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.

Back in February 2024, the BBC reported that the United Kingdom had rejected resettlement applications for Afghan commandos who fought alongside British soldiers in the fight against the Taliban. From that original report:

When the Taliban swept to power in August 2021, members of Afghan Special Forces units CF 333 and ATF 444 – known as the "Triples" – were among the groups most at risk of reprisal, having supported UK Special Forces in their fight against the Taliban.

— Read the rest

The post UK Special Forces veto immigration applications for Afghan troops they fought with appeared first on Boing Boing.

BAE Systems and GlobalFoundries are teaming up to strengthen the supply of chips for national security programs, aligning technology roadmaps and collaborating on innovation and manufacturing. Focus areas include advanced packaging, GaN-on-silicon chips, silicon photonics, and advanced technology process development.

Onsemi plans to build a $2 billion silicon carbide production plant in the Czech Republic. The site would produce smart power semiconductors for electric vehicles, renewable energy technology, and data centers.

The global chip manufacturing industry is projected to boost capacity by 6% in 2024 and 7% in 2025, reaching 33.7 million 8-inch (200mm) wafers per month, according to SEMI‘s latest World Fab Forecast report. Leading-edge capacity for 5nm nodes and below is expected to grow by 13% in 2024, driven by AI demand for data center applications. Additionally, Intel, Samsung, and TSMC will begin producing 2nm chips using gate-all-around (GAA) FETs next year, boosting leading-edge capacity by 17% in 2025.

At the IEEE Symposium on VLSI Technology & Circuits, imec introduced:

• Functional CMOS-based CFETs with stacked bottom and top source/drain contacts.
• CMOS-based 56Gb/s zero-IF D-band beamforming transmitters to support next-gen short-range, high-speed wireless services at frequencies above 100GHz.
• ADCs for base stations and handsets, a key step toward scalable, high-performance beyond-5G solutions, such as cloud-based AI and extended reality apps.

Quick links to more news:

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

Global

Wolfspeed postponed plans to construct a $3 billion chip plant in Germany, underscoring the EU‘s challenges in boosting semiconductor production, reports Reuters. The North Carolina-based company cited reduced capital spending due to a weakened EV market, saying it now aims to start construction in mid-2025, two years later than 0riginally planned.

Micron is building a pilot production line for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) in the U.S., and considering HBM production in Malaysia to meet growing AI demand, according to a Nikkei report. The company is expanding HBM R&D facilities in Boise, Idaho, and eyeing production capacity in Malaysia, while also enhancing its largest HBM facility in Taichung, Taiwan.

Kioxia restored its Yokkaichi and Kitakami plants in Japan to full capacity, ending production cuts as the memory market recovers, according to Nikkei. The company, which is focusing on NAND flash production, has secured new bank credit support, including refinancing a ¥540 billion loan and establishing a ¥210 billion credit line. Kioxia had reduced output by more than 30% in October 2022 due to weak smartphone demand.

Europe’s NATO Innovation Fund announced its first direct investments, which includes semiconductor materials. Twenty-three NATO allies co-invested in this over $1B fund devoted to address critical defense and security challenges.

The second meeting of the U.S.–India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET) was held in New Delhi, with various funding and initiatives announced to support semiconductor technology, next-gen telecommunications, connected and autonomous vehicles, ML, and more.

Amazon announced investments of €10 billion in Germany to drive innovation and support the expansion of its logistics network and cloud infrastructure.

Quantum Machines opened the Israeli Quantum Computing Center (IQCC) research facility, backed by the Israel Innovation Authority and located at Tel Aviv University. Also, Israel-based Classiq is collaborating with NVIDIA and BMW, using quantum computing to find the optimal automotive architecture of electrical and mechanical systems.

Global data center vacancy rates are at historic lows, and power availability is becoming less available, according to a Siemens report featured on Broadband Breakfast. The company called for an influx of financing to find new ways to optimize data center technology and sustainability.

In-Depth

Semiconductor Engineering published its Manufacturing, Packaging & Materials newsletter this week, featuring these top stories:

• Single Vs. Multi-Patterning Advancements For EUV
• Precise Control Of Copper Plating And CMP
• Ruthenium Interconnects On Tap
• Opportunities Grow For GPU Acceleration

More reporting this week:

• IC Industry’s Growing Role In Sustainability
• What’s Missing In Test

Market Reports

Renesas completed its acquisition of Transphorm and will immediately start offering GaN-based power products and reference designs to meet the demand for wide-bandgap (WBG) chips.

Revenues for the top five wafer fab equipment (WFE) companies fell 9% YoY in Q1 2024, according to Counterpoint. This was offset partially by increased demand for NAND and DRAM, which increased 33% YoY, and strong growth in sales to China, which were up 116% YoY.

The SiC power devices industry saw robust growth in 2023, primarily driven by the BEV market, according to TrendForce. The top five suppliers, led by ST with a 32.6% market share and onsemi in second place, accounted for 91.9% of total revenue. However, the anticipated slowdown in BEV sales and weakening industrial demand are expected to significantly decelerate revenue growth in 2024. 

About 30% of vehicles produced globally will have E/E architectures with zonal controllers by 2032, according to McKinsey & Co. The market for automotive micro-components and logic semiconductors is predicted to reach $60 billion in 2032, and the overall automotive semiconductor market is expected to grow from $60 billion to $140 billion in the same period, at a 10% CAGR.

The automotive processor market generated US$20 billion in revenue in 2023, according to Yole. US$7.8 billion was from APUs and FPGAs and $12.2 billion was from MCUs. The ADAS and infotainment processors market was worth US$7.8 billion in 2023 and is predicted to grow to $16.4 billion by 2029 at a 13% CAGR. The market for ADAS sensing is expected to grow at a 7% CAGR.

Security

The CHERI Alliance was established to drive adoption of memory safety and scalable software compartmentalization via the security technology CHERI, or Capability Hardware Enhanced RISC Instructions. Founding members include Capabilities Limited, Codasip, the FreeBSD Foundation, lowRISC, SCI Semiconductor, and the University of Cambridge.

In security research:

• Japan and China researchers explored a NAND-XOR ring oscillator structure to design an entropy source architecture for a true random number generator (TRNG).
• University of Toronto and Carleton University researchers presented a survey examining how hardware is applied to achieve security and how reported attacks have exploited certain defects in hardware.
• University of North Texas and Texas Woman’s University researchers explored the potential of hardware security primitive Physical Unclonable Functions (PUF) for mitigation of visual deepfakes.
• Villanova University researchers proposed the Boolean DERIVativE attack, which generalizes Boolean domain leakage.

Post-quantum cryptography firm PQShield raised $37 million in Series B funding.

Former OpenAI executive, Ilya Sutskever, who quit over safety concerns, launched Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI).

EU industry groups warned the European Commission that its proposed cybersecurity certification scheme (EUCS) for cloud services should not discriminate against Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, reported Reuters.

Cyber Europe tested EU cyber preparedness in the energy sector by simulating a series of large-scale cyber incidents in an exercise organized by the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA).

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

Education and Training

New York non-profit NY CREATES and South Korea’s National Nano Fab Center partnered to develop a hub for joint research, aligned technology services, testbed support, and an engineer exchange program to bolster chips-centered R&D, workforce development, and each nation’s high-tech ecosystem.

New York and the Netherlands agreed on a partnership to promote sustainability within the semiconductor industry, enhance workforce development, and boost semiconductor R&D.

Rapidus is set to send 200 engineers to AI chip developer Tenstorrent in the U.S. for training over the next five years, reports Nikkei. This initiative, led by Japan’s Leading-edge Semiconductor Technology Center (LSTC), aims to bolster Japan’s AI chip industry.

Product News

UMC announced its 22nm embedded high voltage (eHV) technology platform for premium smartphone and mobile device displays. The 22eHV platform reduces core device power consumption by up to 30% compared to previous 28nm processes. Die area is reduced by 10% with the industry’s smallest SRAM bit cells.​

Alphawave Semi announced a new 9.2 Gbps HBM3E sub-system silicon platform capable of 1.2 terabytes per second. Based on the HBM3E IP, the sub-system is aimed at addressing the demand for ultra-high-speed connectivity in high-performance compute applications.

Movellus introduced the Aeonic Power product family for on-die voltage regulation, targeting the challenging area of power delivery.

Cadence partnered with Semiwise and sureCore to develop new cryogenic CMOS circuits with possible quantum computing applications. The circuits are based on modified transistors found in the Cadence Spectre Simulation Platform and are capable of processing analog, mixed-signal, and digital circuit simulation and verification at cryogenic temperatures.

Renesas launched R-Car Open Access (RoX), an integrated development platform for software-defined vehicles (SDVs), designed for Renesas R-Car SoCs and MCUs with tools for deployment of AI applications, reducing complexity and saving time and money for car OEMs and Tier 1s.

Infineon released industry-first radiation-hardened 1 and 2 Mb parallel interface ferroelectric-RAM (F-RAM) nonvolatile memory devices, with up to 120 years of data retention at 85-degree Celsius, along with random access and full memory write at bus speeds. Plus, a CoolGaN Transistor 700 V G4 product family for efficient power conversion up to 700 V, ideal for consumer chargers and notebook adapters, data center power supplies, renewable energy inverters, and more.

Ansys adopted NVIDIA’s Omniverse application programming interfaces for its multi-die chip designers. Those APIs will be used for 5G/6G, IoT, AI/ML, cloud computing, and autonomous vehicle applications. The company also announced ConceptEV, an SaaS solution for automotive concept design for EVs.

Fig. 1: Field visualization of 3D-IC with Omniverse. Source: Ansys

QP Technologies announced a new dicing saw for its manufacturing line that can process a full cassette of 300mm wafers 7% faster than existing tools, improving throughput and productivity.

NXP introduced its SAF9xxx of audio DSPs to support the demand for AI-based audio in software-defined vehicles (SDVs) by using Cadence’s Tensilica HiFi 5 DSPs combined with dedicated neural-network engines and hardware-based accelerators.

Avionyx, a provider of software lifecycle engineering in the aerospace and safety-critical systems sector, partnered with Siemens and will leverage its Polarion application lifecycle management (ALM) tool. Also, Dovetail Electric Aviation adopted Siemens Xcelerator to support sustainable aviation.

Research

Researchers from imec and KU Leuven released a +70 page paper “Selecting Alternative Metals for Advanced Interconnects,” addressing interconnect resistance and reliability.

A comprehensive review article — “Future of plasma etching for microelectronics: Challenges and opportunities” — was created by a team of experts from the University of Maryland, Lam Research, IBM, Intel, and many others.

Researchers from the Institut Polytechnique de Paris’s Laboratory of Condensed Matter for Physics developed an approach to investigate defects in semiconductors. The team “determined the spin-dependent electronic structure linked to defects in the arrangement of semiconductor atoms,” the first time this structure has been measured, according to a release.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory-led researchers developed a small enclosed chamber that can hold all the components of an electrochemical reaction, which can be paired with transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to generate precise views of a reaction at atomic scale, and can be frozen to stop the reaction at specific time points. They used the technique to study a copper catalyst.

The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) approved a clinical trial to test a device with 1,024 nanoscale sensors that records brain activity during surgery, developed by engineers at the University of California San Diego (UC San Diego).

Events and Further Reading

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

Upcoming webinars are here.

Semiconductor Engineering’s latest newsletters:

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

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

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

Pornhub will soon be blocked in five more states as the adult site continues to fight what it considers privacy-infringing age-verification laws that require Internet users to provide an ID to access pornography.

On July 1, according to a blog post on the adult site announcing the impending block, Pornhub visitors in Indiana, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, and Nebraska will be "greeted by a video featuring" adult entertainer Cherie Deville, "who explains why we had to make the difficult decision to block them from accessing Pornhub."

Pornhub explained that—similar to blocks in Texas, Utah, Arkansas, Virginia, Montana, North Carolina, and Mississippi—the site refuses to comply with soon-to-be-enforceable age-verification laws in this new batch of states that allegedly put users at "substantial risk" of identity theft, phishing, and other harms.

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

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

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

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

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

Quick links to more news:

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

Global

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Markets and Money

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

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

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

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

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

In-Depth

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

• The Uncertainty Of Certifying AI For Automotive
• Why It’s So Hard To Secure AI Chips
• Toward A Software-Defined Hardware World

More reporting this week:

• Chip Design Digs Deeper Into AI
• Why IC Design Safety Nets Have Limits
• Opportunities Grow For GPU Acceleration

Security

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

Photo source: Ed Sperling/Semiconductor Engineering

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Education and Training

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

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

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

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

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

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

Product News

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

Infineon released several products:

• 600 V CoolMOS 8 high voltage superjunction (SJ) MOSFET product family.
• CoolGaN bidirectional switch (BDS) and CoolGaN Smart Sense device.
• New CoolSiC MOSFET discretes 650 V, with two product families housed in the Thin-TOLL 8×8 and TOLT packages to increase system power density.

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

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

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

Research

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

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

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

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

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

TU Wien researchers investigated how AI categorizes images.

In Canada:

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

Events and Further Reading

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

Upcoming webinars are here.

Semiconductor Engineering’s latest newsletters:

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

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

Chase Oliver, who secured the Libertarian Party's presidential nomination on Sunday night, says "there are few better examples of 'bad government' than the overly complex current laws and regulations involving immigration."

"If we can allow peaceful people to be peaceful, we can more easily and effectively end actual crimes at our border and make our communities, immigrant and non-immigrant alike, more safe and prosperous," explains a statement provided by the Oliver campaign.

Neither President Joe Biden nor former President Donald Trump has an immigration platform—or record—that is a clear fit for supporters of free migration and a less intrusive federal government. Oliver's campaign argues that he offers a different approach, calling out the use of eminent domain "to build permanent walls or structures on properties that do not wish to have them" and the "arbitrary caps" that are prevalent in the U.S. immigration system.

"What Chase offers is a way for peaceful people to move freely, safely, and lawfully," continues the statement.

The Libertarian candidate proposes that the U.S. "return to an Ellis Island style of processing immigrants," which would involve simplifying the immigration process "for those who wish to come here to work and build a better life." It shouldn't take "months or years" for those immigrants to receive medical and criminal checks and work authorization, but days "at most."

Oliver also supports creating a path to citizenship for the country's undocumented immigrants. Millions of undocumented immigrants are "doing essential jobs, paying payroll taxes, and contributing to our economic growth," reads his platform. "Formalizing this arrangement" will "allow them to further contribute to the economy by meeting critical labor demand and reducing inflationary pressures" and save "taxpayers billions of dollars in enforcement costs," Oliver's website says.

The platform outlines a pathway to citizenship for recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, the policy enacted by President Barack Obama that defers deportation action and offers work authorization to immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as kids. Oliver's platform also includes a pathway to citizenship for the children of long-term temporary visa holders, a class of legally present immigrants who must self-deport at 21 if they can't secure legal status before then. There are currently over 200,000 dependent visa holders waiting for relief.

The last point is a unique one. Dip Patel, founder of Improve the Dream, an organization that advocates for solutions for those visa holders, noted that it may be the first presidential platform to outline that relief explicitly.  "It is great to see this common sense idea to allow children raised and educated in America with lawful status be [explicitly] mentioned on a presidential candidate's immigration platform," Patel tells Reason. He hopes that all future candidates' platforms will "include this and other nuanced solutions affecting so many who have spent their entire lives in America."

Oliver wants to expand the H-1B visa program, a nonimmigrant visa pathway for highly skilled, highly educated workers. He also supports a startup visa, noting that 55 percent of American startups valued at over $1 billion or more were founded or co-founded by immigrants. This was the conclusion of 2022 research by the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP), which also found that almost 80 percent of those billion-dollar companies have an immigrant founder or an immigrant in a key leadership position.

"It was great to see the Libertarian Party advocate for a startup visa and a higher level of H-1B visas for high-skilled professionals, particularly since Democrats and Republicans often try to coopt ideas from third parties," says Stuart Anderson, NFAP's executive director. "Our research shows making it easier for highly skilled individuals to remain in the United States, including as entrepreneurs, leads to more jobs, innovation and cutting-edge products for Americans."

Oliver's views on immigration have proven somewhat controversial among some in the Libertarian Party, including members of the Mises Caucus (which "advocated this year in an internal strategy document" to "rid references to…free immigration" from the party platform, reported Reason's Brian Doherty). Quizzed on Reason's Just Asking Questions podcast this week about whether he considered himself "an open borders libertarian," Oliver called it a "very ambiguous term" and reiterated his support for a "21st century Ellis Island."

"If you're there for peace, you just go right on in and get to work and contribute to the economy. You get a job," he continued. "And that will get 99.9 percent of the people quickly filed through the process so they can get to work and contribute to the economy instead of being stuck on welfare or charity programs as they are right now."

The post Libertarian Candidate Chase Oliver Wants To Bring Back 'Ellis Island Style' Immigration Processing appeared first on Reason.com.

Sole source contracting is the sort of thing government agencies should seek to avoid. In some cases, it’s impossible, but most spending should be open to bidding to help ensure the government isn’t spending more than it has to — or worse, hooking up contractor buddies Mob-style.

There’s a whiff of impropriety in all of this, but it may be imaginary. However, it’s still worth examining more closely, as the Associated Press has done here. School shootings just aren’t going to go away here in the United States, so it’s understandable that legislators and educators are exploring their options. But what’s detailed in this article suggests several things, most of which aren’t exactly great.

Kansas could soon offer up to $5 million in grants for schools to outfit surveillance cameras with artificial intelligence systems that can spot people carrying guns. But the governor needs to approve the expenditures and the schools must meet some very specific criteria.

The AI software must be patented, “designated as qualified anti-terrorism technology,” in compliance with certain security industry standards, already in use in at least 30 states and capable of detecting “three broad firearm classifications with a minimum of 300 subclassifications” and “at least 2,000 permutations,” among other things.

Only one company currently meets all those criteria: the same organization that touted them to Kansas lawmakers crafting the state budget. That company, ZeroEyes, is a rapidly growing firm founded by military veterans after the fatal shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.

The first thing worth closer observation is this part of the AP’s reporting: “Only one company currently meets all those criteria.” That company would be ZeroEyes, which has benefited from similar legislation and similar grants across the country.

Again, it’s understandable that if the goal is protecting children, legislators and schools are going to want the best product. At this point, that would appear to be ZeroEyes. It does have competitors but almost none of them are able to meet the very specific criteria that keep showing up in new gun detection tech grant legislation.

ZeroEyes also appears to be the only firm qualified for state firearms detection programs under laws enacted last year in Michigan and Utah, bills passed earlier this year in Florida and Iowa and legislation proposed in Colorado, Louisiana and Wisconsin.

On Friday, Missouri became the latest state to pass legislation geared toward ZeroEyes, offering $2.5 million in matching grants for schools to buy firearms detection software designated as “qualified anti-terrorism technology.”

This sort of thing would appear to be outside the boundary of normal coincidence. And yet, the co-founder of ZeroEyes told AP “We’re not paying legislators to write us into their bills.” That’s probably true. The days of garishly showing up at a lawmaker’s office with a briefcase full of money are (mostly) behind us. But the ability to influence not just the direction of legislation, but the creation of legislation is something industries and their lobbyists have been capable of accomplishing without having to actually “pay” anyone to do anything.

Now, it could be that ZeroEyes just got out in front of its competitors to meet a bunch of requirements that its competitors couldn’t. Or it could be that it chose to approach regulators, rather than legislators, to help ensure the specifications and requirements more closely matched its product than any of its rivals.

Or, it’s just a coincidence ZeroEyes is seemingly the sole beneficiary of recently crafted legislation that provides funding to schools to buy tech from a single source.

Given all of this, it would seem most likely ZeroEyes is persuading legislators these laws need to be written and these funds need to be available to protect children from school shootings. That only its product meets the requirements is a happy coincidence, rather than the result of loutishly dangling campaign contributions over malleable legislators’ heads.

America is a business more than it’s a country. These new laws are now forcing taxpayers to fund tech that hasn’t exactly shown it can handle the responsibilities expected of it. Given the numerous options available to legislators, law enforcement, and a small army of government agencies (including social services and mental health professionals), is it really the best idea to start throwing money at the shiniest option, especially when only a single provider meets the criteria… which means it doesn’t need to be all that shiny to begin with?

Here’s what the chairperson of the National Council of School Safety Directors (Jason Stoddard) had to say about ZeroEyes and its legislation-enabled takeover of the AI gun detection market:

The super-specific Kansas bill — particularly the requirement that a company have its product in at least 30 states — is “probably the most egregious thing that I have ever read” in legislation…

[…]

When states allot millions of dollars for certain products, it often leaves less money for other important school safety efforts, such as electronic door locks, shatter-resistant windows, communication systems and security staff, he said.

“The artificial-intelligence-driven weapons detection is absolutely wonderful,” Stoddard said. “But it’s probably not the priority that 95% of the schools in the United States need right now.”

That’s probably the most salient point, whether or not ZeroEyes’ hands are completely clean. Most AI in use today is still a bit wonky. Facial recognition tech has been around for years, but most products still suffer from the same issues, even though they’ve had plenty of time to address things like built-in bias or, you know, just assuming any images they find laying around the ‘net are free for the taking (and training).

And as for the co-founder’s claims it does not buy legislators or legislation, it hardly seems to matter. Purchased or not, legislators are willing to make ZeroEyes a sole source for in-school gun detection tech. As the AP reports, the company put on a presentation for state legislators earlier this year. Whatever else went on between ZeroEyes and Kansas legislators, this was (almost!) the end result:

Kansas state Rep. Adam Thomas, a Republican, initially proposed to specifically name ZeroEyes in the funding legislation. The final version removed the company’s name but kept the criteria that essentially limits it to ZeroEyes.

Yeah, that’s not a great look, even if ZeroEyes stayed out of the law-crafting process. Sadly, another Republican on the K-12 budget committee was even more voracious in the defense of ZeroEyes as a sole source provider, telling her fellow legislators the state “couldn’t afford the delays of a standard bidding process.” Whew.

All of this may just be coincidence. But given the reach of ZeroEyes and the number of states that have passed similar legislation that solely benefits the only company that (equally coincidentally!) can match specific criteria enumerated in these bills, there’s reason to doubt every bit of this is on the up-and-up.

Experts at the Table: The automotive ecosystem is undergoing a transformation toward software-defined vehicles, spurring new architectures with more software. Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the impact of these changes with Suraj Gajendra, vice president of products and solutions in Arm‘s automotive line of business; Chuck Alpert, R&D automotive fellow at Cadence; Steve Spadoni, zone controller and power distribution application manager at Infineon; Rebeca Delgado, chief technology officer and principal AI engineer at Intel Automotive; Cyril Clocher, senior director in the automotive product line for high-performance computing at Renesas; David Fritz, vice president, hybrid and virtual systems at Siemens EDA; and Marc Serughetti, senior director, systems design group at Synopsys. What follows are excerpts of that discussion.

L-R: Arm’s Gajendra, Cadence’s Alpert, Infineon’s Spadoni, Intel’s Delgado, Renesas’ Clocher, Siemens’ Fritz, Synopsys’ Serughetti.

SE: The automotive ecosystem is undergoing a technology evolution the likes of which has not been seen, including the move to software-defined vehicles. To set a baseline for this discussion, what is your definition of an SDV?

Gajendra: A software-defined vehicle is a concept, a trend, an idea, where the whole ecosystem can drive new capabilities and new user experiences into the car, even after it rolls out of the showroom or dealership. It’s a pretty loaded concept. There’s a lot of infrastructure that needs to come together, such as software development in the cloud, seamless deployment of that software development onto the car, the whole deployment of over-the-air updates, and the connectivity. In short, the concept of a software-defined vehicle is expecting a world where we can drive new experiences, new capabilities, and new features into the car throughout its lifetime.

Alpert: In thinking about what SDV means, one example is the battery — especially in an EV. I’m not talking about the technology of the battery that’s evolved, but rather the idea that in the past when you wanted to charge your car in your garage and you were worried about starting a fire, you’d think, ‘No, don’t do that because your whole house could burn down.’ The idea is that in the past, maybe we might put a temperature sensor on the battery, but now we actually have software that can monitor it. It might even have AI to predict if the battery is reaching some state that might cause a fire in the future. You also might have something that connects to the power grid and learns when is a good time to charge, because it’s a low-usage period so it’s cheaper. This is just one part of the car, but you can imagine a whole bunch of software that you want to put on top of it in order to connect to the universe. You need a software-defined vehicle platform in order for this, or in all the other parts of your car, to communicate with the world and provide the best user experience.

Spadoni: Infineon’s definition of a software-defined vehicle is a redefining of architecture — specifically, electrical and electronic architecture, feature allocation, and the entire topology of the vehicle, from power generation and storage to power distribution and high compute. It really means new electrical architectures, and it has consequences for the business model of every OEM and Tier 1 involved. It’s a major change to previous methodologies in the last 30 years.

Delgado: Software-defined vehicle is not just over-the-air updates. It’s truly a new methodology and a new philosophy for how to architect every ingredient of the vehicle to continue to deliver value over time, in which the value is very tightly attached to the software that delivers the user experience. Ultimately, this architecture must enable the different practices on how to deliver this new value over time. What’s very interesting is that these practices of moving to software-defined architecture has been done by many other industries already. Intel has a ton of heritage, and actually helped those industries transform. That transformation is truly what we’re observing here. It’s an incredible opportunity, and possibly a crisis if not done right.

Clocher: To apply an analogy here, the car is the new smartphone. But for us, it’s more than that. I’ve heard about the platform, yes, and it’s the major architecture evolution that we’ll see in the next decade. For us at Renesas, it will be a journey that will take time to enhance the user experience, to generate new revenue streams for the industry as it moves from decentralized to centralized classic compute with zonal architecture. We can apply all those buzzwords to a software-defined vehicle. Those platform will need big computers and heavy complex hardware solutions and this will generate evolutions, upgrades to the car during its entire lifetime, but underneath we know — at least at Renesas, and certainly at some other players and silicon vendors — that this will need a huge amount of hardware resources to manage what we have in mind to deploy this platform.

Fritz: I see software-defined vehicles a bit differently than what’s been mentioned so far. For many years, you’d have the hardware team doing their design, and the software team doing their design, and it all needs to come together. There’s an English natural language discussion about what needs to happen, and as we all know, that never really goes terribly well. In automotive that becomes an integration storm, and it is a nightmare. With the new compute requirements that have been mentioned already, that just compounds the issue. So the way I see this is that we tend, as people who have an engineering background, to dive into how we’re going to do things. We hear ‘software-defined vehicle,’ we immediately think about how to do that. There’s not a lot of thought about why it needs to be done, and what needs to happen. We jump into the ‘how’ too early, and a lot of the discussion here is exemplary of that kind of approach. When I’m looking at software-defined vehicles, I’m looking at why it’s important that the software needs to run effectively on a piece of hardware. And for that hardware, why is it important for it to actually operate properly on the software? Then you can decide how to put together a new methodology that’s going to bring those things together. In the past, it’s been called hardware/software co-design. There have been attempts many times, and as has been mentioned, other industries have made this transition. What’s unique about automotive is that it’s not just one transition that needs to happen. It’s hundreds or thousands of transitions. The ecosystem needs to be turned upside down, which we’re seeing happen right now, and you need to bring all that together. It really is a methodology where you need the tooling, you need the processes, you need the thinking, you need the organizations to change so that they can make this transition in a realistic way. SDV is a huge transition. It is a way for the automotive industry to morph into something that has longevity and can meet customer expectations, which it really hasn’t met for some time now.

Serughetti: At the end of the day, if we look starting at the top from our perspective, SDV is a means to bring and enhance the car experience for the customer. That’s the end result that the OEMs look at, but they look at it from the perspective of how that improves the OEM efficiencies, and how that creates new business opportunities. The way we look at it, and what’s important, is the impact it has on the industry, the impact on the processes, on the methodologies, on the people, on the ecosystem, on the technology. It’s really a transformation of the automotive market that is going to fundamentally change how the industry moves forward and bring the OEM into a world in which they are really looking at how they become efficient in delivering cars, how they bring new features, but at the same time, how they evolve their business as well.

SE: As you’ve all described, SDV requires many inter-dependencies, and the entire ecosystem has to have an understanding of the ‘why,’ which should then lead back to laying out the plan for how to get there. Where does the ecosystem stand today in terms of realizing SDV?

Fritz: OEMs have decided in the last few years that they’ve got to take control of their own destiny. They cannot simply take what the suppliers provide. They need a methodology — like this whole SDV concept, and any tooling necessary to provide that — to push down into their suppliers, such that, ‘Here’s what I need. If you can’t do this for me, I will go find someone that will.’ This is not the old ecosystem that bubbled up from the IP to the Tier 2s, to the Tier 1s, and then to the OEMs, which gave them limited choices to go from. So when I say, “Turn the ecosystem upside down,” that’s what is happening. But every OEM has their own ecosystem, and they’re not all in the same place. Even region-to-region, they can be very different.

Delgado: This is a critical discussion, and effectively where the industry has to eventually settle. The magnitude of the transformation of the ecosystem includes roles in the technology evolution. The silicon content is expected to quadruple over the next few years in the vehicle for defining the in-cabin experience of the end user. At the end of the day, the complexity of the transition of roles is of such magnitude that the proprietary, fragmented, and broken approaches that David articulated are really not going to enable the industry to transform at the speed it requires to deliver and meet the experiences. But more than anything, they are not going to address the actual technology changes necessary to implement and allow for this value delivery mechanism. At the end of the day, this is where Intel really believes collaboration is key, and anybody who wants to participate in this ecosystem must provide scalability — also known as top-to-bottom support of the different product lines that our OEMs and Tier 1s are having to support, versus a broken-up approach on these ever-evolving higher performance and higher performance compute needs. It has to be future-proof, because you’re going to launch the vehicle eventually. So certain hardware has to be future-proofed to a certain affordability envelope, and there has to be a strategy around that. And then the ecosystem and that collaboration must be able to deliver that aggregation. It has to be done with certain anchoring technology that will allow us to deliver that performance. Collaboration is key in the sense that these technologies cannot be single-handedly owned, developed, let alone owned, defined, developed, and integrated by OEMs in silos with a proprietary end-to-end architecture definition. There obviously will be differentiations on the actual implementation, but the technologies at large have to have a sense of reuse, particularly from other verticals that have already done software-defined transformations and then tuned in the right ways toward the automotive requirements.

Spadoni: There are probably a wide variety of implementations. At Infineon, we partner with OEMs and Tier 1s and we see different approaches. For example, General Motors has more of a modular approach that emulates what happened in in the mobile phone space. It seems that Ford has a more pragmatic approach, along with Stellantis, but all of them are facing very similar challenges in that affordability has become a big problem. There are multiple generations of implementations that are going to occur, and you’ll see a striving toward how to pay for this extra hardware. It leads to tradeoffs in implementations of other systems that have to have savings in order for them to afford these vehicles. No one ever goes into a dealership and says, ‘Give me a software-defined vehicle.’ Everyone’s looking for value, and you can see it now with volumes going down. There’s a saturation of people buying at the high level. The OEMs want to get more sales, which means they’ll have to go to the lower-cost-value vehicles, and that’s going to affect the electrical and electronic architectures and the software-defined vehicle.

Clocher: What we’re seeing I would summarize as the impact on the ecosystem. We’re moving to an OEM-centric ecosystem. One size does not fit all, meaning OEMs will have their different tastes, their different definitions of levels of integration they want to have in their software-defined vehicle — especially given more complex tasks that we all have to do, rather than the challenge we have to solve, because we’re not talking about a common umbrella of software-defined vehicle. But it really does mean different implementations and different meanings for OEM A from OEM B. I would fully agree with David and Steve that we are far from having a common understanding of, at least, the market itself. And that’s fine, because this will bring differentiation, and ultimately that’s why a customer will go to Dealership A versus Dealership B. This is what the industry wants to see — continue to differentiate, continue to add value to the ultimate product, which is the car.

Serughetti: The important point in all this is, of course, you’re breaking the model that exists today. That’s one of the big challenges. We used to have Tier 1s that were building boxes, and delivering software. This was a complete black box. When it would go to integration, there were all sorts of problems. And now you’re going to break this? The challenge for the OEM is how they do this. They want to control software, but are they equipped to do this today? We see the problems today that some of the legacy OEMs have in setting up their software organizations, the challenges of CARIAD and all such organizations that are trying to do this. It’s not easy to change those companies. Of course, the new entrants don’t have this problem because they are coming from a brand new design versus the ones that deal with legacy. So for the OEM, it’s about how to take control of the software. What does that mean in terms of the processes, in terms of agile development, digital twins, and all of these technologies everybody’s talking about? The other side is, ‘It’s all nice, this software,’ but this software runs on all the companies that are delivering hardware, and that becomes essential to it. You can have the best software, but if your hardware is not there to support performance, power, and all of those aspects, you’re not going to be successful. So the ecosystem is evolving how hardware, software, and all of this comes together. The OEM wants to be the central point. That’s what we’re talking about in terms of the process methodology aspects that are making this transition evolve.

Gajendra: Where are we in this journey? How far have we come? And where are we going? Going back to the point that David mentioned earlier about supply chain evolving and the supply chain turned upside down, five years ago, if we sat here in this sort of a panel and discussed software-defined vehicles, the conversation would have been entirely different. It would have been stuck with the traditional supply chain that we’ve seen for the last 35 or 40 years in the automotive industry. There are fundamentally two aspects here. The supply chain is evolving, and the infrastructure that we, as a community — this team, for example, and many others in the community — are trying to enable is going to be key to making our EDA partners happy. The use of virtual platforms today in the cloud to try and shift left and develop and validate some of these technologies and software wasn’t even there five years ago, so we’ve come a long way. We’ve made a lot of progress together as an industry. Yes, we have a long way to go until we actually have a truly software-defined vehicle. We can go and ask for a software-defined vehicle in the dealership. But the changes we are seeing in terms of all sorts of technology providers trying to make sure that the technology that we eventually will have in the hardware is provided in some sort of virtual form, be it fast models or whatever it is in the cloud, for the vast majority of software ecosystem in automotive this is a big change. I was at Embedded World, and the amount of virtual platforms and the demos that people were actually showing — silicon partners like we have here, Intel, Renesas, Infineon, EDA companies — pointed to a strong movement of, ‘Let’s build the infrastructure that we can build, and then provide that infrastructure to the OEMs to take it from there.’ There is a lot of work going on. Together we will make the infrastructure across the board, be it virtual platform or others, richer and more capable.

Alpert: For sure, OEMs have to control their own destiny. In the past, they would do it by differentiating maybe because they had better engine performance, or some other feature. But going forward, the differentiation is going to be their software. Whoever can make software that will provide additional value, and brand it, that’s going to be the differentiator and that’s the trend. In terms of how you get there, a shared ecosystem is important. SOAFEE is a potential way that, together with virtual platforms, you can provide a shared ecosystem for development, but still allow everyone to differentiate and plug-and-play. That’s one reason we’re working closely with Arm on trying to have a reference design specifically for this purpose. But again, we’re not saying, ‘This is the design you use. This is how you do it.’ That’s not it. The point is, let’s start somewhere, and then people can start swapping out pieces and doing different things. As long as OEMs can plug-and-play, then they can still differentiate. But they don’t have to invent everything themselves, which would be too costly.

Related Reading
Software-Defined Vehicles Ready To Roll
New approach could have big effects on cost, safety, security, and time to market.

The post Software-Defined Vehicle Momentum Grows appeared first on Semiconductor Engineering.

Experts at the Table: The automotive ecosystem is undergoing a transformation toward software-defined vehicles, spurring new architectures with more software. Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the impact of these changes with Suraj Gajendra, vice president of products and solutions in Arm‘s automotive line of business; Chuck Alpert, R&D automotive fellow at Cadence; Steve Spadoni, zone controller and power distribution application manager at Infineon; Rebeca Delgado, chief technology officer and principal AI engineer at Intel Automotive; Cyril Clocher, senior director in the automotive product line for high-performance computing at Renesas; David Fritz, vice president, hybrid and virtual systems at Siemens EDA; and Marc Serughetti, senior director, systems design group at Synopsys. What follows are excerpts of that discussion.

L-R: Arm’s Gajendra, Cadence’s Alpert, Infineon’s Spadoni, Intel’s Delgado, Renesas’ Clocher, Siemens’ Fritz, Synopsys’ Serughetti.

SE: The automotive ecosystem is undergoing a technology evolution the likes of which has not been seen, including the move to software-defined vehicles. To set a baseline for this discussion, what is your definition of an SDV?

Gajendra: A software-defined vehicle is a concept, a trend, an idea, where the whole ecosystem can drive new capabilities and new user experiences into the car, even after it rolls out of the showroom or dealership. It’s a pretty loaded concept. There’s a lot of infrastructure that needs to come together, such as software development in the cloud, seamless deployment of that software development onto the car, the whole deployment of over-the-air updates, and the connectivity. In short, the concept of a software-defined vehicle is expecting a world where we can drive new experiences, new capabilities, and new features into the car throughout its lifetime.

Alpert: In thinking about what SDV means, one example is the battery — especially in an EV. I’m not talking about the technology of the battery that’s evolved, but rather the idea that in the past when you wanted to charge your car in your garage and you were worried about starting a fire, you’d think, ‘No, don’t do that because your whole house could burn down.’ The idea is that in the past, maybe we might put a temperature sensor on the battery, but now we actually have software that can monitor it. It might even have AI to predict if the battery is reaching some state that might cause a fire in the future. You also might have something that connects to the power grid and learns when is a good time to charge, because it’s a low-usage period so it’s cheaper. This is just one part of the car, but you can imagine a whole bunch of software that you want to put on top of it in order to connect to the universe. You need a software-defined vehicle platform in order for this, or in all the other parts of your car, to communicate with the world and provide the best user experience.

Spadoni: Infineon’s definition of a software-defined vehicle is a redefining of architecture — specifically, electrical and electronic architecture, feature allocation, and the entire topology of the vehicle, from power generation and storage to power distribution and high compute. It really means new electrical architectures, and it has consequences for the business model of every OEM and Tier 1 involved. It’s a major change to previous methodologies in the last 30 years.

Delgado: Software-defined vehicle is not just over-the-air updates. It’s truly a new methodology and a new philosophy for how to architect every ingredient of the vehicle to continue to deliver value over time, in which the value is very tightly attached to the software that delivers the user experience. Ultimately, this architecture must enable the different practices on how to deliver this new value over time. What’s very interesting is that these practices of moving to software-defined architecture has been done by many other industries already. Intel has a ton of heritage, and actually helped those industries transform. That transformation is truly what we’re observing here. It’s an incredible opportunity, and possibly a crisis if not done right.

Clocher: To apply an analogy here, the car is the new smartphone. But for us, it’s more than that. I’ve heard about the platform, yes, and it’s the major architecture evolution that we’ll see in the next decade. For us at Renesas, it will be a journey that will take time to enhance the user experience, to generate new revenue streams for the industry as it moves from decentralized to centralized classic compute with zonal architecture. We can apply all those buzzwords to a software-defined vehicle. Those platform will need big computers and heavy complex hardware solutions and this will generate evolutions, upgrades to the car during its entire lifetime, but underneath we know — at least at Renesas, and certainly at some other players and silicon vendors — that this will need a huge amount of hardware resources to manage what we have in mind to deploy this platform.

Fritz: I see software-defined vehicles a bit differently than what’s been mentioned so far. For many years, you’d have the hardware team doing their design, and the software team doing their design, and it all needs to come together. There’s an English natural language discussion about what needs to happen, and as we all know, that never really goes terribly well. In automotive that becomes an integration storm, and it is a nightmare. With the new compute requirements that have been mentioned already, that just compounds the issue. So the way I see this is that we tend, as people who have an engineering background, to dive into how we’re going to do things. We hear ‘software-defined vehicle,’ we immediately think about how to do that. There’s not a lot of thought about why it needs to be done, and what needs to happen. We jump into the ‘how’ too early, and a lot of the discussion here is exemplary of that kind of approach. When I’m looking at software-defined vehicles, I’m looking at why it’s important that the software needs to run effectively on a piece of hardware. And for that hardware, why is it important for it to actually operate properly on the software? Then you can decide how to put together a new methodology that’s going to bring those things together. In the past, it’s been called hardware/software co-design. There have been attempts many times, and as has been mentioned, other industries have made this transition. What’s unique about automotive is that it’s not just one transition that needs to happen. It’s hundreds or thousands of transitions. The ecosystem needs to be turned upside down, which we’re seeing happen right now, and you need to bring all that together. It really is a methodology where you need the tooling, you need the processes, you need the thinking, you need the organizations to change so that they can make this transition in a realistic way. SDV is a huge transition. It is a way for the automotive industry to morph into something that has longevity and can meet customer expectations, which it really hasn’t met for some time now.

Serughetti: At the end of the day, if we look starting at the top from our perspective, SDV is a means to bring and enhance the car experience for the customer. That’s the end result that the OEMs look at, but they look at it from the perspective of how that improves the OEM efficiencies, and how that creates new business opportunities. The way we look at it, and what’s important, is the impact it has on the industry, the impact on the processes, on the methodologies, on the people, on the ecosystem, on the technology. It’s really a transformation of the automotive market that is going to fundamentally change how the industry moves forward and bring the OEM into a world in which they are really looking at how they become efficient in delivering cars, how they bring new features, but at the same time, how they evolve their business as well.

SE: As you’ve all described, SDV requires many inter-dependencies, and the entire ecosystem has to have an understanding of the ‘why,’ which should then lead back to laying out the plan for how to get there. Where does the ecosystem stand today in terms of realizing SDV?

Fritz: OEMs have decided in the last few years that they’ve got to take control of their own destiny. They cannot simply take what the suppliers provide. They need a methodology — like this whole SDV concept, and any tooling necessary to provide that — to push down into their suppliers, such that, ‘Here’s what I need. If you can’t do this for me, I will go find someone that will.’ This is not the old ecosystem that bubbled up from the IP to the Tier 2s, to the Tier 1s, and then to the OEMs, which gave them limited choices to go from. So when I say, “Turn the ecosystem upside down,” that’s what is happening. But every OEM has their own ecosystem, and they’re not all in the same place. Even region-to-region, they can be very different.

Delgado: This is a critical discussion, and effectively where the industry has to eventually settle. The magnitude of the transformation of the ecosystem includes roles in the technology evolution. The silicon content is expected to quadruple over the next few years in the vehicle for defining the in-cabin experience of the end user. At the end of the day, the complexity of the transition of roles is of such magnitude that the proprietary, fragmented, and broken approaches that David articulated are really not going to enable the industry to transform at the speed it requires to deliver and meet the experiences. But more than anything, they are not going to address the actual technology changes necessary to implement and allow for this value delivery mechanism. At the end of the day, this is where Intel really believes collaboration is key, and anybody who wants to participate in this ecosystem must provide scalability — also known as top-to-bottom support of the different product lines that our OEMs and Tier 1s are having to support, versus a broken-up approach on these ever-evolving higher performance and higher performance compute needs. It has to be future-proof, because you’re going to launch the vehicle eventually. So certain hardware has to be future-proofed to a certain affordability envelope, and there has to be a strategy around that. And then the ecosystem and that collaboration must be able to deliver that aggregation. It has to be done with certain anchoring technology that will allow us to deliver that performance. Collaboration is key in the sense that these technologies cannot be single-handedly owned, developed, let alone owned, defined, developed, and integrated by OEMs in silos with a proprietary end-to-end architecture definition. There obviously will be differentiations on the actual implementation, but the technologies at large have to have a sense of reuse, particularly from other verticals that have already done software-defined transformations and then tuned in the right ways toward the automotive requirements.

Spadoni: There are probably a wide variety of implementations. At Infineon, we partner with OEMs and Tier 1s and we see different approaches. For example, General Motors has more of a modular approach that emulates what happened in in the mobile phone space. It seems that Ford has a more pragmatic approach, along with Stellantis, but all of them are facing very similar challenges in that affordability has become a big problem. There are multiple generations of implementations that are going to occur, and you’ll see a striving toward how to pay for this extra hardware. It leads to tradeoffs in implementations of other systems that have to have savings in order for them to afford these vehicles. No one ever goes into a dealership and says, ‘Give me a software-defined vehicle.’ Everyone’s looking for value, and you can see it now with volumes going down. There’s a saturation of people buying at the high level. The OEMs want to get more sales, which means they’ll have to go to the lower-cost-value vehicles, and that’s going to affect the electrical and electronic architectures and the software-defined vehicle.

Clocher: What we’re seeing I would summarize as the impact on the ecosystem. We’re moving to an OEM-centric ecosystem. One size does not fit all, meaning OEMs will have their different tastes, their different definitions of levels of integration they want to have in their software-defined vehicle — especially given more complex tasks that we all have to do, rather than the challenge we have to solve, because we’re not talking about a common umbrella of software-defined vehicle. But it really does mean different implementations and different meanings for OEM A from OEM B. I would fully agree with David and Steve that we are far from having a common understanding of, at least, the market itself. And that’s fine, because this will bring differentiation, and ultimately that’s why a customer will go to Dealership A versus Dealership B. This is what the industry wants to see — continue to differentiate, continue to add value to the ultimate product, which is the car.

Serughetti: The important point in all this is, of course, you’re breaking the model that exists today. That’s one of the big challenges. We used to have Tier 1s that were building boxes, and delivering software. This was a complete black box. When it would go to integration, there were all sorts of problems. And now you’re going to break this? The challenge for the OEM is how they do this. They want to control software, but are they equipped to do this today? We see the problems today that some of the legacy OEMs have in setting up their software organizations, the challenges of CARIAD and all such organizations that are trying to do this. It’s not easy to change those companies. Of course, the new entrants don’t have this problem because they are coming from a brand new design versus the ones that deal with legacy. So for the OEM, it’s about how to take control of the software. What does that mean in terms of the processes, in terms of agile development, digital twins, and all of these technologies everybody’s talking about? The other side is, ‘It’s all nice, this software,’ but this software runs on all the companies that are delivering hardware, and that becomes essential to it. You can have the best software, but if your hardware is not there to support performance, power, and all of those aspects, you’re not going to be successful. So the ecosystem is evolving how hardware, software, and all of this comes together. The OEM wants to be the central point. That’s what we’re talking about in terms of the process methodology aspects that are making this transition evolve.

Gajendra: Where are we in this journey? How far have we come? And where are we going? Going back to the point that David mentioned earlier about supply chain evolving and the supply chain turned upside down, five years ago, if we sat here in this sort of a panel and discussed software-defined vehicles, the conversation would have been entirely different. It would have been stuck with the traditional supply chain that we’ve seen for the last 35 or 40 years in the automotive industry. There are fundamentally two aspects here. The supply chain is evolving, and the infrastructure that we, as a community — this team, for example, and many others in the community — are trying to enable is going to be key to making our EDA partners happy. The use of virtual platforms today in the cloud to try and shift left and develop and validate some of these technologies and software wasn’t even there five years ago, so we’ve come a long way. We’ve made a lot of progress together as an industry. Yes, we have a long way to go until we actually have a truly software-defined vehicle. We can go and ask for a software-defined vehicle in the dealership. But the changes we are seeing in terms of all sorts of technology providers trying to make sure that the technology that we eventually will have in the hardware is provided in some sort of virtual form, be it fast models or whatever it is in the cloud, for the vast majority of software ecosystem in automotive this is a big change. I was at Embedded World, and the amount of virtual platforms and the demos that people were actually showing — silicon partners like we have here, Intel, Renesas, Infineon, EDA companies — pointed to a strong movement of, ‘Let’s build the infrastructure that we can build, and then provide that infrastructure to the OEMs to take it from there.’ There is a lot of work going on. Together we will make the infrastructure across the board, be it virtual platform or others, richer and more capable.

Alpert: For sure, OEMs have to control their own destiny. In the past, they would do it by differentiating maybe because they had better engine performance, or some other feature. But going forward, the differentiation is going to be their software. Whoever can make software that will provide additional value, and brand it, that’s going to be the differentiator and that’s the trend. In terms of how you get there, a shared ecosystem is important. SOAFEE is a potential way that, together with virtual platforms, you can provide a shared ecosystem for development, but still allow everyone to differentiate and plug-and-play. That’s one reason we’re working closely with Arm on trying to have a reference design specifically for this purpose. But again, we’re not saying, ‘This is the design you use. This is how you do it.’ That’s not it. The point is, let’s start somewhere, and then people can start swapping out pieces and doing different things. As long as OEMs can plug-and-play, then they can still differentiate. But they don’t have to invent everything themselves, which would be too costly.

Related Reading
Software-Defined Vehicles Ready To Roll
New approach could have big effects on cost, safety, security, and time to market.

The post Software-Defined Vehicle Momentum Grows appeared first on Semiconductor Engineering.

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.

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, Gregory Haley, and Liz Allan.

Cadence plans to acquire BETA CAE Systems for $1.24 billion, the latest volley in a race to sell multi-physics simulation and analysis across a broad set of customers with deep pockets. Cadence said the deal opens the door to structural analysis for the automotive, aerospace, industrial, and health care sectors. Under the terms of the agreement, 60% of the purchase would be paid in cash, and the remainder in stock.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service reported that North Korea was targeting cyberattacks at domestic semiconductor equipment companies, using a “living off the land” approach, in which the attacker uses minimal malware to attack common applications installed on the server. That makes it more difficult to spot an attack. According to the government, “In December last year, Company A, and in February this year, Company B, had their configuration management server and security policy server hacked, respectively, and product design drawings and facility site photos were stolen.”

As the memory market goes, so goes the broader chip industry. Last quarter, and heading into early 2024, both markets began showing signs of sustainable growth. DRAM revenue jumped 29.6% in Q4 for a total of $17.46 billion. TrendForce attributed some of that to  new efforts to stockpile chips and strategic production control. NAND flash revenue was up 24.5% in Q4, with solid growth expected to continue into the first part of this year, according to TrendForce. Revenue for the sector topped $11.4 billion in Q4, and it’s expected to grow another 20% this quarter. SSD prices rebounded in Q4, as well, up 15% to $23.1 billion. Across the chip industry, sales grew 15.2% in January compared to the same period in 2023, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). This is the largest increase since May 2022, and that trend is expected to continue throughout 2024 with double-digit growth compared to 2023.

Marvell said it is working with TSMC to develop a technology platform for the rapid deployment of analog, mixed-signal, and foundational IP. The company plans to sell both custom and commercial chiplets at 2nm.

The Dutch government is concerned that ASML, the only maker of EUV/high-NA EUV lithography equipment in the world, is considering leaving the Netherlands, according to De Telegraaf.

Quick links to more news:

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

Design and Power

AMD appears to have hit a roadblock with the U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) over a new AI chip it designed for the Chinese market, as reported by Bloomberg. U.S. officials told the company the new chip is too powerful to be sold without a license.

JEDEC released its new memory standard as a free download on its website. The JESD239 Graphics Double Data Rate SGRAM can reach speeds of 192 GB/s and improve signal-to-noise ratio.

Accellera rolled out its IEEE Std. 1800‑2023 Standard for SystemVerilog—Unified Hardware Design, Specification, and Verification Language, which is now available for free download. The decision to offer it at no cost is due to Accellera’s participation in the IEEE GET Program, which was founded in 2010 with the intention of providing  open access to some standards. Accellera also announced it had approved for release the Verilog-AMS 2023 standard, which offers enhancements to analog constructs, dynamic tolerance for event control statements, and other upgrades.

Chiplets are a hot topic these days. Six industry experts discuss chiplet standards, interoperability, and the need for highly customized AI chiplets.

Optimizing EDA hardware for the cloud can shorten the time required for large and complex simulations, but not all workloads will benefit equally, and much more can be done to improve those that can.

Flex Logix is developing InferX DSP for use with existing EFLX eFPGA from 40nm to 7nm. InferX achieves about 30 times the DSP performance/mm² than eFPGA.

The number of challenges is growing in power semiconductors, just as it is in traditional chips. This tech talk looks at integrating power semiconductors with other devices, different packaging impacts, and how these devices will degrade over time.

Vultr announced it will use NVIDIA’s HGX H100 GPU clusters to expand its Seattle-based cloud data center. The company said the expansion, which will be powered by hydroelectricity, will make the facility one of the cleanest, most power efficient data centers in the country.

Amazon Web Services will expand its presence in Saudi Arabia, announcing a new $5.3 billion infrastructure region in the country that will launch in 2026. The new region will offer developers, entrepreneurs and companies access to healthcare, education and other services.

Google is teaming up with the Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator (GESDA) to launch the XPRIZE Quantum Applications, with a $5 million in prizes for winners who can demonstrate ways to use quantum computing to solve real-world problems. Teams must submit a proposal that includes analysis of how long their algorithm would need to run before reaching a solution to a problem, such as improving drug development or designing new battery materials.

South Korea’s nepes corporation has turned to Siemens EDA for solutions in the development of advanced 3D-IC packages. The deal will see nepes incorporating several Siemens technologies, including the Calibre nmPlatform, Hyperlynx software and Xpedition Substrate Integrator software.

Siemens also formalized a partnership with Nuclei System Technology in which the pair of companies will work together on solution support for Nuclei’s RISC-V processor cores. The collaboration will allow clients to monitor CPU program execution in real-time via Nuclei’s RISC-V CPU Ips.

Keysight and ETS-Lindgren announced a breakthrough test solution for cellular devices using non-terrestrial networks. The solution is capable of measuring and validating the performance of both the transmitter and receiver of devices capable of supporting the network.

Nearly fifty companies raised $800 million for power electronics, data center interconnects, and more last month.

Manufacturing and Test

SEMI Europe issued a position statement to the European Union, warning against additional export controls or rules on foreign investment. SEMI argued that free trade partnerships are a better method for ensuring security than bans or restrictions.

Revenues for the top five wafer fab equipment manufacturers declined 1% YoY in 2023 to $93.5 billion, according to Counterpoint Research. The drop was attributed to weak spending on memory, inventory adjustments, and low demand in consumer electronics. The tide is changing, though.

Bruker closed two acquisitions. One involved Chemspeed Technologies, a Switzerland-based provider of automated laboratory R&D and QC workflow solutions. The second involved Phasefocus, an image processing company based in the UK.

A Swedish company, SCALINQ, released a commercially available large-scale packaging solution capable of controlling quantum devices with hundreds of qubits.

Solid Sands, a provider of testing and qualification technology for compilers and libraries, will partner with California-based Emprog to establish a representative presence in the U.S.

Automotive

Tesla halted production at its Brandenberg, Germany, gigafactory after an environmental activist group attacked an electricity pylon, reports the Guardian.

Stellantis will invest €5.6 billion (~$6.1B) in South America to support more than 40 new products, decarbonization technologies, and business opportunities.

The amount of data being collected, processed, and stored in vehicles is exploding, and so is the value of that data. That raises questions that are still not fully answered about how that data will be used, by whom, and how it will be secured.

While industry experts expect many benefits of V2X technology, technological and social hurdles to cross. But there is progress.

Infineon released its next-gen silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFET trench technology with 650V and 1,200V options improving stored energies and charges by up to 20%, ideal for power semiconductor applications such as photovoltaics, energy storage, DC EV charging, motor drives, and industrial power supplies.

Hyundai selected Ansys to supply structural simulation solutions for vehicle body system analysis, providing end-to-end, predictively accurate capabilities for virtual performance validation.

ION Mobility used the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio for styling, mechanical engineering, and electric battery pack development for its ION M1-S electric motorbike.

Ethernovia sampled a family of automotive PHY transceivers that scale from 10 Gbps to 1 Gbps over 15 meters of automotive cabling.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved Waymo’s plan to expand its driverless robotaxi services to Los Angeles and other cities near San Francisco, reports Reuters.

By 2027, next-gen battery EVs (BEVs) will on average be cheaper to produce than comparable gas-powered cars, reports Gartner. But the firm noted that average cost of EV accident repair will rise by 30%, and 15% of EV companies founded in the last decade will be acquired or bankrupt.

University of California San Diego (UCSD) researchers developed a cathode material for solid-state lithium-sulfur batteries that is electrically conductive and structurally healable.

ION Storage Systems announced its anodeless and compressionless solid-state batteries (SSBs) achieved 125 cycles with under 5% capacity degradation in performance. ION has been working with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to test its SSB before expanding into markets such as EVs, energy storage, consumer electronics, and aerospace.

Security

Advanced process nodes and higher silicon densities are heightening DRAM’s susceptibility to Rowhammer attacks, as reduced cell spacing significantly decreases the hammer count needed for bit flips. A multi-layered, system-level approach is crucial to DRAM protection.

Researchers at Bar-Ilan University and Rafael Defense Systems proposed an analytical electromagnetic model for IC shielding against hardware attacks.

Keysight acquired the IP of Firmalyzer, whose firmware security analysis technology will be integrated into the Keysight IoT Security Assessment and Automotive Security solutions, providing analysis into what is happening inside the IoT device itself.

Flex Logix joined the Intel Foundry U.S. Military Aerospace Government (USMAG) Alliance, ensuring U.S. defense industrial base and government customers have access to the latest technology, enabling successful designs for mission critical programs.

The EU Council presidency and European Parliament reached a provisional agreement on a Cyber Solidarity Act and an amendment to the Cybersecurity Act (CSA) concerning managed security services.

The EU Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) and partners updated the compendium on elections cybersecurity in response to issues such as AI deep fakes, hacktivists-for-hire, the sophistication of threat actors, and the current geopolitical context.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) launched efforts to help secure the open source software ecosystem; updated its Public Safety Communications and Cyber Resiliency Toolkit; and issued other alerts including security advisories for VMware, Apple, and Cisco.

Pervasive Computing and AI

Johns Hopkins University engineers used natural language prompts and ChatGPT4 to produce detailed instructions to build a spiking neural network (SNN) chip. The neuromorphic accelerators could power real-time machine intelligence for next-gen embodied systems like autonomous vehicles and robots.

The global AI hardware market size was estimated at $53.71 billion in 2023, and is expected to reach about $473.53 billion by 2033, at a compound annual growth rate of 24.5%, reports Precedence Research.

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researchers and partners built compact chips capable of converting light into microwaves, which could improve navigation, communication, and radar systems.

Fig. 1: NIST researchers test a chip for converting light into microwave signals. Pictured is the chip, which is the fluorescent panel that looks like two tiny vinyl records. The gold box to the left of the chip is the semiconductor laser that emits light to the chip. Credit: K. Palubicki/NIST

The Indian government is investing 103 billion rupees ($1.25B) in AI projects, including computing infrastructure and large language models (LLMs).

Infineon is collaborating with Qt Group, bringing Qt’s graphics framework to Infineon’s graphics-enabled TRAVEO T2G cluster MCUs to optimize graphical user interface (GUI) development.

Keysight leveraged fourth-generation AMD EPYC CPUs to develop a new benchmarking methodology to test mobile and 5G private network performance. The method uses realistic traffic generation to uncover a CPU’s true power and scalability while observing bandwidth requirements.

The AI industry is pushing a nuclear power revival, reports NBC, and Amazon bought a nuclear-powered data center in Pennsylvania from Talen Energy for $650 million, according to WNEP.

Bank of America was awarded 644 patents in 2023 for technology including information security, AI, machine learning (ML), online and mobile banking, payments, data analytics, and augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR).

Mistral AI’s large language model, Mistral Large, became available in the Snowflake Data Cloud for customers to securely harness generative AI with their enterprise data.

China’s smartphone unit sales declined 7% year over year in the first six weeks of 2024, with Apple declining 24%, reports Counterpoint.

Shipments of LCD TV panels are expected to reach 55.8 million units in Q1 2024, a 5.3% quarter over quarter increase, reports TrendForce. And an estimated 5.8 billion LED lamps and luminaires are expected to reach the end of their lifespan in 2024, triggering a wave of secondary replacements and boosting total LED lighting demand to 13.4 billion units.

Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) researchers mined high-purity gold from electrical and electronic waste.

The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and the University of Utah launched a National Data Platform pilot project, aimed at making access to and use of scientific data open and equitable.

Events

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

Upcoming webinars are here.

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.

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.

Is a painting of a giant burger a sign or a mural? The answer to that question could determine whether Steve Howard can keep some half-finished burger art on the side of his restaurant or be forced to take it down.

Howard is the owner of The Cozy Inn in Salina, Kansas—a restaurant known for the sliders it serves with a generous helping of aromatic onions.

Back in November, Howard commissioned a local artist to decorate the side of The Cozy Inn with a large burger mural, some smaller slider-shaped UFOs, and a caption reading, "Don't fear the smell! The fun is inside!!"

Within a few days, a Salina official was telling Howard to halt the paint job. The city reasoned that because Howard's wall art would depict a product his restaurant also sold, it was not a mural (which the city doesn't regulate), but rather a sign (for which it has extensive rules).

Under Salina's sign code, Howard's business could only post signs totaling 62 square feet in size and he'd already used up 52 of those feet with existing signage. His planned burger wall art would take up 528 square feet. Downtown businesses' signs also need approval from the city's Design Review Board.

Since being told to stop work on his burger painting, Howard has been going back and forth with the city over whether he'll be able to complete the work. Earlier this month, the city sent him a letter telling him to hold off on the painting while it "reviewed" its signage regulations.

Rather than wait, Howard filed a federal lawsuit arguing that because the legality of his mural turns on the particular images it depicts, his free speech rights are being violated. If he had commissioned wall art of car parts or some other product his business didn't sell, he'd be well within his rights to proceed with the mural.

"In our view, this is a clear content-based restriction on speech," says Sam MacRoberts of the Kansas Justice Institute, which is representing Howard.

The U.S. Supreme Court theoretically put limits on this kind of sign regulation with its decision in the 2015 case Reed v. Gilbert, which struck down an Arizona town's regulations on temporary signs that applied stricter rules to nonpolitical signage.

"The town definitely was drawing lines based on what messages the signs conveyed," says Betsy Sanz, an attorney with the Institute for Justice (which is not affiliated with the Kansas Justice Institute). "The court said that was not allowed."

Nevertheless, cities post-Reed continue to enforce restrictions on business murals that include images of what the business sells.

The Institute for Justice has litigated multiple mural cases, pre- and post-Reed. It is currently representing business owner Sean Young in a First Amendment lawsuit against Conway, New Hampshire, which has told him a donut mural painted by local art students on his bakery violates the town's sign code.

Despite the likely unconstitutionality of many towns' sign restrictions, business owners are often reluctant to challenge them.

That means businesses will often just paint over their murals or change them so that they're no longer showing products the business sells.

In 2012, The Washington Post reported on a smoke shop in Arlington, Virginia (a hotspot of mural censorship), that changed its mural of a man smoking a cigar to a man holding a whale to comply with county regulations.

Sanz urges the Supreme Court to take up the issue of towns' regulation of business murals, saying, "There are still government bodies that wish to control speech. The Supreme Court is going to need to take signs up again to help clarify things for individuals."

The post Town Says Burger Joint's Mural Can't Show Any Burgers appeared first on Reason.com.

Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the impact of leading edge technologies such as generative AI in data centers, AR/VR, and security architectures for connected devices, with Michael Kurniawan, business strategy manager at Accenture; Kaushal Vora, senior director and head of business acceleration and ecosystem at Renesas Electronics; Paul Karazuba, vice president of marketing at Expedera; and Chowdary Yanamadala, technology strategist at Arm. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. Panelists were chosen by GSA’s EMTECH Interest Group. To view part one of this discussion, click here.

L-R: Accenture’s Kurniawan; Renesas’ Vora; Expedera’s Karazuba; Arm’s Yanamadala.

SE: In the past, a lot of data center applications were for things like enterprise resource planning (ERP), and those were 10- or 15-year cycles. Cycles now are 1 or 2 years at most. With ChatGPT, that’s about six months. How do companies plan for this today?

Kurniawan: In the past, businesses were very focused on just the technology. But technology is everywhere today. ERP is there to support the business initiatives, and there is a very intimate relationship between technology and business at this point. So virtually all businesses are technology businesses. We advise clients before implementing their technologies to think first about, ‘What are your business initiatives? What’s the business strategy? What’s the business imperative for where you want to go? What’s your vision?’ And then, once you understand that and get alignment from the leaders, you can think about the technology. You kind of jump back and forth, because those are really two sides of the same coin. You cannot separate them anymore. And your vision encompasses everything you want to achieve in the future while providing room for flexibility and testing out the technology plan you want to put in place to see how that supports your business vision. With every challenge comes opportunity. Our job as a consultant is really to be able to see what’s happening out there, continuously scanning the market, and trying to get ahead of the curve to advise clients.

Yanamadala: The rapid evolution of advanced technologies like generative AI can present challenges to data centers due to the short technology cycles and demanding workloads. Some of the key challenges with advanced workloads include fluctuating resource needs, because they can demand bursts of high compute. That means static resource allocation will be inefficient in handling these demands. Additionally, the growing demand for heterogenous computing can also present additional challenges in deploying a flexible compute infrastructure. Data centers are adding flexibility through adoption of containerization and virtualization. Adopting hardware-agnostic software frameworks like TensorFlow and PyTorch also can help to facilitate switching between different computing architectures. So can the development of efficient hardware and specialized AI accelerators.

SE: A lot of technology advancements are incremental, but if you get enough of these incremental improvements they can be combined in ways most people never imagined. We’ve seen systems shrink from mainframes to PCs to smart phones, and now computing is happening just about everywhere. Are we at the on the cusp of moving beyond a box, which we’ve been tethered to since the start of computing, and particularly with AR/VR.

Vora: I find it fascinating that somebody could wear a pair of glasses, get immersed in that world, and get used to it. From a user experience perspective, it seems like an extreme shift. Although I do see some play in certain verticals, it’s not clear there will be mass consumerization or adoption of this technology.

Kurniawan: Right now, generative AI is getting a lot of attention. ChatGPT captured the attention of hundreds of millions of people in 60 days. That says something. You input a prompt and you get a response back. ChatGPT is super-intuitive. It’s a technology with potential for many killer use cases. AR/VR is promising technology with upside potential, but there’s still work that needs to be done to tie that technology to the use case. Virtual reality gaming is number one, for sure. But the path to leveraging that technology to enhance how we operate other stuff still needs more clarity. That said, we recently published a white paper talking about the build-outs around the globe, driven by the combination of public incentivies and private investments. Everywhere around the world, everybody wants to build up their manufacturing facilities. We conducted interviews with semiconductor experts, and touched on AR/VR when we asked what they did during COVID when the whole world shut down. Is AR/VR like a hammer looking for nails? The overall response we got was pretty positive. They said that AR/VR probably will be tremendously useful at some future date. But they like where the technologies are going. For example, there are constraints like heat dissipation and the size of the headset, but the belief is the technology will evolve. As it matures to become more user-centric, you might think about using an AR/VR device to control the operations of the equipment in a fab. But there is work needed from a value perspective — connectivity and processing, for example.

Karazuba: AR/VR in the past has largely been a victim of its own hype cycle. There’s a lot of promises people have made. We’ve spent a little bit of time with AR/VR folks. There’s certainly an acknowledgement that whatever success the Apple AR/VR headset has will largely set the tone for the next half decade for what the AR/VR market is. These folks are not undeterred by that. Are we at a point today where you can walk around all day with mixed reality? No. With a home gaming system, being tied to the wall is probably a small price to pay for the constant AC power and the performance advantages that will provide. This is going to take some time. The value proposition is there, but the timing may not be right today. We saw this with the watch and wearables. Now, everybody has one of these. But it took five to seven years before it really took off.

Vora: We’ve worn watches for decades, so it’s not something new. It’s just that what we wear now is different. But with AR/VR, we’ve never done that before. How do you suddenly expect massive change like that?

Karazuba: But most of us are wearing eyeglasses. If you have a form factor that is a version of what we have now, where information is just simply overlaid on what we’re seeing, it’s not that far of a jump for mixed reality or augmented reality. However, with virtual reality, I find it hard to believe that people are going to walk into a conference room with a bunch of other people and put a headset on.

Yanamadala: We’ve seen devices and sensors deployed practically everywhere. Platforms that offer high-performance computing, along with secure, power-efficient hardware and connectivity are available today, and they will make this trend possible. But untethered or ambient consumer experiences in the mass market will have their challenges. We will need to invest in substantial infrastructure to enable technology to operate invisibly in the background. So while consumer-facing technology deployments increasingly become untethered, the compute and connectivity infrastructure will still require connections for power and bandwidth.

SE: People have been sounding the alarm for hardware security for years, but with limited success. What’s changed today is that we have many more connected devices and more valuable data. Is the chip industry starting to take this seriously? Or is the problem now so immense and pervasive that anything we do is just going to be a drop in the bucket?

Yanamada: Security is fundamental from the chip level, and five years ago we saw an opportunity to proactively improve the quality of chip security. IoT was in its early stages, and each chip vendor had varied and fragmented approaches to security. They also rarely approached an independent evaluation lab to check the robustness of their security implementation. But with increasing connectivity and data becoming more valuable, hackers were paying close attention, and governments were considering what action to take to protect consumers. That’s why in 2019, we launched PSA Certified – to rally the ecosystem to be proactive with security best practices. It’s critically important that chip vendors, software platforms, OEMs, and CSPs can deploy and access standardized Root of Trust services. Security is complicated. You need the whole value chain to work together.

Vora: Security architectures, at least on the hardware side, have come a long way. We pretty much now have a semiconductor TPM-like [Trusted Platform Module] capability, with security capabilities built into even small microcontrollers. They have cryptographic engines, randomizers, and all sorts of security elements built in. The fundamental challenge with security is that just putting some security features on a chip and providing all the technology pieces won’t solve the security challenge. Security is more of a system challenge and a policy challenge. In many cases, people have to think about it within the context of the entire network. And then, it’s only as strong as the weakest link in the network. That piece of security is going to grow in complexity as we start seeing more complex use cases with AI coming into play with IoT. On the other side, though, as data handling of AI moves closer to the edge, we will start seeing more local inferencing and local data being worked on without the need to mindlessly transport data across layers of networks and across the cloud. We’re going to see some lower risk and improvements from a data-in-flight perspective, because of a lot of more localization of intelligence and compute happening at different layers of the edge. As we start moving more to the edge, AI starts getting more of a hold there. But as a whole, security will remain a challenge. The fundamental challenges with security have not changed. It’s just the context and the systems in which we will have to apply them are different.

Karazuba: The semiconductor industry is finally starting to understand the true nature of what security breaches could mean with the type of data we’re handling. Security is a day zero responsibility of anyone building a product, whether that product is a chip or a device, and security responsibilities proliferate across the entire lifecycle of the of any device, from the person who is architecting the chip, to the person designing the smartphone, to the carrier. I would argue that carrier responsibilities for security go as far as the stopping those robo calls that we all get, and the spam calls and phishing calls. The internet service providers have a responsibility to stop the phishing e-mails. That’s all part of security. Obviously, with banks and financial institutions, their security is generally pretty good. But it stretches the entire way, and in the security world, the weakest link is always the security profile of your device. We’re getting better. We always could be better. But I am more encouraged now than I’ve been at any point since I really started looking at security of devices. I’m more encouraged by the way chips are being designed, deployed, manufactured, and delivered to customers.

Kurniawan: There’s some certification for IoT devices before those are sent into the market to make sure there is some security standard they adhere to. But two key words I mentioned before, collaboration and flexibility, are applicable to security, as well. Collaboration involves where you see the rest of the system, including other components in the technology set, going to evolve in the future. And flexibility is required, because security is a moving target. It needs to evolve because as you upgrade your system, your software, a vulnerability will move, as well. You need flexibility and security-minded thinking infused into your chip design.

Related Reading
Preparing For An AI-Driven Future In Chips (part 1 of above roundtable)
Designs need to be flexible enough to handle an onslaught of continuous and rapid changes, but secure enough to protect data.

The post Broad Impact From Accelerating Tech Cycles appeared first on Semiconductor Engineering.

Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the impact of leading edge technologies such as generative AI in data centers, AR/VR, and security architectures for connected devices, with Michael Kurniawan, business strategy manager at Accenture; Kaushal Vora, senior director and head of business acceleration and ecosystem at Renesas Electronics; Paul Karazuba, vice president of marketing at Expedera; and Chowdary Yanamadala, technology strategist at Arm. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. Panelists were chosen by GSA’s EMTECH Interest Group. To view part one of this discussion, click here.

L-R: Accenture’s Kurniawan; Renesas’ Vora; Expedera’s Karazuba; Arm’s Yanamadala.

SE: In the past, a lot of data center applications were for things like enterprise resource planning (ERP), and those were 10- or 15-year cycles. Cycles now are 1 or 2 years at most. With ChatGPT, that’s about six months. How do companies plan for this today?

Kurniawan: In the past, businesses were very focused on just the technology. But technology is everywhere today. ERP is there to support the business initiatives, and there is a very intimate relationship between technology and business at this point. So virtually all businesses are technology businesses. We advise clients before implementing their technologies to think first about, ‘What are your business initiatives? What’s the business strategy? What’s the business imperative for where you want to go? What’s your vision?’ And then, once you understand that and get alignment from the leaders, you can think about the technology. You kind of jump back and forth, because those are really two sides of the same coin. You cannot separate them anymore. And your vision encompasses everything you want to achieve in the future while providing room for flexibility and testing out the technology plan you want to put in place to see how that supports your business vision. With every challenge comes opportunity. Our job as a consultant is really to be able to see what’s happening out there, continuously scanning the market, and trying to get ahead of the curve to advise clients.

Yanamadala: The rapid evolution of advanced technologies like generative AI can present challenges to data centers due to the short technology cycles and demanding workloads. Some of the key challenges with advanced workloads include fluctuating resource needs, because they can demand bursts of high compute. That means static resource allocation will be inefficient in handling these demands. Additionally, the growing demand for heterogenous computing can also present additional challenges in deploying a flexible compute infrastructure. Data centers are adding flexibility through adoption of containerization and virtualization. Adopting hardware-agnostic software frameworks like TensorFlow and PyTorch also can help to facilitate switching between different computing architectures. So can the development of efficient hardware and specialized AI accelerators.

SE: A lot of technology advancements are incremental, but if you get enough of these incremental improvements they can be combined in ways most people never imagined. We’ve seen systems shrink from mainframes to PCs to smart phones, and now computing is happening just about everywhere. Are we at the on the cusp of moving beyond a box, which we’ve been tethered to since the start of computing, and particularly with AR/VR.

Vora: I find it fascinating that somebody could wear a pair of glasses, get immersed in that world, and get used to it. From a user experience perspective, it seems like an extreme shift. Although I do see some play in certain verticals, it’s not clear there will be mass consumerization or adoption of this technology.

Kurniawan: Right now, generative AI is getting a lot of attention. ChatGPT captured the attention of hundreds of millions of people in 60 days. That says something. You input a prompt and you get a response back. ChatGPT is super-intuitive. It’s a technology with potential for many killer use cases. AR/VR is promising technology with upside potential, but there’s still work that needs to be done to tie that technology to the use case. Virtual reality gaming is number one, for sure. But the path to leveraging that technology to enhance how we operate other stuff still needs more clarity. That said, we recently published a white paper talking about the build-outs around the globe, driven by the combination of public incentivies and private investments. Everywhere around the world, everybody wants to build up their manufacturing facilities. We conducted interviews with semiconductor experts, and touched on AR/VR when we asked what they did during COVID when the whole world shut down. Is AR/VR like a hammer looking for nails? The overall response we got was pretty positive. They said that AR/VR probably will be tremendously useful at some future date. But they like where the technologies are going. For example, there are constraints like heat dissipation and the size of the headset, but the belief is the technology will evolve. As it matures to become more user-centric, you might think about using an AR/VR device to control the operations of the equipment in a fab. But there is work needed from a value perspective — connectivity and processing, for example.

Karazuba: AR/VR in the past has largely been a victim of its own hype cycle. There’s a lot of promises people have made. We’ve spent a little bit of time with AR/VR folks. There’s certainly an acknowledgement that whatever success the Apple AR/VR headset has will largely set the tone for the next half decade for what the AR/VR market is. These folks are not undeterred by that. Are we at a point today where you can walk around all day with mixed reality? No. With a home gaming system, being tied to the wall is probably a small price to pay for the constant AC power and the performance advantages that will provide. This is going to take some time. The value proposition is there, but the timing may not be right today. We saw this with the watch and wearables. Now, everybody has one of these. But it took five to seven years before it really took off.

Vora: We’ve worn watches for decades, so it’s not something new. It’s just that what we wear now is different. But with AR/VR, we’ve never done that before. How do you suddenly expect massive change like that?

Karazuba: But most of us are wearing eyeglasses. If you have a form factor that is a version of what we have now, where information is just simply overlaid on what we’re seeing, it’s not that far of a jump for mixed reality or augmented reality. However, with virtual reality, I find it hard to believe that people are going to walk into a conference room with a bunch of other people and put a headset on.

Yanamadala: We’ve seen devices and sensors deployed practically everywhere. Platforms that offer high-performance computing, along with secure, power-efficient hardware and connectivity are available today, and they will make this trend possible. But untethered or ambient consumer experiences in the mass market will have their challenges. We will need to invest in substantial infrastructure to enable technology to operate invisibly in the background. So while consumer-facing technology deployments increasingly become untethered, the compute and connectivity infrastructure will still require connections for power and bandwidth.

SE: People have been sounding the alarm for hardware security for years, but with limited success. What’s changed today is that we have many more connected devices and more valuable data. Is the chip industry starting to take this seriously? Or is the problem now so immense and pervasive that anything we do is just going to be a drop in the bucket?

Yanamada: Security is fundamental from the chip level, and five years ago we saw an opportunity to proactively improve the quality of chip security. IoT was in its early stages, and each chip vendor had varied and fragmented approaches to security. They also rarely approached an independent evaluation lab to check the robustness of their security implementation. But with increasing connectivity and data becoming more valuable, hackers were paying close attention, and governments were considering what action to take to protect consumers. That’s why in 2019, we launched PSA Certified – to rally the ecosystem to be proactive with security best practices. It’s critically important that chip vendors, software platforms, OEMs, and CSPs can deploy and access standardized Root of Trust services. Security is complicated. You need the whole value chain to work together.

Vora: Security architectures, at least on the hardware side, have come a long way. We pretty much now have a semiconductor TPM-like [Trusted Platform Module] capability, with security capabilities built into even small microcontrollers. They have cryptographic engines, randomizers, and all sorts of security elements built in. The fundamental challenge with security is that just putting some security features on a chip and providing all the technology pieces won’t solve the security challenge. Security is more of a system challenge and a policy challenge. In many cases, people have to think about it within the context of the entire network. And then, it’s only as strong as the weakest link in the network. That piece of security is going to grow in complexity as we start seeing more complex use cases with AI coming into play with IoT. On the other side, though, as data handling of AI moves closer to the edge, we will start seeing more local inferencing and local data being worked on without the need to mindlessly transport data across layers of networks and across the cloud. We’re going to see some lower risk and improvements from a data-in-flight perspective, because of a lot of more localization of intelligence and compute happening at different layers of the edge. As we start moving more to the edge, AI starts getting more of a hold there. But as a whole, security will remain a challenge. The fundamental challenges with security have not changed. It’s just the context and the systems in which we will have to apply them are different.

Karazuba: The semiconductor industry is finally starting to understand the true nature of what security breaches could mean with the type of data we’re handling. Security is a day zero responsibility of anyone building a product, whether that product is a chip or a device, and security responsibilities proliferate across the entire lifecycle of the of any device, from the person who is architecting the chip, to the person designing the smartphone, to the carrier. I would argue that carrier responsibilities for security go as far as the stopping those robo calls that we all get, and the spam calls and phishing calls. The internet service providers have a responsibility to stop the phishing e-mails. That’s all part of security. Obviously, with banks and financial institutions, their security is generally pretty good. But it stretches the entire way, and in the security world, the weakest link is always the security profile of your device. We’re getting better. We always could be better. But I am more encouraged now than I’ve been at any point since I really started looking at security of devices. I’m more encouraged by the way chips are being designed, deployed, manufactured, and delivered to customers.

Kurniawan: There’s some certification for IoT devices before those are sent into the market to make sure there is some security standard they adhere to. But two key words I mentioned before, collaboration and flexibility, are applicable to security, as well. Collaboration involves where you see the rest of the system, including other components in the technology set, going to evolve in the future. And flexibility is required, because security is a moving target. It needs to evolve because as you upgrade your system, your software, a vulnerability will move, as well. You need flexibility and security-minded thinking infused into your chip design.

Related Reading
Preparing For An AI-Driven Future In Chips (part 1 of above roundtable)
Designs need to be flexible enough to handle an onslaught of continuous and rapid changes, but secure enough to protect data.

The post Broad Impact For Accelerating Tech Cycles appeared first on Semiconductor Engineering.

Chiplets are gaining renewed attention in the automotive market, where increasing electrification and intense competition are forcing companies to accelerate their design and production schedules.

Electrification has lit a fire under some of the biggest and best-known carmakers, which are struggling to remain competitive in the face of very short market windows and constantly changing requirements. Unlike in the past, when carmakers typically ran on five- to seven-year design cycles, the latest technology in vehicles today may well be considered dated within several years. And if they cannot keep up, there is a whole new crop of startups producing cheap vehicles with the ability to update or change out features as quickly as a software update.

But software has speed, security, and reliability limitations, and being able to customize the hardware is where many automakers are now putting their efforts. This is where chiplets fit in, and the focus now is on how to build enough interoperability across large ecosystems to make this a plug-and-play market. The key factors to enable automotive chiplet interoperability include standardization, interconnect technologies, communication protocols, power and thermal management, security, testing, and ecosystem collaboration.

Similar to non-automotive applications at the board level, many design efforts are focusing on a die-to-die approach, which is driving a number of novel design considerations and tradeoffs. At the chip level, the interconnects between various processors, chips, memory, and I/O are becoming more complex due to increased design performance requirements, spurring a flurry of standards activities. Different interconnect and interface types have been proposed to serve varying purposes, while emerging chiplet technologies for dedicated functions — processors, memories, and I/Os, to name a few — are changing the approach to chip design.

“There is a realization by automotive OEMs that to control their own destiny, they’re going to have to control their own SoCs,” said David Fritz, vice president of virtual and hybrid systems at Siemens EDA. “However, they don’t understand how far along EDA has come since they were in college in 1982. Also, they believe they need to go to the latest process node, where a mask set is going to cost $100 million. They can’t afford that. They also don’t have access to talent because the talent pool is fairly small. With all that together comes the realization by the OEMs that to control their destiny, they need a technology that’s developed by others, but which can be combined however needed to have a unique differentiated product they are confident is future-proof for at least a few model years. Then it becomes economically viable. The only thing that fits the bill is chiplets.”

Chiplets can be optimized for specific functions, which can help automakers meet reliability, safety, security requirements with technology that has been proven across multiple vehicle designs. In addition, they can shorten time to market and ultimately reduce the cost of different features and functions.

Demand for chips has been on the rise for the past decade. According to Allied Market Research, global automotive chip demand will grow from $49.8 billion in 2021 to $121.3 billion by 2031. That growth will attract even more automotive chip innovation and investment, and chiplets are expected to be a big beneficiary.

But the marketplace for chiplets will take time to mature, and it will likely roll out in phases.  Initially, a vendor will provide different flavors of proprietary dies. Then, partners will work together to supply chiplets to support each other, as has already happened with some vendors. The final stage will be universally interoperable chiplets, as supported by UCIe or some other interconnect scheme.

Getting to the final stage will be the hardest, and it will require significant changes. To ensure interoperability, large enough portions of the automotive ecosystem and supply chain must come together, including hardware and software developers, foundries, OSATs, and material and equipment suppliers.

Momentum is building
On the plus side, not all of this is starting from scratch. At the board level, modules and sub-systems always have used onboard chip-to-chip interfaces, and they will continue to do so. Various chip and IP providers, including Cadence, Diode, Microchip, NXP, Renesas, Rambus, Infineon, Arm, and Synopsys, provide off-the-shelf interface chips or IP to create the interface silicon.

The Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) Consortium is the driving force behind the die-to-die, open interconnect standard. The group released its latest UCIe 1.1 specification in August 2023. Board members include Alibaba, AMD, Arm, ASE, Google Cloud, Intel, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Samsung, and others. Industry partners are showing widespread support. AIB and Bunch of Wires (BoW) also have been proposed. In addition, Arm just released its own Chiplet System Architecture, along with an updated AMBA spec to standardize protocols for chiplets.

“Chiplets are already here, driven by necessity,” said Arif Khan, senior product marketing group director for design IP at Cadence. “The growing processor and SoC sizes are hitting the reticle limit and the diseconomies of scale. Incremental gains from process technology advances are lower than rising cost per transistor and design. The advances in packaging technology (2.5D/3D) and interface standardization at a die-to-die level, such as UCIe, will facilitate chiplet development.”

Nearly all of the chiplets used today are developed in-house by big chipmakers such as Intel, AMD, and Marvell, because they can tightly control the characteristics and behavior of those chiplets. But there is work underway at every level to open this market to more players. When that happens, smaller companies can begin capitalizing on what the high-profile trailblazers have accomplished so far, and innovating around those developments.

“Many of us believe the dream of having an off-the-shelf, interoperable chiplet portfolio will likely take years before becoming a reality,” said Guillaume Boillet, senior director strategic marketing at Arteris, adding that interoperability will emerge from groups of partners who are addressing the risk of incomplete specifications.

This also is raising the attractiveness of FPGAs and eFPGAs, which can provide a level of customization and updates for hardware in the field. “Chiplets are a real thing,” said Geoff Tate, CEO of Flex Logix. “Right now, a company building two or more chiplets can operate much more economically than a company building near-reticle-size die with almost no yield. Chiplet standardization still appears to be far away. Even UCIe is not a fixed standard yet. Not all agree on UCIe, bare die testing, and who owns the problem when the integrated package doesn’t work, etc. We do have some customers who use or are evaluating eFPGA for interfaces where standards are in flux like UCIe. They can implement silicon now and use the eFPGA to conform to standards changes later.”

There are other efforts supporting chiplets, as well, although for somewhat different reasons — notably, the rising cost of device scaling and the need to incorporate more features into chips, which are reticle-constrained at the most advanced nodes. But those efforts also pave the way for chiplets in automotive, and there is strong industry backing to make this all work. For example, under the sponsorship of SEMI, ASME, and three IEEE Societies, the new Heterogeneous Integration Roadmap (HIR) looks at various microelectronics design, materials, and packaging issues to come up with a roadmap for the semiconductor industry. Their current focus includes 2.5D, 3D-ICs, wafer-level packaging, integrated photonics, MEMS and sensors, and system-in-package (SiP), aerospace, automotive, and more.

At the recent Heterogeneous Integration Global Summit 2023, representatives from AMD, Applied Materials, ASE, Lam Research, MediaTek, Micron, Onto Innovation, TSMC, and others demonstrated strong support for chiplets. Another group that supports chiplets is the Chiplet Design Exchange (CDX) working group , which is part of the Open Domain Specific Architecture (ODSA) and the Open Compute Project Foundation (OCP). The Chiplet Design Exchange (CDX) charter focuses on the various characteristics of chiplet and chiplet integration, including electrical, mechanical, and thermal design exchange standards of the 2.5D stacked, and 3D Integrated Circuits (3D-ICs). Its representatives include Ansys, Applied Materials, Arm, Ayar Labs, Broadcom, Cadence, Intel, Macom, Marvell, Microsemi, NXP, Siemens EDA, Synopsys, and others.

“The things that automotive companies want in terms of what each chiplet does in terms of functionality is still in an upheaval mode,” Siemens’ Fritz noted. “One extreme has these problems, the other extreme has those problems. This is the sweet spot. This is what’s needed. And these are the types of companies that can go off and do that sort of work, and then you could put them together. Then this interoperability thing is not a big deal. The OEM can make it too complex by saying, ‘I have to handle that whole spectrum of possibilities.’ The alternative is that they could say, ‘It’s just like a high speed PCIe. If I want to communicate from one to the other, I already know how to do that. I’ve got drivers that are running my operating system. That would solve an awful lot of problems, and that’s where I believe it’s going to end up.”

One path to universal chiplet development?

Moving forward, chiplets are a focal point for both the automotive and chip industries, and that will involve everything from chiplet IP to memory interconnects and customization options and limitations.

For example, Renesas Electronics announced in November 2023 plans for its next-generation SoCs and MCUs. The company is targeting all major applications across the automotive digital domain, including advance information about its fifth-generation R-Car SoC for high-performance applications with advanced in-package chiplet integration technology, which is meant to provide automotive engineers greater flexibility to customize their designs.

Renesas noted that if more AI performance is required in Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), engineers will have the capability to integrate AI accelerators into a single chip. The company said this roadmap comes after years of collaboration and discussions with Tier 1 and OEM customers, which have been clamoring for a way to accelerate development without compromising quality, including designing and verifying the software even before the hardware is available.

“Due to the ever increasing needs to increase compute on demand, and the increasing need for higher levels of autonomy in the cars of tomorrow, we see challenges in monolithic solutions scaling and providing the performance needs of the market in the upcoming years,” said Vasanth Waran, senior director for SoC Business & Strategies at Renesas. “Chiplets allows for the compute solutions to scale above and beyond the needs of the market.”

Renesas announced plans to create a chiplet-based product family specifically targeted at the automotive market starting in 2025.

Standard interfaces allow for SoC customization
It is not entirely clear how much overlap there will be between standard processors, which is where most chiplets are used today, and chiplets developed for automotive applications. But the underlying technologies and developments certainly will build off each other as this technology shifts into new markets.

“Whether it is an AI accelerator or ADAS automotive application, customers need standard interface IP blocks,” noted David Ridgeway, senior product manager, IP accelerated solutions group at Synopsys. “It is important to provide fully verified IP subsystems around their IP customization requirements to support the subsystem components used in the customers’ SoCs. When I say customization, you might not realize how customizable IP has become over the course of the last 10 to 20 years, on the PHY side as well as the controller side. For example, PCI Express has gone from PCIe Gen 3 to Gen 4 to Gen 5 and now Gen 6. The controller can be configured to support multiple bifurcation modes of smaller link widths, including one x16, two x8, or four x4. Our subsystem IP team works with customers to ensure all the customization requirements are met. For AI applications, signal and power integrity is extremely important to meet their performance requirements. Almost all our customers are seeking to push the envelope to achieve the highest memory bandwidth speeds possible so that their TPU can process many more transactions per second. Whenever the applications are cloud computing or artificial intelligence, customers want the fastest response rate possible.”

Fig 1: IP blocks including processor, digital, PHY, and verification help developers implement the entire SoC. Source: Synopsys

Optimizing PPA serves the ultimate goal of increasing efficiency, and this makes chiplets particularly attractive in automotive applications. When UCIe matures, it is expected to improve overall performance exponentially. For example, UCIe can deliver a shoreline bandwidth of 28 to 224 GB/s/mm in a standard package, and 165 to 1317 GB/s/mm in an advanced package. This represents a performance improvement of 20- to 100-fold. Bringing latency down from 20ns to 2ns represents a 10-fold improvement. Around 10 times greater power efficiency, at 0.5 pJ/b (standard package) and 0.25 pJ/b (advanced package), is another plus. The key is shortening the interface distance whenever possible.

To optimize chiplet designs, the UCIe Consortium provides some suggestions:

• Careful planning consideration of architectural cut-lines (i.e. chiplet boundaries), optimizing for power, latency, silicon area, and IP reuse. For example, customizing one chiplet that needs a leading-edge process node while re-using other chiplets on older nodes may impact cost and time.
• Thermal and mechanical packaging constraints need to be planned out for package thermal envelopes, hot spots, chiplet placements and I/O routing and breakouts.
• Process nodes need to be carefully selected, particularly in the context of the associated power delivery scheme.
• Test strategy for chiplets and packaged/assembled parts need to be developed up front to ensure silicon issues are caught at the chiplet-level testing phase rather than after they are assembled into a package.

Conclusion
The idea of standardizing die-to-die interfaces is catching on quickly but the path to get there will take time, effort, and a lot of collaboration among companies that rarely talk with each other. Building a vehicle takes one determine carmaker. Building a vehicle with chiplets requires an entire ecosystem that includes the developers, foundries, OSATs, and material and equipment suppliers to work together.

Automotive OEMs are experts at putting systems together and at finding innovative ways to cut costs. But it remains to seen how quickly and effectively they can build and leverage an ecosystem of interoperable chiplets to shrink design cycles, improve customization, and adapt to a world in which the leading edge technology may be outdated by the time it is fully designed, tested, and available to consumers.

— Ann Mutschler contributed to this report.

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The post Why Chiplets Are So Critical In Automotive appeared first on Semiconductor Engineering.