A few hours before touching down in Chicago Sunday, Vice President Kamala Harris, in one of her few interactions with reporters since snatching the Democratic Party's presidential nomination from her boss, gave a meandering yet revealing answer to the simple question of how she would pay for her recently introduced economic proposals.

"What we're doing in terms of the [first-time homebuyer] tax credits, we know that there's a great return on investment," Harris asserted in Moon Township, Pennsylvania. "When we increase home ownership in America, what that means in terms of increasing the tax base, not to mention property tax base, what that does to fund schools—again, return on investment. I think it's a mistake for any person who talks about public policy to not critically evaluate how you measure the return on investment. When you are strengthening neighborhoods, strengthening communities, and in particular the economies of those communities, and investing in a broad-based economy, everybody benefits, and it pays for itself in that way."

Italics added, to emphasize America's ongoing mistakes.

Democrats begin their four-day national convention Monday in the city that perhaps best exemplifies the chasm between their party's dreamy policy rhetoric and grim real-world results. As a direct result of one-party misrule (there are zero Republicans on the 50-seat City Council), Chicago's tax base is decreasing, not increasing. The population has declined for nine consecutive years, is shrinking by an annual rate of 1 percent, and is at its lowest point in more than a century.

Illinois, where Democrats control the governorship and a two-thirds majority of the legislature, lost "an estimated $3.6 billion in income tax revenue in 2022 alone, a year the net loss of 87,000 residents subtracted $9.8 billion in adjusted gross income," syndicated columnist and Illinois native George Will observed last week. "In the past six years, $47.5 billion [adjusted gross income] has left….Illinois leads the nation in net losses of households making 200,000 or more."

None of these or other grisly Windy City stats—including the murders and the pension liabilities—are obscure. As Illinois Policy Institute Vice President Austin Berg put it Saturday night at a live taping of the Fifth Column podcast, "I believe Chicago is the greatest American city, and the worst-governed American city."

The bigger mystery has been why the Democratic Party would choose such a metaphorically dicey backdrop. But an answer begins to suggest itself amid the banal dystopia of the DNC's endless security checkpoints, concrete barriers, and battalions of police officers separating America's political class from its serfs. Democrats chose Chicago for a similar reason that Harris chose a running mate with a particularly awful record during the pandemic- and riot-scarred year of 2020: Because they, like their candidate, know that, contra Harris' assertion Sunday in Pennsylvania, the people who talk about policy—whether politician, journalist, or political consumer—almost never "critically evaluate how you measure the return on investment."

If professional political conversation was tethered even loosely to policy results, you might expect one or maybe even two of the journalists dutifully collecting their DNC press credentials at the colossal (and colossally empty) McCormick Place convention center to ask a follow-up question about what their eyeballs cannot miss. How in the world can a city in terminal financial crisis not just support the country's largest convention-center complex during a time of market oversupply and conventioneering decline, but actually keep expanding the damn thing?

The DNC's second major site (behind the United Center, which is hosting what you watch on television), "has been a political money pit for nearly 60 years," Berg wrote in 2019. Built in 1960, rebuilt after a 1967 fire, then expanded in 1986, 1997, 2007, and 2017, McCormick Place looks this week like the cover of a Mike Davis book—extensive security barricades and fencing separating the nearby poors from a depopulated, dully corporate expanse.

"Over and over, Chicago and Illinois public officials and a roster of consultants promised that a bigger McCormick Place would yield hundreds of thousands of new convention attendees and billions in new spending and public revenues," Heywood Sanders wrote in his 2014 book Convention Center Follies. "Those repeated promises have proved false, the consultant projections unmet."

Instead, like so many other Chicago governance failures, the unmet promises are covered over with taxes—on hotel room stays, restaurants, car rentals. In completely related news, a 2024 Wallet Hub study of effective state/local tax burden per median U.S. household income ranked Illinois dead last.

But the 2024 campaign is famously more about "vibes" than anything related to governance. The Harris/Walz campaign website still does not have a policy page (though the party did on Sunday release a draft platform). "I have not had a single constituent in El Paso or a single person on the road try to get very specific policy details from me," Harris campaign co-chair Rep. Veronica Escobar (D–Texas) told The New York Times. You're going to have to vote for a Harris administration to see what's in it.

Republican nominee Donald Trump famously did not even update the 2016 GOP platform when he ran unsuccessfully in 2020, suggesting that America has a supply problem when it comes to national politicians and policy accountability.

But don't sleep on demand. Trump fans love his boorish, bizarre, and often funny jokes, so he keeps making cracks about Kamala Harris' looks and Montana Sen. John Tester's fat stomach rather than stay as focused on issues as his advisors would prefer. Harris is getting cheered on by a subset of journalists for not subjecting herself to any kind of public cross-examination. And the residents of Chicago, looking upon both the civic dysfunction and the city's undeniable energy and charm, just keep on voting for more Democrats.

Americans may be getting precisely what they want out of politics in 2024. Good and hard.

The post Democrats Unburdened by What They Have Done to Chicago appeared first on Reason.com.

For the past year, New York City-based political strategy firm Mercury Public Affairs has lobbied Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson on economic and labor issues. And beginning in 2024, it has also consulted for his political fund. According to the Chicago Tribune, there are no state or city ethics rules that prohibit a political group from helping an elected official raise money at the same time it is lobbying him.

The post Brickbat: Double Dip appeared first on Reason.com.

This nonsense is somehow still going. To catch you up if you’re not familiar with this story, the Ravinia Festival Association operates the Ravinia Festival venue in the north suburbs of Chicago. When a small brewery opened its doors in Highland Park, calling itself Ravinia Brewing Company, the RFA objected to its name and convinced the brewery to enter into an agreement whereby the RFA would not object to the name or sue for trademark infringement in exchange for all kinds of agreed upon restrictions on the brewery. These included restrictions on the percentage of real estate on packaging and marketing materials using the term “Ravinia,” not organizing musical concerts, and so on.

Now, this might all sound fairly reasonable if you’re not from the area, as I am. But if you are from the Chicagoland area, you will recognize two problems with all of this. First, the term “Ravinia” comes from a formerly incorporated municipality that used to exist on the grounds where the RFA operates. It was the name of a neighborhood, not unlike “Wrigleyville” near Wrigley Field, thereby making it a geographic marker. Geographic markers have historically enjoyed very limited trademark protections, if any at all. The reality is that this trademark probably never should have been granted in the first place. Add to that the simple fact that the area also has other businesses that use the “Ravinia” name, some of which include businesses that serve beer and food, all without objection from the RFA. Despite all of the above, the RFA last year claimed that Ravinia Brewing had violated its agreement and sued for trademark infringement.

At present, this lawsuit is still going. The RFA recently amended its complaint, noting that Ravinia Brewing had transferred its own trademarks for its business name to a company setup in Delaware in order to license the marks back to the local business.

The updated complaint in the federal lawsuit between the music festival and the microbrewery accuses the founders of the brewing company of starting their business with “the express purposes of taking advantage of the name recognition and good will of Ravinia [Festival Association].”

In addition to the Illinois-registered LLCs of Ravinia Brewing Company and Ravinia Brewing Company Chicago, the 11-count amended complaint adds as a defendant Ravinia Brewing IP LLC, a Delaware-based entity incorporated in 2016. According to a joint status report filed earlier this month, attorneys for the music festival only recently learned that the brewing company had assigned trademark rights to the Delaware affiliate.

So that’s the reason for the amended complaint, but most of the facts of the case remain the same. The trademark in question is a geographic marker and the RFA has not policed its mark equitably with respect to other businesses in the area. There is still a great deal of complaining in the suit over font sizes, musical “concerts” put on by the brewery, social media “advertising,” and a beer with a musical-themed brand. There’s a lot of scare quotes in that sentence. Here’s why:

1. The “concerts” put on by the brewery are largely a person with a guitar playing some songs in the bar. These are nothing like the massive concerts put on at Ravinia Festival.
2. The font size issue occurred when there was a change in size and shape of the beer can and the brewery corrected the issue as soon as it was brought to their attention.
3. The new music themed beer was called “Key Notes” and featured a person playing a piano on the can. That both isn’t enough to make this trademark infringement, nor is the beer even sold any longer.
4. The social media “advertising” claim stems from the wife of the owner of the brewery, on her own social media page, posting a picture drinking one of the brewery’s beers while at a concert at Ravinia Festival.

And, again, this is all over a geographic marker trademark that shouldn’t have been granted in the first place. And, in the brewery’s response to the lawsuit, potentially shouldn’t have been granted for other reasons as well.

The brewery contended that the association’s 2011 trademark for exclusive rights to use the “Ravinia” name for “Restaurant Services; Catering Services; Offering Banquet Facilities” was obtained fraudulently, noting that the festival’s finance director signed a sworn declaration that no one else was using the name for restaurants and food — despite the existence of local restaurants like the Ravinia Green Country Club and the Ravinia BBQ and Grill.

The brewery’s attorney, Shelley Smith, said a jury could reasonably determine that a senior Ravinia Festival executive, like its then finance director, could not credibly claim that she was unaware of country club or BBQ joint.

“Thus, when Ravinia Festival filed its trademark application, Ravinia BBQ and Grill had been using the mark ‘Ravinia’ for twenty-five years and Ravinia Green Country Club had been using the mark for forty-three years, all without interference by Ravinia Festival,” Smith said. “It is under these circumstances that Ravinia Festival told the PTO that no one else had the ‘right to use the mark in commerce’ in connection with restaurant services.”

Whether that’s true or not ultimately shouldn’t really matter. The fact is that “Ravinia” is a geographic marker, understood not to be a source of a good or service, but as a reference to a neighborhood. On top of that, the RFA has clearly not policed its trademark against other uses of the term, and is instead singling out Ravinia Brewing Company for this sort of action.

Why the RFA wants to continue with its bullying via this lawsuit is beyond me. It can’t possibly be worth whatever it is paying its lawyers, as there is clearly no threat from a small brewery with a couple of brick and mortar locations.

When two masked men broke into a woman's Chicago home, she called 911. And then she called again. And again. In total, she spoke to 911 operators six times over the course of an hour. At one point, a supervisor explained they had no police units to send, blaming cuts to the police department; he even recommended she call her alderman and ask him to give the police more funding. Fortunately for her, the intruders left after spotting her. Officers did not arrive until more than three hours after her first call to 911.

The post Brickbat: When Seconds Count appeared first on Reason.com.

Samsung and Synopsys collaborated on the first production tapeout of a high-performance mobile SoC design, including CPUs and GPUs, using the Synopsys.ai EDA suite on Samsung Foundry’s gate-all-around (GAA) process. Samsung plans to begin mass production of 2nm process GAA chips in 2025, reports BusinessKorea.

UMC developed the first radio frequency silicon on insulator (RF-SOI)-based 3D IC process for chips used in smartphones and other 5G/6G mobile devices. The process uses wafer-to-wafer bonding technology to address radio frequency interference between stacked dies and reduces die size by 45%.

Fig. 1: UMC’s 3D IC solution for RFSOI technology. Source: UMC

The first programmable chip capable of shaping, splitting, and steering beams of light is now being produced by Skywater Technology and Lumotive. The technology is critical for advancing lidar-based systems used in robotics, automotive, and other 3D sensing applications.

Driven by demand for AI chips, SK hynix revealed it has already booked its entire production of high-bandwidth memory chips for 2024 and is nearly sold out of its production capacity for 2025, reported the Korea Times, while SEMI reported that silicon wafer shipments declined in Q1 2024, quarter over quarter, a 13% drop, attributed to continued weakness in IC fab utilization and inventory adjustments.

PCI-SIG published the CopprLink Internal and External Cable specifications to provide PCIe 5.0 and 6.0 signaling at 32 and 64 GT/s and leverage standard connector form factors for applications including storage, data centers, AI/ML, and disaggregated memory.

The U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) launched the CHIPS Women in Construction Framework to boost the participation of women and economically disadvantaged people in the workforce, aiming to support on-time and successful completion of CHIPS Act-funded projects. Intel and Micron adopted the framework.

Quick links to more news:

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

Markets and Money

The SiC wafer processing equipment market is growing rapidly, reports Yole. SiC devices will exceed $10B by 2029 at a CAGR of 25%, and the SiC manufacturing tool market is projected to reach $5B by 2026.

imec.xpand launched a €300 million (~$321 million) fund that will invest in semiconductor and nanotechnology startups with the potential to push semiconductor innovation beyond traditional applications and drive next-gen technologies.

Blaize raised $106 million for its programmable graph streaming processor architecture suite and low-code/no-code software platform for edge AI.

Guerrilla RF completed the acquisition of Gallium Semiconductor‘s portfolio of GaN power amplifiers and front-end modules.

About 90% of connected cars sold in 2030 will have embedded 5G capability, reported Counterpoint. Also, about 75% of laptop PCs sold in 2027 will be AI laptop PCs with advanced generative AI, and the global high-level OS (HLOS) or advanced smartwatch market is predicted to grow 15% in 2024.

Global

Powerchip Semiconductor opened a new 300mm facility in northwestern Taiwan targeting the production of AI semiconductors. The facility is expected to produce 50,000 wafers per month at 55, 40, and 28nm nodes.

Taiwan-based KYEC Semiconductor will withdraw its China operations by the third quarter due to increasing geopolitical tensions, reports the South China Morning Post.

Japan will expand its semiconductor export restrictions to China related to four technologies: Scanning electron microscopes, CMOS, FD-SOI, and the outputs of quantum computers, according to TrendForce.

IBM will invest CAD$187 million (~US$137M in Canada’s semiconductor industry, with the bulk of the investment focused on advanced assembly, testing, and packaging operations.

Microsoft will invest US$2.2 billion over the next four years to build Malaysia’s digital infrastructure, create AI skilling opportunities, establish an AI Center of Excellence, and enhance cybersecurity.

In-Depth

New stories and tech talks published by Semiconductor Engineering this week:

• Multi-Die Design Pushes Complexity To The Max
• Design Considerations In Photonics
• Overlay Optimization In Advanced IC Substrates
• Fundamental Issues In Computer Vision Still Unresolved
• Sensor Fusion Challenges In Automotive

Security

Infineon collaborated with ETAS to integrate the ESCRYPT CycurHSM 3.x automotive security software stack into its next-gen AURIX MCUs to optimize security, performance, and functionality.

Synopsys released Polaris Assist, an AI-powered application security assistant on its Polaris Software Integrity Platform, combining LLM technology with application security knowledge and intelligence.

In security research:

• UT Dallas, Intel, NXP, and TI published a framework for early anomaly detection in AMS components of automotive SoCs.
• The University of Central Florida said that LLMs can be harnessed to automatically rectify security-relevant vulnerabilities inherent in hardware designs within the semiconductor context.
• Western University leveraged hardware security modules for enhanced intra-domain security.
• A team in India proposed a post-quantum secure PUF-based cross-domain authentication mechanism for Internet of Drones.

U.S. President Biden signed a National Security Memorandum to enhance the resilience of critical infrastructure, and the White House announced key actions taken since Biden’s AI Executive Order, including measures to mitigate risk.

CISA and partners published a fact sheet on pro-Russia hacktivists who seek to compromise industrial control systems and small-scale operational technology systems in North American and European critical infrastructure sectors. CISA issued other alerts including two Microsoft vulnerabilities.

Education and Training

The U.S. National Institute for Innovation and Technology (NIIT) and the Department of Labor (DoL) partnered to celebrate the inaugural Youth Apprenticeship Week on May 5 to 11, highlighting opportunities in critical industries such as semiconductors and advanced manufacturing.

SUNY Poly received an additional $4 million from New York State for its Semiconductor Processing to Packaging Research, Education, and Training Center.

The University of Pennsylvania launched an online Master of Science in Engineering in AI degree.

The American University of Armenia celebrated its 10-year collaboration with Siemens, which provides AUA’s Engineering Research Center with annual research grants.

Product News

Renesas and SEGGER Embedded Studio launched integrated code generator support for its 32-bit RISC-V MCU. 

Rambus introduced a family of DDR5 server Power Management ICs (PMICs), including an extreme current device for high-performance applications.

Fig. 2: Rambus’ server PMIC on DDR5 RDIMM. Source: Rambus

Keysight added capabilities to Inspector, part of the company’s recently acquired device security research and test lab Riscure, that are designed to test the robustness of post-quantum cryptography (PQC) and help device and chip vendors identify and fix hardware vulnerabilities. Keysight also validated new conformance test cases for narrowband IoT non-terrestrial networks standards.

Ansys’ RedHawk-SC and Totem power integrity platforms were certified for TSMC‘s N2 nanosheet-based process technology, while its RaptorX solution for on-chip electromagnetic modeling was certified for TSMC’s N5 process.

Netherlands-based athleisure brand PREMIUM INC selected CLEVR to implement Siemens’ Mendix Digital Lifecycle Management for Fashion & Retail solution.

Micron will begin shipping high-capacity DRAM for AI data centers.

Microchip uncorked radiation-tolerant SoC FPGAs for space applications that uses a real-time Linux-capable RISC-V-based microprocessor subsystem.

Quantum

University of Chicago researchers developed a system to boost the efficiency of quantum error correction using a framework based on quantum low-density party-check (qLDPC) codes and new hardware involving reconfigurable atom arrays.

PsiQuantum will receive AUD $940 million (~$620 million) in equity, grants, and loans from the Australian and Queensland governments to deploy a utility-scale quantum computer in the regime of 1 million physical qubits in Brisbane, Australia.

Japan-based RIKEN will co-locate IBM’s Quantum System Two with its Fugaku supercomputer for integrated quantum-classical workflows in a heterogeneous quantum-HPC hybrid computing environment. Fugaku is currently one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers.

QuEra Computing was awarded a ¥6.5 billion (~$41 million) contract by Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) to deliver a gate-based neutral-atom quantum computer alongside AIST’s ABCI-Q supercomputer as part of a quantum-classical computing platform.

Novo Holdings, the controlling stakeholder of pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, plans to boost the quantum technology startup ecosystem in Denmark with DKK 1.4 billion (~$201 million) in investments.

The University of Sydney received AUD $18.4 million (~$12 million) from the Australian government to help grow the quantum industry and ecosystem.

The European Commission plans to spend €112 million (~$120 million) to support AI and quantum research and innovation.

Research

Intel researchers developed a 300-millimeter cryogenic probing process to collect high-volume data on the performance of silicon spin qubit devices across whole wafers using CMOS manufacturing techniques.

EPFL researchers used a form of ML called deep reinforcement learning (DRL) to train a four-legged robot to avoid falls by switching between walking, trotting, and pronking.=

The University of Cambridge researchers developed tiny, flexible nerve cuff devices that can wrap around individual nerve fibers without damaging them, useful to treat a range of neurological disorders.

Argonne National Laboratory and Toyota are exploring a direct recycling approach that carefully extracts components from spent batteries. Argonne is also working with Talon Metals on a process that could increase the number of EV batteries produced from mined nickel ore.

Events

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

Upcoming webinars are here.

Further Reading

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

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

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

An American Airlines flight going from Albuquerque to Chicago had to return to New Mexico when an unruly passenger decided he wanted off.

"Aggressively" trying to open the emergency door, it took at least six other passengers to wrestle the determined gentleman to the ground, where he was finally restrained with duct tape and flex cuffs, according to The Boston Globe. — Read the rest

The post Passengers tackle a man on American Airlines who pulled the emergency door handle (video) appeared first on Boing Boing.