Chip Industry Week In Review

Three Fraunhofer Institutes (IIS/EAS, IZM, and ENAS) launched the Chiplet Center of Excellence, a research initiative to support the commercial introduction of chiplet technology. The center initially will focus on automotive electronics, developing workflows and methods for electronics design, demonstrator construction, and the evaluation of reliability.

The UCIe Consortium published the Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) 2.0 specification. The latest version adds a standardized system architecture for manageability with a management fabric within each chiplet for testing, telemetry, and debug functions. It also includes higher bandwidth density and improved power efficiencies along with support for 3D packaging and optimized package designs for interoperability and compliance testing.

The U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) and SK hynix signed a non-binding preliminary memorandum of terms to provide up to $450 million in CHIPS Act funding to establish an HBM advanced packaging fabrication and R&D facility, building upon the company’s $3.87 billion investment in West Lafayette, Indiana, at the Purdue University Research Park.

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) said global semiconductor industry sales totaled $149.9 billion during Q2 2024, up 18.3% compared to Q2 2023 and 6.5% higher than Q1 2024. Also, the SIA and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) released a report, “Attracting Chips Investment: Industry Recommendations for Policymakers.”

Imec presented patterned structures obtained after exposure with the 0.55NA EUV scanner in the joint ASML–imec High-NA EUV Lithography Lab in the Netherlands, confirming readiness of the high-NA EUV patterning ecosystem for enabling future logic and memory.

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Events and Further Reading

Global

Infineon opened the first phase of its new 200mm fab in Malaysia, expected to be the world’s largest. The first phase will focus on silicon carbide (SiC) power semiconductors using gallium nitride (GaN) epitaxy.

Arm and Cadence, among others, partnered with the Malaysian government on a Semiconductor IC Design Park in Puchong, near Kuala Lumpur, according to the South China Morning Post.

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo held a roundtable discussion with investors to discuss actions from China that threaten to distort the market for mature node semiconductors. She said there have been signs that China over-produced legacy chips to prevent fair competition by companies in the U.S. and like-minded countries.

SEMI Europe recommended the EU Commission place as few restrictions as possible on its companies investing in foreign chip technology.

In-Depth

Semiconductor Engineering published its Low Power-High Performance newsletter this week, featuring these top stories:

• Analog Consolidation Spurs New Round Of Startups
• Power Delivery Challenged By Data Center Architectures
• Voltage Drop Now Requires Dynamic Analysis

And its Test, Measurement & Analytics newsletter featured these reports:

• AI/ML’s Role In Design And Test Expands
• Metrology And Inspection For The Chiplet Era
• Driving Cost Lower and Power Higher With GaN

More reporting this week:

• Focus Shifts To Application-Specific Workloads

Markets and Money

Sivers Semiconductors intends to spin off and merge its photonics subsidiary, which focuses on indium phosphide (InP) laser sources, with SPAC byNordic Acquisition Corp. to create a standalone, publicly traded company. Sivers Semiconductors will retain its wireless business.

Polymatech Electronics, a maker of sapphire-based semiconductors and wafers, acquired Nisene Technology, a provider of decapsulation systems along with silicon and silicon carbide ingots, wafers, and bare die.

Wafer-scale chip maker Cerebras Systems has filed for an IPO with the U.S. SEC.

Automotive chip company Black Sesame listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange.

Groq raised $640 million in Series D funding for its cloud-based AI inference platform using self-developed chips.

Riverlane raised $75 million in Series C funding for its quantum error correction stack that comprises chips, hardware, and software.

LightSolver was awarded €12.5 million in grant and equity funding from the European Innovation Council for its laser-based processing unit for compute-intensive workloads such as CAE, bio-science computations, and optimization problems.

Kalray and Pliops terminated their merger plans.

To gain insight into SiC wafer market trends, McKinsey & Co. evaluated the critical factors that can affect supply and demand.

Semiconductor metal and oxide precursors are predicted to reach US$1.7 billion in revenues in 2024, rising 15% over 2023, according to TECHCET.

The global smartphone market rose 8% year-over-year to hit 289.1 million unit shipments in Q2 2024, said Counterpoint.

OLED-on-silicon (OLEDoS) will dominate the high-end VR/MR market, with its share reaching 23% by 2030, per TrendForce, and LCD will hold a 63% share in near-eye displays.

Education and Training

The Synopsys Academic & Research Alliances (SARA) program is helping close the global semiconductor talent shortage by working with universities, bringing technology to classrooms, and providing diverse academic offerings. Dr. Patrick Haspel is Executive Director of the SARA program and won a Distinguished Service Award at DAC 2024. This week he spoke about the potential for industry to leverage academia for mutual benefit without the transactional nature of traditional partnerships.

The SEMI Foundation and Policy Equity Group are collaborating to help companies comply with child care requirements under the U.S. CHIPS Act by assessing the current state of the semiconductor workforce and the local early child care and education system, launching targeted outreach programs, and more.

In China, the cities of Shenzhen and Hong Kong launched a service station to help foreign talent expedite working and living on the mainland, as part of their Science and Technology Innovation Cooperation Zone, per the South China Morning Post.

Security

A security report titled, “Security in the Era of Global Semiconductor Initiatives,” was launched at the UK RISE Annual Summer School held at the University of Birmingham. It was spurred by insights from a 2023 workshop in Washington, D.C., co-chaired by Professor Maire O’Neill of Queen’s University Belfast and Professor Mark Tehranipoor of the University of Florida.

The Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) released CWE REST API, enabling partners and users to easily stay up to date with its security risk content.

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) awarded Dell Federal Systems a $109,911,637 ceiling, firm-fixed-price blank purchase agreement for hardware to support Enterprise Logging Extra and Small Form Factor efforts at multiple Air Force bases.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released a Secure by Demand Guide and an updated advisory on BlackSuit (Royal) Ransomware. And CISA issued a number of other alerts/advisories.

Terra Quantum will study the feasibility of developing a quantum-resistant network for the U.S. Department of the Air Force (DAF).

Samsung joined a funding round for security and AI startup, Protect AI, raising $60 million for a valuation of $400 million.

Recent security research:

• Harnessing Heterogeneity for Targeted Attacks on 3-D ICs (Drexel University)
• A Viewpoint: Harmonizing the Diverse Memory Safety Fronts (Intel Labs, Huawei Technologies, Finland)
• Memristive True Random Number Generator for Security Applications (Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology, University of Stuttgart)
• A Multi-Dimensional Hardware Trojan Design Platform to Enhance Hardware Security (Barkhausen Institut)
• Intellectual Property Design with PUF-based Hardware Security (Anil Neerukonda Institute of Technology and Sciences, Andhra University College of Engineering)
• Memristive-Based Physical Unclonable Function Design of Authentication Architectures: A Systematic Review (Al-Nahrain University)

Products and Standards

NVM Express published several new and updated specifications aimed at faster and simpler development of NVMe architecture. Key features include Live Migration, Computational Storage, and a new Host Directed Data Placement Technology.

Siemens EDA announced verification IP for UCIe 2.0.

Ettifos and Autotalks used Keysight’s PathWave Signal Generation and Modulation Analysis Measurement Application products to conduct a vendor-to-vendor sidelink interoperability test for 5G cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) communications.

Advantest observed the 25th anniversary of its flagship V93000 SoC test platform.

NEO Semiconductor debuted its 3D X-AI chip that combines DRAM and neural circuits to enable AI processing inside HBM.

NASA and Infleqtion produced quantum memory that stores information in a cloud of laser-cooled atoms and later releases it as photons, a possible step toward free space transmission of quantum information and large-scale quantum networks.

Research

imec presented a hyperspectral sensor that contains a line-based filter on chip, featuring a broad spectral range (450-900 nm) and high, uniform light sensitivity suited to meet signal-to-noise ratio requirements for earth observation from small satellites.

Argonne National Laboratory researchers developed a microscopy technique that uses electrical pulses to observe the nanosecond dynamics within tantalum sulfide (1T-TaS2), with potential for more energy-efficient electronics.

A Texas Tech University researcher, Minxiang “Glenn” Zeng, was awarded a $250,000 grant via a National Science Foundation (NSF) program to further his research about printable semiconductors and electronics under extreme environments.

EPFL researchers published a programmable framework that overcomes a key computational bottleneck of optical neural networks (ONNs).

Events and Further Reading

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Upcoming webinars are here.

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