Chip Industry Week In Review

By Adam Kovac, Karen Heyman, and Liz Allan.

Europe’s semiconductor footprint is growing in areas that previously had little association with chips. Silicon Box plans to build a panel-level foundry in northern Italy, funded in part by the Italian government. The deal is worth around €3.2 billion ($3.6B).

In addition, imec will establish a specialized 300mm chip technology pilot line in Malaga, Spain, in partnership with the Andalusian regional government.

Cadence and Arm introduced a scalable automotive chiplet architecture with interface interoperability, aimed at speeding innovation in software-defined vehicles.

The EU Parliament approved the Artificial Intelligence Act, banning certain AI applications that threaten citizens’ rights, including biometric categorization systems. It also adopted its Cyber Resilience Act to boost security of digital products, such as identify management systems, password managers, and connected devices.

Quick links to more news:

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

Design and Power

The Indian government is teaming up with several leading firms to shore up its burgeoning semiconductor industry, reports the Economic Times. Siemens is working with the government’s IT industry to create new EDA tools, while Synopsys is partnering with several schools to develop talent. Cadence, meanwhile, has provided 350 engineering schools with a suite of EDA tools. In addition, Tessolve partnered with Keysight to beef up testing capabilities at its Bangalore, India-based HSIO lab. Tessolve hopes the agreement will speed up its ability to bring high-speed designs to market and offer customers improved performance and product quality.

Arteris expanded its Ncore cache-coherent network-on-chip IP. The latest version works with multiple processor IPs, including RISC-V, and includes multi-protocol support. 

Samsung appears ready to ramp up its production of HBM chips. Reuters reported the tech giant has purchased mass reflow molded underfill chipmaking equipment as part of an effort to catch up with the competition.

Cerebras announced the latest version of its Condor Galaxy AI supercomputer, powered by the company’s new wafer-scale chips, each containing 4 trillion transistors. The company says performance will double using the same amount of power.

Keysight joined with Q-CTRL to accelerate the development of quantum processors.

Zutacore will provide liquid cooling technology to support NVIDIA’s H100 and H200 GPUs. Meanwhile, Accelsius partnered with UT Austin’s Texas Advanced Computing Center, which will be the first supercomputing facility to use two-phase direct-to-chip liquid cooling with NVIDIA’s AI chips.

Siemens will provide digital tools from its Xcelerator line of software to students at the University of Maine.

Top Stories in the  Low Power-High Performance newsletter this week:

• Special Report: The Rising Price Of Power In Chips: More data requires faster processing, which leads to a whole bunch of problems — not all of which are obvious or even solvable.
• Backside Power Delivery Adds New Thermal Concerns: Lack of shielding, routing issues, and new mechanical stresses could have broad impact on standard cell design.
• Photonics: The Former And Future Solution: experts discuss where photonics is in the hype cycle and its secure role in data centers.

Manufacturing and Test

Revenue of the top 10 foundries rose 7.9% to $111.54 billion in 2023, according to TrendForce.

SRC announced the Semiconductor Manufacturing and Research for Twins (SMART) USA Institute to develop digital twins for research in semiconductor and advanced packaging manufacturing.

NIST plans an open competition for a new Manufacturing USA institute focused on using AI to improve the resilience of U.S. manufacturing, with likely $70 million in federal funds over five years, along with an equal or greater contribution from other sources.

Toppan Holdings plans to build a semiconductor package substrate plant in Singapore and expects to begin operations at the end of 2026. Nikkei Asia estimates the investment at ¥50 billion.

Britain pledged £35 million ($45 million) to an overall €1.3 billion ($1.4 billion) EU research and innovation fund aimed at semiconductor technology development.

Yole Group released a technology, process & cost analysis/report on the HiSilicon Kirin 9000s SoC in Huawei Mate 60 Pro, which contains the first SMIC 7nm (N+2) for a consumer product.

The Oregon Legislature approved $10 million for semiconductor education at Oregon universities.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) invested $5.2 million in 13 projects that will tap into its national laboratories’ high performance computing resources to help industry partners improve material performance, advance manufacturing processes, and reduce industrial emissions. Winners include Siemens Energy and Flawless Photonics. The DoE also awarded the University at Buffalo with $2.8 million to advance semiconductor technology to help modernize the nation’s power grid.

This week’s  Test, Measurement and Analytics newsletter features these top stories:

• DTCO/STCO Create Path For Faster Yield Ramps: A holistic approach can improve reliability and reduce defects, but it has to start early in the design cycle.
• AI/ML Challenges In Test And Metrology: New tools are changing the game, but it will take time and collaboration for them to achieve their full potential.
• Strategies For Detecting Sources Of Silent Data Corruption: Manufacturing screening needs improvement, but that won’t solve all problems. SDCs will require tools and methodologies that are much broader and deeper.

Automotive and Batteries

Arm announced an automotive enhanced (AE) portfolio, including a Neoverse CPU, two Armv9 A-class CPUs, an R-class CPU, and an image signal processor (ISP). The AE processors feature Armv9’s AI, security, and virtualization capabilities to speed up automotive development cycles, while enabling AI-accelerated autonomous and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) workloads.

Arm also detailed its automotive virtual platform partnerships, including one with Siemens’ for pre-silicon simulation of Arm Cortex-A720AE for SDVs, and its automotive collaborations on full stack software solutions.

Infineon introduced 2000V CoolSiC MOSFETs with a higher DC link voltage so power can be increased without increasing the current. The chips are aimed at EV charging. The company also launched 200V OptiMOS MOSFETs with improved conduction losses and switching behavior, reducing electromagnetic interference, targeted at micro-EVs, battery management systems, and servers.

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, a manufacturer of unmanned aircraft and surveillance and radar imaging systems, adopted Siemens Simcenter STAR-CCM+ for computational fluid dynamics (CFD).

The Biden-Harris Administration released a strategy to deploy zero-emission infrastructure for freight trucks.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recalled certain Honda models due to inadvertent activation of the automatic emergency braking system.

The South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport announced certain Hyundai and Kia EVs are voluntarily recalled due to software errors in the integrated charging control unit (ICCU), reports the Korea Economic Daily.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) researchers showed a light-duty passenger EV can be wirelessly charged at 100kW with 96% efficiency, using polyphase electromagnetic coupling coils with rotating magnetic fields.

China’s NIO and CATL are collaborating on long-life batteries and power swapping.

University of Tokyo researchers developed a physics-based predictive tool to speed up battery and superconductor research.

Security

President Biden’s 2025 budget proposal seeks to invest $65 million in the Department of Commerce (DoC) to safeguard and promote AI; $50 million in the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to continue its work identifying and mitigating AI risk; $8.8 million in the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), and $3 million in the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to carry out work on AI.

Tokyo Institute of Technology and the University of Electro-Communications researchers proposed a hardware/software design to suppress power side-channel attacks in IoT devices.

Georgia Tech researchers proposed a framework implementing a privacy homomorphism that creates sensor data directly in an encoded format to increase the security of remote IoT devices.

DARPA launched efforts to help defend against manipulated media and deep fakes.

Thistle Technologies integrated Infineon’s OPTIGA TrustM security controller with its Verified Boot technology, targeting critical industries such as health care, automotive, and manufacturing.

CISPA and partners in a German research project aim to understand the implications of generative AI for cybersecurity.

The Biden-Harris Administration released a secure software development attestation form for software producers who work with government.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) published guidance to help businesses securely integrate their traditional on-premises enterprise networks with cloud-based solutions, and issued other alerts.

Pervasive Computing and AI

SUNY Poly and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) partnered to develop an open federated XG network to connect smart live IoT equipment and facilitate an intelligent agility network for education tools such as HD live broadcasts, VR/AR teaching, and holographic classrooms.

Global smartphone production rose 12.1%, ending an eight-quarter slump, though the annual total dropped 2.1%, reports TrendForce. Apple‘s production increased 58.6%, driven by demand for iPhone 15. The 2024 spotlight is on AI applications.

Samsung’s Galaxy Plus series, with 12GB of DRAM, is performing well, highlighting the increasing importance of higher specs to provide on-device experiences such as running a large language model (LLM), reports Counterpoint.

The US satellite direct-to-device market is predicted to grow from $430 million in 2023 to $6.5 billion by 2027 at a CAGR of 36%, reports TrendForce.

Researchers from Epoch, MIT FutureTech, and Northeastern University analyzed the total algorithmic progress in language models.

NTU Singapore researchers developed ultra-thin semiconductor fibers that can be woven into fabrics for smart wearable electronics.

UC San Diego and UC Riverside researchers used superconducting loops to demonstrate associative memory, which allows the human brain to remember the relationship between two unrelated items, helping advance neuromorphic computing.

In medical technology news:

• ORNL researchers and the National Cancer Institute developed an AI tool for cancer surveillance, offering more accurate almost real-time reporting.
• ETH Zurich and St Hedwig Hospital researchers developed an algorithm to detect heart defects in newborns.
• EPFL researchers developed a haptic device capable of reproducing the softness of materials like a beating heart.

In-Depth Reports

And more new stories by the Semiconductor Engineering team:

• Security Is Critical For Commercial Chiplets: Expert discussion on data management, trust, traceability, and provenance
• Changes And Challenges In Auto MCUs: Video on why automakers are shifting their emphasis from custom hardware to differentiating in software.

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