$3B for packaging program; DARPA’s 3DHI; AI yield improvement tool; OpenAI CEO reinstated; EV consumer sentiment; SiC market projections; RISC-V security model; AI edge devices; ESD discharge; ML in failure analysis.
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, and processes; power delivery and thermal management; photonics and connectors; a chiplet ecosystem; and co-design for test, repair, security, interoperability, and reliability. NAPMP is one of four CHIPS for America R&D programs, along with National Semiconductor Technology Center (NSTC), Manufacturing USA institute(s), and CHIPS R&D Metrology.
“Within a decade, we envision that America will both manufacture and package the world’s most sophisticated chips,” said Laurie Locascio, director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). “This means both onshoring a high-volume advanced packaging industry that is self-sustaining, profitable and environmentally sound, and conducting the research to accelerate new packaging approaches to market.”
OpenAI fired founder and CEO Sam Altman, then reinstated him, and sacked three of the board members who dismissed him. The move follows a warning from 700 of the 770 employees at the company who said they would join Altman at Microsoft if he was not reinstated at OpenAI. Microsoft owns 49% of OpenAI, and agreed to hire Altman after his dismissal.
Japan’s Resonac announced plans for an advanced packaging and materials R&D facility in Silicon Valley. The company plans to begin operations in 2025.
Quick links to more news:
Design and Power
Manufacturing and Test
Automotive and Batteries
Security
Pervasive Computing and AI
In-Depth Reports
Events
Arm extended its Cortex-M family for AIoT applications, allowing tiny low-power devices to handle compute-intensive ML inferencing. The new Cortex-M52 is based on Arm’s general-purpose vector extension, called Helium.
Thalia added full support for Siemens AFS Simulator in its Technology Analyzer, Circuit Porting, and Design Enabler tools.
Tenstorrent plans to develop CPU IP for AI edge devices targeting Rapidus‘ upcoming 2nm process technology.
STMicroelectronics introduced a digital current, voltage, and power monitor with high-precision input channels and support for the MIPI I3C advanced bus interface.
Qualcomm debuted its Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 mobile platform.
MediaTek expanded its Wi-Fi 7 portfolio with a dual-band enterprise access point and a stand-alone client solution.
Omnivision uncorked an image signal processor (ISP) for reusable and disposable endoscopes.
Advantest launched a new yield-improvement tool that uses artificial intelligence (AI) software to find root causes of yield loss and analyze test results. Called Advantest Cloud Solutions Engineering AI Studio for Yield Improvement (ACS EASY), the tool is for device engineers and OSATs and will be available soon on the Advantest Cloud Solutions’ website.
In Germany, Tresky, budatec, Berliner Nanotest und Design, and Bond Pulse formed the International Semiconductor Alliance to help mutual customers through the manufacturing process.
Bruker Optics acquired a majority stake of MIRO, a Swiss company that makes quantum cascade laser (QCL)-based gas analyzers. MIRO MGA instruments track low concentrations of HONO (HNO2), NO2, NH3 and SO2 molecules in clean room air for the semiconductor industry.
The probe card market will grow to $3.9 billion by 2029 from a $2.5 billion in 2023, a CAGR of 6.5% from 2023 to 2029, estimates Valuates Reports.
The market of wide-bandgap (WBG) semiconductors — mostly silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN) — for EVs and EV supply equipment (EVSE) will increase to $37.1 billion by 2032, projects Guidehouse Insights.
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) closed entries on its Next-Generation Microelectronics Manufacturing (NGMM) program. The next milestone is Proposers Day on Nov. 28. The goal of NGMM is to achieve national-level, breakthroughs comprising novel design and engineering driven by three-dimensional heterogeneous integration (3DHI).
Fig. 1: An illustration of a 3D heterogeneous integration (3DHI) chip. Source: DARPA
Raytheon, an RTX company, has a four-year contract from DARPA to add high-power-density GaN transistors to radio frequency sensors. The high-power GaN will have 16 times higher output power versus the traditional GaN and won’t increase operating temperature.
A quarter of U.S. adults said they would be “very likely” or “likely” to buy a fully electric vehicle the next time they buy a car, but cost, lack of charging stations, cost to replace or repair the battery, range anxiety, and the impact of cold weather on range remain primary barriers, reports AAA.
Infineon introduced a new topside-cooled high-voltage superjunction MOSFET for onboard charging and DC-DC converters. The new packaging enables energy-efficient utilization in less space, and it minimizes electromagnetic interference due to lower parasitics.
Sweden-based Northvolt announced a sodium-ion battery that is validated for energy density of more than 160 watt-hours per kilogram. “It is based on a hard carbon anode and a Prussian White-based cathode, and is free from lithium, nickel, cobalt and graphite.”
Also in Sweden, dockworkers are refusing to offload Tesla vehicles at any of the country’s ports in support of mechanics who are already striking over the company’s failure to accept collective bargaining agreements, reports Reuters.
Cruise co-founder and CEO Kyle Vogt resigned. In a post on X, he did not cite the company’s recent recall of its robotaxi fleet as a reason.
Hyundai opened an innovation center in Singapore that elevates collaboration between people, robotics, and AI technology. “Digital twin Meta-Factory technology will ensure ultra-rapid responses to changing customer demands and production requirements.”
BYD launched a premium brand, Sea Lion, and an SUV, Sea Lion 07, to compete with Tesla’s Shanghai-made Model Y, reports the South China Morning Post.
Cadillac announced its 2025 OPTIQ will act as the entry point for the company’s EV lineup in North America, slotting in below the luxury compact LYRIQ.
The silicon carbide (SiC) device market is projected to reach $11 billion to $14 billion in 2030, growing at about 26% compound annual growth rate. Given SiC’s suitability for inverters, 70% of demand is expected to come from EVs and China is projected to drive around 40% of the overall demand.
Siemens Digital Industries Software announced Red Bull Ford Powertrains leveraged its Xcelerator portfolio to develop the next generation hybrid ICE/electric driven Power Unit (PU) for the Formula 1 2026 racing season.
Joby Aviation won a $9.8 million California Competes grant to expand manufacturing of its electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft.
Renesas released a guide for noise countermeasures for capacitative touch sensors.
A secure instruction and data-level information flow tracking model for RISC-V was proposed by researchers at University of North Carolina.
AT&T will create a cybersecurity joint venture with WillJam Ventures. “By bringing together network-embedded security and global managed security service provider (MSSP) capabilities, business customers will have stronger protections and security postures end-to-end.”
EU member states agreed on a proposed amendment of its cybersecurity act of 2019 to enable the future adoption of European certification schemes for managed security services.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and other agencies released a joint advisory about LockBit 3.0 ransomware affiliates exploiting the Citrix Bleed vulnerability, affecting Citrix’s NetScaler web application delivery control and NetScaler Gateway appliances. CISA also released a mitigation guide for the healthcare sector and issued other alerts.
Keysight and MediaTek developed a way to test interoperability between 5G new radio and 5G reduced capability, ensuring that a base station can establish and maintain a link with a user device.
Renesas expanded its 32-bit MCU line with a high-precision analog front end aimed at industrial applications, where fast and accurate analog signal measurements are critical.
Broadcom completed its acquisition of VMware, initially announced last May with a price of $61 billion. Broadcom will invest in VMware Cloud Foundation and VMware will offer a catalog of services to modernize and optimize cloud and edge environments.
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, along with Xavier Niel and Rodolphe Saadé, launched Kyutai, an AI open-science lab, aiming to tackle the challenges of modern AI by developing large multimodal models and inventing new algorithms using Scaleway’s supercomputer.
NVIDIA announced Dell, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Lenovo will integrate its Spectrum-X Ethernet networking technologies for AI into their server lineups to help enterprise customers speed up generative AI workloads. NVIDIA also partnered with Genentech “to transform the discovery and development of new medicines.”
The rise of 5G private networks will boost the RF Front-End market to $320 million by 2028 from US$160 million in 2022, showing a 10% CAGR, reports Yole. GaAs technology dominates for small cells below 1W, showing an 8% CAGR.
Europe’s smartphone shipments dropped 11% year over year in Q3 2023, with Samsung hitting its lowest Q3 shipments since 2011 and Apple taking a higher market share despite its lowest Q3 shipments since 2014. HONOR was back in the top five.
Researchers from MIT, the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, and elsewhere developed a technique that enables AI on edge devices to keep learning over time.
University of Oxford researchers warned that when large language models (LLMs) are treated as knowledge-bases to generate information in response to questions, users are vulnerable to regurgitated false information that was present in the training data, and to hallucinations or false information spontaneously generated by the LLM that was not present in the training data.
University of Cambridge researchers created an artificial system that models a simplified version of the brain, then applied physical constraints that led the system to self-organize and develop features of brains of complex organisms.
Infineon expanded its CoolSiC 1200 V and 2000 V MOSFET module families. The proven 62mm device is designed in half-bridge topology and based on the M1H silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFET technology, enabling the use of SiC for mid-power applications from 250 kW. The company also released an LED credit card, providing visual feedback when the card is held up to the point-of-service (POS) terminal for a payment transaction, using a security controller with certified software integrated into Coil-on-Module (CoM) chip modules.
Fig. 2: Infineon’s LED Credit Card. Source: Infineon
New stories by the Semiconductor Engineering team this week:
Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:
| Event | Date | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Ansys IDEAS 2023 Digital Forum | Nov 30 | Online |
| IEEE IEDM 2023 | Dec 9 – 13 | San Francisco, CA |
| ITF@IEDM | Dec 10 | San Francisco, CA |
| CHIPS R&D Chiplets Interface Technical Standards Workshop | Dec 12 – 13 | Rockville, MD and Virtual |
| SEMICON Japan | Dec 13 | Tokyo, Japan |
| CHIPS R&D Digital Twin Technical Standards Workshop | Dec 14 – 15 | Rockville, MD and Virtual |
| ISS 2024: Industry Strategy Symposium | Jan 7 – 10 | Half Moon Bay, CA |
| SPIE Photonics West | Jan 27 – Feb 1 | San Francisco, CA |
| All Upcoming Events | ||
Upcoming webinars are here.
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
Leave a Reply