation
• AI For Data Management
• Trouble Ahead For IC Verification

Global

STMicroelectronics is building a fully integrated SiC facility in Catania, Italy.  The high-volume 200mm facility is projected to cost over $5 billion.

Siliconware Precision Industries Co. Ltd.(SPIL) broke ground on an RM 6 billion (~$1.3 billion) advanced packaging and testing facility in Malaysia. Also, Google will invest $2 billion in Malaysia for its first data center, and a Google Cloud hub to meet growing demand for cloud services and AI literacy programs, reports AP.

In an SEC filing, Applied Materials received additional subpoenas from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s (DoC) Bureau of Industry and Security related to shipments of advanced semiconductor equipment to China. This comes on the heels of similar subpoenas issued last year.

A Chinese contractor working for SK hynix was arrested in South Korea and is being charged with funneling more than 3,000 copies of a paper on solving process failure issues to Huawei, reports South Korea’s Union News.

VSORA, CEA-Grenoble, and Valeo were awarded $7 million from the French government to build low-latency, low-power AI inference co-processors for autonomous driving and other applications.

In the U.S., the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is investigating unexpected driving behaviors of vehicles equipped with Waymo‘s 5th Generation automated driving system (ADS), with details of nine new incidents on top of the first 22.

Product News

ASE introduced powerSIP, a power delivery platform designed to reduce signal and transmission loss while addressing current density challenges.

Infineon announced a roadmap for energy-efficient power supply units based on Si, SiC, and GaN to address the energy needs of AI data centers, featuring new 8 kW and 12 kW PSUs, in addition to the 3 kW and 3.3 kW units available today. The company also released its CoolSiC MOSFET 400 V family, specially developed for use in the AC/DC stage of AI servers, complementing the PSU roadmap.

Fig. 1: Infineon’s 8kW PSU. Source: Infineon

Infineon also introduced two new generations of high voltage (HV) and medium voltage (MV) CoolGaN TM devices, enabling customers to use GaN in voltage classes from 40 V to 700 V. The devices are built using Infineon’s 8-inch foundry processes.

Ansys launched Ansys Access on Microsoft Azure to provide pre-configured simulation products optimized for HPC on Azure infrastructure.

Foxconn Industrial Internet used Keysight Technology’s Open RAN Studio solution to certify an outdoor Open Radio Unit (O-RU).

Andes Technology announced an SoC and development board for the development and porting of large RISC-V applications.

MediaTek uncorked a pair of mobile chipsets built on a 4nm process that use an octa-core CPU consisting of 4X Arm Cortex-A78 cores operating at up to 2.5GHz paired with 4X Arm Cortex-A55 cores.

The NVIDIA H200 Blackwell platform is expected to begin shipping in Q3 of 2024 and will be available to data centers by Q4, according to TrendForce.

A room-temperature direct fusion hybrid bonding system from Be Semiconductor has shipped to the NHanced advanced packaging facility in North Carolina. The new system offers faster throughput for copper interconnects with submicron pad sizes, greater accuracy and reduced warpage.

Markets and Money

Frore Systems raised $80 million for its solid-state active cooling module, which removes heat from the top of a chip without fans. The device in systems ranging from notebooks and network edge gateways to data centers.

Axus Technology received $12.5 million in capital equity funding to make its chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) equipment for semiconductor wafer polishing, thinning, and cleaning, including of silicon carbide (SiC) wafers.

Elon Musk’s xAI announced a series B funding round of $6 billion.

Micron was ordered to pay $445 million in damages to Netlist for patent infringement of the company’s DDR4 memory module technology between 2021 and 2024.

Global revenue from AI semiconductors is predicted to total $71 billion in 2024, up 33% from 2023, according to Gartner. In 2025, it is expected to jump to $91.9 billion. The value of AI accelerators used in servers is expected to total $21 billion in 2024 and reach $33 billion by 2028.

NAND flash revenue was $14.71 billion in Q1 2024, an increase of 28.1%, according to TrendForce.

The optical transceiver market dipped from $11 billion in 2022 to $10.9 billion in 2023, but it is predicted to reach $22.4 billion by 2029, driven by AI, 800G applications, and the transition to 200G/lane ecosystem technologies, reports Yole.

Yole also found that ultra-wideband technical choices and packaging types used by NXP, Apple, and Qorvo vary considerably, ranging from 7nm to 90nm, with both CMOS and finFET transistors.

The global market share of GenAI-capable smartphones increased to 6% in Q1 2024 from 1.3% in the previous quarter, reports Counterpoint. The premium segment accounted for over 70% of sales with Samsung on top and contributing 58%. Meanwhile, global foldable smartphone shipments were up 49% YoY in Q1 2024, led by Huawei, HONOR, and Motorola.

Security

The National Science Foundation awarded Worcester Polytechnic Institute researcher Shahin Tajik almost $0.6 million to develop new technologies to address hardware security vulnerabilities.

The Hyperform consortium was formed to develop European sovereignty in post-quantum cryptography, funded by the French government and EU credits. Members include IDEMIA Secure Transactions, CEA Leti, and the French cybersecurity agency (ANSSI).

In security research:

• University of California Davis and University of Arizona researchers proposed a framework leveraging generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) models to automate the obfuscation process.
• Columbia University and Intel researchers presented a secure digital low dropout regulator that integrates an attack detector and a detection-driven protection scheme to mitigate correlation power analysis.
• Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) researchers analyzed threshold switch devices and their performance in hardware security.

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) seeks proposals for its AI Quantified program to develop technology to help deploy generative AI safely and effectively across the Department of Defense (DoD) and society.

Vanderbilt University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) partnered to develop dependable AI for national security applications.

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

Research and Training

New York continues to amp up their semiconductor offerings. NY CREATES and Raytheon unveiled a semiconductor workforce training program. And Syracuse  University is hosting a free virtual course focused on the semiconductor industry this summer.

In research news:

• A team of researchers at MIT and other universities found that extreme temperatures up to 500°C did not significantly degrade GaN materials or contacts.
• University of Cambridge researchers developed adaptive and eco-friendly sensors that can be directly and imperceptibly printed onto biological surfaces, such as a finger or flower petal.
• Researchers at Rice University and Hanyang University developed an elastic material that moves like skin and can adjust its dielectric frequency to stabilize RF communications and counter disruptive frequency shifts that interfere with electronics when a substrate is twisted or stretched, with potential for stretchable wearable electronic devices.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded $36 million to three projects chosen for their potential to revolutionize computing. The University of Texas at Austin-led project aims to create a next-gen open-source intelligent and adaptive OS. The Harvard University-led project targets sustainable computing. The University of Massachusetts Amherst-led project will develop computational decarbonization.

Quantum

Singapore will invest close to S$300 million (~$222 million) into its National Quantum Strategy to support the development and deployment of quantum technologies, including an initiative to design and build a quantum processor within the country.

Several quantum partnerships were announced:

• Riverlane and Alice & Bob will integrate Riverlane’s quantum error correction stack within Alice & Bob’s larger quantum computing system based on cat qubit technology.
• New York University and the University of Copenhagen will collaborate to explore the viability of hybrid superconductor-semiconductor quantum materials for the production of quantum chips and integration with CMOS processes.
• NXP, eleQtron, and ParityQC showed off a full-stack, ion-trap based quantum computer demonstrator for Germany’s DLR Quantum Computing Initiative.
• Photonic says it demonstrated distributed entanglement between quantum modules using optically-linked silicon spin qubits with a native telecom networking interface as part of a quantum internet effort with Microsoft.
• Classiq and HPE say they developed a rapid method for solving large-scale combinatorial optimization problems by combining quantum and classical HPC approaches.

Events and Further Reading

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

Upcoming webinars are here, including integrated SLM analytics solution, prototyping and validation of perception sensor systems, and improving PCB designs for performance and reliability.

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