GF’s 10 year contract; DoD awards $238M; Intel’s glass substrates; China’s materials ban kicks in; UK PM backtracks on EVs; breaches in AI accelerators; quantum cybersecurity threats; SiTime’s oscillator.
By Jesse Allen, Karen Heyman, and Liz Allan
The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) announced $238 million in awards toward establishing eight regional innovation hubs under the CHIPS and Science Act. The hubs aim to accelerate hardware prototyping and “lab-to-fab” transition of semiconductor technologies for secure edge/IoT, 5G/6G, AI hardware, quantum technology, electromagnetic warfare, and more.
The DoD also awarded GlobalFoundries a 10-year contract with a total spending ceiling of $3.1 billion for securely manufactured, U.S.-made semiconductors for use across critical aerospace and defense applications.
Intel announced one of the industry’s first glass substrates for next-generation advanced packaging, planned for the latter part of this decade. The substrates will initially be introduced for applications and workloads requiring larger form factor packages and higher speed capabilities.
At its annual innovation event, Intel also announced:
Processor revenue is projected to reach US$242 billion by 2028, growing at a CAGR of 8% from 2022 to 2028, according to Yole. In addition, the RF GaN market is poised to surpass the US$2 billion mark by 2028 likely fueled by 5G telecom infrastructure. Yole also predicts the InP and GaAs markets are poised for substantial growth, driven by the expanding applications of AI across various industries.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will adopt 11 Department of Energy (DOE) categorical exclusions to expedite the review of semiconductor manufacturing projects funded through the CHIPS Act, and the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) will adopt the electric vehicle (EV) charging categorical exclusion to accelerate environmental reviews on certain land where there is existing development.
The European Chips Act is now in effect. The goal is to double the EU’s current global semiconductor market share to 20% by 2030.
Design and Power
Manufacturing and Test
Automotive and Batteries
Security
Pervasive Computing
Events
Further Reading And Newsletters
Kalray debuted a data processing unit (DPU) optimized for AI and data intensive processing.
SambaNova Systems uncorked a chip for generative AI that can serve a 5 trillion parameter model.
Revenue for the top 10 global IC design powerhouses in Q2 2023 reached US $38.1 billion, marking a 12.5% quarterly increase, according to Trendforce. NVIDIA dethroned Qualcomm as the world’s premier IC design house, while the remainder of the leaderboard remained stable.
Cadence made several announcements:
Flex Logix announced the availability of reconfigurable block RAM with ECC and parity options for its Generation 2.4 EFLX eFPGA.
Keysight introduced a compact, four-channel vector signal generator (VSG) with an embedded reflectometer that is capable of signal generation up to 8.5 GHz with 960 MHz of modulation bandwidth per channel.
Synopsys demonstrated end-to-end 64 GT/s interoperability between its IP for PCIe 6.0 and Intel’s PCIe 6.0-enabled test chip.
The University of Maryland opened the National Quantum Laboratory (QLab) research center in partnership with IonQ.
Asia Times examined the competing efforts of China and India to develop a 1,000-qubit quantum computer.
China’s exports of germanium and gallium products in August plunged after Beijing implemented new export controls on the two chipmaking metals, according to Reuters. Some Chinese companies have since obtained export licenses after Beijing set new conditions.
Camtek will acquire FormFactor‘s FRT Metrology Business to leverage advanced packaging and silicon carbide technologies that require new inspection and metrology steps in semiconductor manufacturing processes.
Plasma-Therm, a manufacturer of plasma-process equipment, acquired Thin Film Equipment, a supplier of sputtering and evaporation process equipment and high purity materials for thin film applications.
indie Semiconductor, a provider of Autotech solutions, acquired EXASLOS AG, a Swiss photonics company.
The SEMI Semiconductor Climate Consortium (SCC) issued its first report on the semiconductor ecosystem’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions profile.
Semiconductor manufacturers worldwide are projected to increase 200mm fab capacity by 14% from 2023 through 2026, adding 12 new 200mm volume fabs (excluding EPI) as the industry reaches a record high of more than 7.7 million wafers per month (wpm), according to SEMI.
Amkor was added to the PHLX Semiconductor Sector Index (SOX), effective Sept. 18.
Synopsys said its collaboration with Intel achieved end-to-end 64 GT/s interoperability between Synopsys’ PCIe 6.0 IP and Intel’s PCIe 6.0-enabled test chip.
U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced the deadline for selling new gas and diesel cars will be pushed back from 2030 to 2035, giving consumers more time to transition to electric vehicles (EVs). Used gas vehicles could be sold after the deadline. Sunak said the country still aimed to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
At Climate Week NYC, Volvo announced the end of production of all diesel-powered Volvo Car models by early 2024. The company plans to sell only fully electric cars by 2030 and aims to be climate neutral by 2040.
Ryder deployed its BrightDrop Zevo 600 electric vans at facilities in California, Texas, and New York. The vans have a range of up to 250 miles and can support a payload of 1,460 to 2,450 lbs.
Marriott selected the EV Connect platform to provide its properties with a turnkey solution to easily add and manage EV charging stations. Earlier, Hilton announced it would install up to 20,000 Tesla Universal Wall Connectors.
The global total of public charging stations is expected to soar to 16 million by 2026, a threefold increase from 2023, as global ownership of neighborhood electric vehicles (NEVs), including PHEVs and BEVs, reaches 96 million, according to Trendforce. The U.S. has just over 200,000 charging stations currently and aims to have 500,000 by 2026 when NEV ownership is expected to reach 15 million, for a vehicle-to-charger ratio of 32:1. Europe and China may achieve ratios of 9:1 and 4:1, respectively, by 2026.
Infineon will provide Infypower with its 1200 V CoolSiC MOSFET power semiconductor devices to improve the efficiency of its electric vehicle charging stations.
Redwood acquired Redux Recycling, an EU-based lithium-ion battery recycler, to help the company quickly expand operations, increase capacity, and work with already-established suppliers, customers, and industry partners across Europe.
New Zealand-based CarbonScape gained funding to produce biographite in Europe and the U.S., enabling cleaner lithium-ion batteries for EVs and grid-scale energy storage. Biographite is made from forestry and timber industry by-products.
Two University of Oxford battery projects received funding from the Faraday Institution. One will research next-generation cathode materials and the other aims to reduce the manufacturing costs of Li-ion battery electrodes and improve electrode performance.
Two U.S. senators sent a letter urging the Committee on Foreign Investment to review the ownership of Gotion, a Chinese company and U.S. subsidiary of Guoxuan High-Tech, expected to open a lithium battery plant in Illinois next year. They claim the Chinese Communist Party “deliberately obscures its control and influence over Guoxuan.”
Cisco will acquire Splunk for $157 per share in cash, representing about $28 billion in equity, accelerating Cisco’s strategy to securely connect everything and drive the next generation of AI-enabled security and observability.
Security breaches in integrated photonic AI accelerators “cannot be fully addressed using hardware security solutions proposed for purely electronic systems,” according to researchers at Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal and Colorado State University who explore different types of new and inevitable attacks.
Quantum computing promises revolutionary changes to the computing paradigm that the semiconductor industry has operated under for decades, but it also raises the prospect of widespread cybersecurity threats. Post-quantum cryptography must be applied now to prevent hackers from decoding today’s data when quantum computers become available.
The winning schemes of the NIST post-quantum cryptography standardization project were CRYSTALS Kyber, a key encapsulation mechanism, and CRYSTALS Dilithium, a digital signature algorithm. Researchers at TU Darmstadt used “the TaPaSCo open-source framework to create hardware building blocks for both schemes using high-level synthesis (HLS) from minimally modified ANSI C software reference implementations across all security levels.”
Two NIST publications look at how effectively modern image-processing software performs face analysis. One team evaluated nine types of presentation attacks, including a person wearing a sophisticated mask, an N95 mask, or holding a photo up to the camera.
Keysight and Synopsys partnered to provide internet of things (IoT) device makers with a comprehensive cybersecurity assessment solution to ensure consumers are protected when devices are shipped to market.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released a joint advisory related to the Snatch ransomware variant, operating as a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) model.
CISA issued numerous other alerts including known exploited vulnerabilities concerning Samsung mobile devices, Realtek SDK, Zyxel EMG2926 routers, Laravel Ignition, and Owl Labs Meeting Owl.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) offered recommendations as to how the federal government can streamline the reporting of cyber incidents to better protect the nation’s critical infrastructure, identify trends, and help organizations prevent, respond to, and recover from attacks.
Germany’s interior ministry proposed forcing 5G telecoms operators to curb their use of equipment made by China’s Huawei and ZTE, according to Reuters. The government official’s statement sparked warnings of likely disruption and possible legal action.
SiTime rolled out a high-precision oscillator that is 2X faster, 9X smaller, and 3X more power efficient than the previous generation. The company said the technology will be deployed in data center switches and routers, 5G base stations, and core infrastructure. The improvements are necessary to keep multiple processing elements and signals in sync.
The global edge data centers market is expected to reach $46.4 billion by 2030, at an annual growth rate of 20.9% during 2023 to 2030, according to Research and Markets.
The number of active smartphone brands dropped to almost 250 in 2023, down from over 700 in 2017, according to Counterpoint. The decline is mostly among local brands and reasons include a maturing user base, improving device quality, longer replacement cycles, and a growing refurbished secondary market.
Nio became the first high-end Chinese electric car brand to release its own smartphone, according to CNBC. It is an Android priced about $950, which is about $150 cheaper than a comparable Huawei phone.
Bruker introduced a scalable, CCS-enabled AI-powered label-free quantification algorithm, performing accurate quantification of peptides and proteins present in hundreds or thousands of samples by using global retention time and collision cross-section prediction models.
Renesas created interfaces between its Reality AI Tools and e2 studio integrated development environment, enabling designers to share data, projects, and AI code modules between the two programs.
Infineon became the head and coordinator of a broad-scope European research project intended to make electronics in Europe more sustainable along the entire value chain, from design, manufacture, and use in the field, all the way to recycling.
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) fired up LCLS-II, a Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL), producing up to a million X-ray pulses per second and an almost continuous X-ray beam that is on average 10,000 times brighter than LCLS-I.
Yale University will offer a one-year master’s in technology management to give its engineering and technical graduates a foundation in business and leadership skills while deepening their expertise in technical fields.
Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:
Upcoming webinars are here.
Read the latest special reports and top stories, or check out the latest newsletters.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |  |
Leave a Reply