Startup Funding: November 2023


November was a banner month for quantum computing startups, with two raising rounds of $100 million for their superconducting and silicon spin qubit technology. Another significant round went to a company developing photonic-based systems. Several other companies drew funding, including one applying quantum sensors to semiconductor inspection. Sizeable funding also went to an autonomous tran... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Susan Rambo, Gregory Haley, and Liz Allan Amkor plans to invest about $2 billion in a new advanced packaging and test facility in Peoria, Arizona. When finished, it will employ about 2,000 people and will be the largest outsourced advanced packaging facility in the U.S. The first phase of the construction is expected to be completed and operational within two to three years. Synopsys p... » read more

3D-ICs May Be The Least-Cost Option


When 2.5D and 3D packaging were first conceived, the general consensus was that only the largest semiconductor houses would be able to afford them, but development costs are quickly coming under control. In some cases, these advanced packages actually may turn out to be the lowest-cost options. With stacked die [1], each die is considered to be a complete functional block or sub-system. In t... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Jesse Allen, Susan Rambo, and Liz Allan The U.S. government will invest about $3 billion for the National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program (NAPMP), including an advanced packaging piloting facility to help U.S. manufacturers adopt new technology and workforce training programs. It also will provide funding for projects concentrating on materials and substrates; equipment, tools, ... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Jesse Allen, Karen Heyman, and Liz Allan Japan's Rapidus and the University of Tokyo are teaming up with France's Leti to meet its previously announced mass production goal of 2nm chips by 2027, and chips in the 1nm range in the 2030s. Rapidus was formed in 2022 with the support of eight Japanese companies — Sony, Kioxia, Denso, NEC, NTT, SoftBank, Toyota, and Mitsubishi's banking arm, ... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Jesse Allen, Gregory Haley, and Liz Allan Bosch, Infineon, and NXP were cleared in Germany to each acquire 10% of the European Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (ESMC), established by TSMC, solidifying the supply chain against future shortages, particularly for automotive chips. “ESMC intends to build and operate another large semiconductor factory in Dresden, in which the three Europ... » read more

Startup Funding: October 2023


Investors are betting heavily on data center technology, with October funding going to companies developing data processing units (DPUs) to accelerate a variety of tasks, a near-memory distributed dataflow architecture for AI, and liquid cooling technology. Much of this is linked to the build-out of the edge, closer to the source of the data than the cloud but not as compute-intensive. Other ... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Susan Rambo, Gregory Haley, Jesse Allen, and Liz Allan President Biden issued an executive order on the “Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence.” It says entities need to report large-scale computing clusters and the total computing power available, including “any model that was trained using a quantity of computing power greater than 1,026 inte... » read more

What Will That Chip Cost?


In the past, analysts, consultants, and many other experts attempted to estimate the cost of a new chip implemented in the latest process technology. They concluded that by the 3nm node, only a few companies would be able to afford them — and by the time they got into the angstrom range, probably nobody would. Much has changed over the past few process nodes. Increasing numbers of startups... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Susan Rambo, Karen Heyman, and Liz Allan The Biden-Harris administration designated 31 Tech Hubs across the U.S. this week, focused on industries including autonomous systems, quantum computing, biotechnology, precision medicine, clean energy advancement, and semiconductor manufacturing. The Department of Commerce (DOC) also launched its second Tech Hubs Notice of Funding Opportunity. ... » read more

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