Chip Industry Week In Review

By Jesse Allen, Gregory Haley, and Liz Allan.

Cadence introduced an AI-based thermal stress and analysis platform aimed at 2.5D and 3D-ICs, and cooling for PCBs and electronic assemblies. The company also debuted a HW/SW accelerated digital twin solution for multi-physics system design and analysis, combining GPU-resident computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solvers with dedicated GPU hardware to provide throughput per GPU of up to 1,000 CPU cores. Suddenly, multi-physics has become a very active market.

CHIPS for America is investing $200 million in a new Manufacturing USA Institute, focusing on digital twins for semiconductor manufacturing, packaging and assembly, and the validation of such digital twins in a physical prototyping facility. Another $300 million in R&D funding is expected for establishing and accelerating domestic capacity for advanced packaging substrates and substrate materials.

Revenues for the global semiconductor industry declined 8.8% in 2023 due to a slowdown in enterprise and consumer spending, according to a new report from Counterpoint Research. Intel reclaimed the top revenue spot from Samsung.

Intel, SK Hynix, and NTT will collaborate on a program to develop cutting-edge chips using optical technologies, supported by $300 million in subsidies from Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, according to Nikkei Asia.  

Rochester Institute of Technology and University of Minnesota researchers designed a microfluidic IC to perform complex operations through artificial neural network computations on data stored in DNA.

Quick links to more news:

Design and Power
Manufacturing and Test
Automotive
Security
Pervasive Computing
In-Depth Reports
Events

Design and Power

Moving data more quickly is critical for new technologies. Three new acquisitions this week:

• Quantum technology company Infleqtion acquired two integrated silicon photonics companies, SiNoptiq and Morton Photonics, to support plans for chip-scale integration of lasers and photonic and atomic systems.
• Photonic quantum computer company ORCA Computing acquired the integrated photonics division and photonics-related assets of GXC, a cellular private network company. ORCA plans to bring to market new hybrid photonic materials.
• SynSense, a maker of ultra-low-power neuromorphic processing ASICs and IP blocks, acquired iniVation, a developer of neuromorphic vision systems for real-time applications, to create an end-to-end sensing and processing company. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Alphawave Semi will embed proteanTecs’ on-chip Agents to bring lifecycle health and performance monitoring to its custom silicon and chiplet-enabled SoCs. Alphawave also collaborated with Teledyne LeCroy on PCIe 7.0 signal generation, transmission, and measurement technologies, and teamed up with Nubis Communications to drive PCIe 6.0 over an optical link at 64GT/s per lane.

Keysight expanded its SSA-X Signal Source Analyzer portfolio with three new higher frequency models (26.5 GHz, 44 GHz, and 54 GHz); introduced a new series of oscilloscope probes to cover bandwidths up to 52 GHz. The company also gained approval for 3GPP Release 16 5G NR single and multiple precoding matrix indicator test cases for 16 and 32 element transmitters, and it extended the number of its test cases available for the Skylo non-terrestrial network (NTN) certification program to 21.

Marvell used Keysight‘s AresONE-M 800GE test platform to validate the performance of its next-gen data center Ethernet switches, processing 51.2 Tbps of traffic across 64 x 800GE links.

Rain AI selected Arteris’ FlexNoC 5 physically aware network-on-chip (NoC) IP to support the design of an advanced mesh network topology for its AI accelerator family that utilizes digital in-memory compute.

JEDEC published DDR5 Clock Driver Definition (DDR5CKD01).

Manufacturing and Test

SK Hynix will develop an advanced packaging plant in Indiana to specialize in stacked SDRAM to create high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, according to the Financial Times.

EC Electronics Group acquired Netherlands-based Liad Electronics, which specializes in printed circuit board assemblies.

Applied Materials and MIT will create an open-access research and development site for advanced nano-fabrication equipment and capabilities at MIT.nano, the institute’s center for nanoscale science and engineering.

The compound semiconductor substrate market is expected to reach $3.3 billion by 2029 with a 17% CAGR, reports Yole.

Bruker announced the acquisition of Swiss firm Chemspeed, a laboratory R&D and software automation company.

IPC and the Institute of American Apprenticeship (IAA) to offer grants to companies offering electronics manufacturing apprenticeships. One offers $375 per apprentice for a first-time program. The other offers $500 per apprentice for related technical instruction, with limited seats available through June 2024.

Arizona State University and Northern Arizona University are joining forces on research projects and education related to semiconductor manufacturing.

Security

Cycuity published a CWE guide, focusing on the most important common weaknesses for hardware security.

Row hammer is a well-publicized target for cyberattacks on DRAM, and there have been attempts to stop these attacks in DDR4 and DDR5, but with mixed results. Here’s why this has become such a serious problem, why it passes virtually unnoticed by error correction technology, and how to stop it with no impact on performance or power.

The U.S. Department of Commerce  proposed regulations requiring U.S. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) providers of cloud products to “verify the identity of their foreign customers,” and to submit a report when a foreign person “transacts with that provider or reseller to train a large AI model with potential capabilities that could be used in malicious cyberenabled activity.”

Demand for IC reliability is pushing formal verification into new applications, where complex interactions and security risks are difficult to solve with other tools.

Infineon received industry-first ISO/SAE 21434 cybersecurity certification for its SLI37 automotive security controller family, facilitating customer integration into applications such as secured devices for vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released a practice guide to help major industries such as finance and health care implement Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.3 and accomplish the required network monitoring and auditing.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) published guidance on security design improvements for small office/home office (SOHO) router device manufacturers as a part of its Secure by Design (SbD) series. And CISA issued other alerts and added a vulnerability concerning improper authentication on multiple Apple products.

Automotive

Volvo will no longer fund Polestar, but the two companies will continue to collaborate on R&D and manufacturing. Geely will provide operational and financial support for Polestar going forward.

Honda selected Infineon as its semiconductor partner and the companies are partnering to discuss supply stability, transfer mutual knowledge, and collaborate on projects to accelerate time to market. 

KIOXIA announced sampling of universal flash storage (UFS) Ver. 4.0 embedded flash memory devices for next-gen automotive applications, including telematics, infotainment, and advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) 4, with +100% for sequential read and about +40% for sequential write to take advantage of 5G.

Peugeot offered ChatGPT across all its passenger and commercial vehicles. The GenAI can answer questions, suggest landmarks, guide drivers, and interact with passengers.

India’s Ather Energy expanded its adoption of Siemens’ Xcelerator portfolio to reduce its design and engineering cycle for electric mobility solutions.

The robotic vehicle processor market is predicted to reach US$1 billion in 2034, at an estimated CAGR of 48% from 2023 to 2034. The U.S. and China lead the robo-taxi and robot truck market, and Europe follows with robot shuttles.

Daimler Truck, NextEra Energy Resources, and BlackRock proposed a joint venture to design, develop, install, and operate a nationwide charging network for medium- and heavy-duty battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in the U.S.

Chemists at Brookhaven National Laboratory added cesium nitrate to the electrolyte that separates a battery’s anode and cathode, improving the charging rate of lithium metal batteries while maintaining a long cycle life.

Pervasive Computing

Renesas launched a new series of MCUs for industrial, building, and home applications on the Arm Cortex-M85 processor, with enhanced peripherals for IoT edge and gateway devices, providing up to 4X performance boost for DSP and ML implementations over the Cortex-M7 core.

INTERCHIP achieved 3x faster verification for its next-gen clocking oscillator with Siemens’ Analog FastSPICE platform and Symphony platform mixed-signal EDA technology.

Fig. 1: INTERCHIP’s oscillator. Source: Siemens

Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems produced a photovoltaic (PV) module using perovskite silicon tandem solar cells from Oxford PV, with a record efficiency of 25% and an output of 421 watts on an area of 1.68 square meters.

Infineon, OMS, and pmdtechnologies developed a hybrid Time of Flight (hToF) camera solution to enable enhanced depth sensing and 3D scene understanding for next-gen smart consumer robots.

Fig. 2: Hybrid ToF camera. Source: Infineon

Infineon also partnered with Framework on an upgradeable, customizable, repairable laptop with advanced USB-C connectivity.

The Apple Vision Pro hit shelves, garnering a ton of consumer reviews. Its sharp displays and full M2 processor offer a futuristic type of computing, reports CNBC.

U.S. smartphone shipments grew 8% year over year in Q4 2023, reports Counterpoint. Apple’s market share grew to 64%, the highest since Q4 2020, but Android’s share declined. Meanwhile, India’s smartphone market stayed flat. Samsung had the largest share at 18% and Apple took the most revenue. 5G smartphone share went over 52%, growing 66% YoY.

Deloitte and Fast Company collaborated on a survey of the world’s most innovative companies and found they plan to invest between 3% and 15% of revenue in innovation in 2024, in areas such as in-house R&D (75%) and expanding AI capabilities (44%).

Nanyang Technological University (NTU) researchers created a stretchable electrode that mimics the properties of spider silk and wraps securely around tissues and organs to deliver electrical stimulation or record electrical signals.

University of Cambridge researchers used ML to teach a robotic sensor to read braille text about twice as fast as humans, at 315 words per minute with close to 90% accuracy.

In-Depth Reports

More new stories by the Semiconductor Engineering team.

Automotive, Security & Pervasive Computing:

• Special Report: Noise mitigation strategies evolve as image sensors play a greater role in ADAS and other critical markets.
• Semiconductors play a crucial role in the development and functionality of humanoid robots, and robotics is pushing well beyond traditional factory automation.
• Expert Discussion: The impact of AI on semiconductor architectures, tools, and security.

Events

Find upcoming chip industry events here:

Upcoming webinars are here, including topics such as chiplet design, UCIe 1.1 IP and system level verification changes, sign off on high-speed PCB designs, and digital twins.

Further Reading and Newsletters

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