Google’s AlphaChip; 300mm fab equip spending; TSMC-EDA partnerships; $123M CHIPS Act; CXL memory standards; MIPI’s A-PHY v2.0; 12-stack HBM3E; LLMs for chip design and manufacturing; CHIPS Metrology access.
Global spending on 300mm fab equipment is expected to reach a record US$400 billion from 2025 to 2027, according to SEMI. Key drivers are the regionalization of semiconductor fabs and the increasing demand for AI chips in data centers and edge devices, with China, South Korea, and Taiwan leading the way.
The Biden-Harris Administration launched the National Semiconductor Technology Center’s (NSTC) Workforce Center of Excellence with an expected $250 million investment. The NSTC consortium also announced an expected $11.5 million in funding through the NSTC Workforce Partner Alliance program to support seven programs that will serve more than 12,000 individuals entering or advancing careers in the U.S. semiconductor industry.
TSMC extended several partnerships with EDA companies, including:
Fig. 1: TSMC’s partner event in Santa Clara, California, this week. Source: Semiconductor Engineering
Qualcomm is considering making an offer for Intel, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal. Both Bloomberg and the Journal have follow-up stories analyzing a potential deal and Intel’s current vulnerabilities.
The U.S. government awarded up to $123 million in funding to Polar Semiconductor for sensor and power semiconductors. Incentives related to this agreement will allow Polar to double its U.S. fabrication capacity within two years. Polar is transitioning to become a U.S. majority-owned commercial foundry.
On the standards front, JEDEC published two new CXL standards, and the MIPI Alliance announced the release of MIPI A-PHY v2.0, the next version of the automotive high-speed asymmetric SerDes PHY.
SK hynix started mass producing the first 12-layer, 36GB HBM3E.
Google DeepMind released more details on its AI method for designing chip layouts, included a pre-trained checkpoint, model weights and its name, AlphaChip.
AI holds the potential to change how companies interact throughout the global semiconductor ecosystem, gluing together different data types and processes that can be shared between companies that in the past had little or no direct connections. This special report looks at why the chip industry is so focused on LLMs for designing and manufacturing chips, and what problems need to be solved to realize those plans.
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U.S. President Biden and India Prime Minister Modi announced an deal to establish a new semiconductor fabrication plant focused on advanced sensing, communication, and power electronics for national security, next-gen telecommunications, and green energy applications.
Tata Electronics and PSMC finalized a deal to jointly build a fab in Gujarat, India to manufacture power management ICs, MCUs, and more.
The EU invested €65 million in quantum chips, expected to be matched by participating states, and the Chips Joint Undertaking (Chips JU) opened calls to support semiconductor research and innovation initiatives. The closing date for proposals is January 21.
Sixteen UK semiconductor firms will share in £11.5 million from Innovate UK.
The Wall Street Journal disclosed discussions between TSMC and Samsung to potentially build fabs in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The deal is estimated to be worth worth $100B.
The Economist reported on how China is innovating to overcome U.S. chip bans, usually in the form of software workarounds.
Seoul Semiconductor won its “No Wire” LED patent lawsuit across the EU.
Amkor’s founder and Executive Chairman, James Kim, is retiring effective Oct. 31. Susan Kim, Amkor’s executive vice chairman, will become chairman of the board at that time.
CHIPS for America released a beta version of the Metrology Exchange to Innovate in Semiconductors (METIS), allowing stakeholders access to CHIPS Metrology research results.
The Building Chips in America Act (S. 2228), which already passed the U.S. Senate, also just passed in the House. According to SIA, the bipartisan legislation would allow certain semiconductor manufacturing projects incentivized by the CHIPS and Science Act to advance toward production without the threat of extended regulatory delays, while also keeping environmental protections in place.
Semiconductor Engineering published its Systems & Design newsletter this week, featuring these top stories:
More stories and tech talks published recently:
Ephos raised $8.5M in a seed round and opened the world’s first facility for design and production of glass-based quantum photonic chips, in Milan, Italy.
Oracle disclosed that it owns 29% of startup Ampere, which is exploring a potential sale, according to Bloomberg.
Micron released earnings this week, with strong revenue growth from data center DRAM and HBM products.
The NAND market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 21% between 2023 and 2029, according to the Yole Group. AI’s influence on NAND demand is anticipated to grow beyond server applications. The DRAM market is experiencing a broad recovery across all technologies. Yole predicts the optical processors market will reach US$3 billion in 2034.
The release of NVIDIA’s Blackwell platform is projected to boost liquid cooling solution adoption by 10% in 2024 and 20% in 2025, according to Trendforce. The growth is partially due to wider adoption NVIDIA’s GB200 full-rack solution, which have a TDP of 140 kW.
Speaking of cooling, Munters and ZutaCore recently formed an alliance for a waterless two-phase solution for cooling data centers.
The U.S. Department of Energy announced $5.5 million in funding for projects advancing cost effective and responsible critical minerals and materials.
The NIST awarded:
Missouri University of Science and Technology is launching a new bachelor’s degree program for semiconductor engineering.
The U.S. Department of Defense awarded $19 million to establish domestic tin processing for national hardware, including electrical connections in semiconductors, high-end capacitors, and other electronic components.
The U.S. Department of Commerce proposed a rule banning vehicles that rely on Chinese software and hardware from driving on American roads.
Chinese government-linked hackers broke into some U.S. internet-service providers in recent months in a campaign called Salt Typhoon, per the Wall St. Journal.
DARPA’s Provably Weird Network Deployment and Detection (PWND2) seeks proposals to change the deployment and detection of hidden networks.
Recent security research:
DARPA, the Canadian Department of National Defence, and the U.K. Ministry of Defence are collaborating on R&D for AI and cybersecurity technology development.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced $279.9 million is available for the FY 2024 State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program (SLCGP).
The EU Commission requested the EU Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) provide support for the certification of European Digital Identity Wallets.
CISA warned about ongoing threats to operational technology and industrial control systems devices, and issued a number of other alerts/advisories.
Canon will ship its most advanced lithography platform, the FPA-1200NZ2, to the Texas Institute for Electronics (TIE), a Texas-based semiconductor consortium. Also, Canon released the FPA-3030i6 semiconductor lithography system for small wafers.
Ansys announced a successful pilot collaboration with Microsoft, in which the companies were able to achieve a 10X speedup of Ansys’ Lumerical FDTD photonics simulation, using the Microsoft Azure NC A100v4 virtual machines. The pairing allows designers to quickly identify optimal chip designs that combine photonic and electronic circuits, while accounting for multi-physics.
Ansys will provide Liebherr with simulation software to create virtual multi-physics models, as well as training, user support, and consulting services through its Apex Channel Partner CADFEM Germany GmbH.
Alphawave Semi extended its partnership with InnoLight, combining Alphawave’s PCI Express 7.0 SerDes PHY with InnoLight’s LPO OSFP optics for data centers and AI networks. The low power, low latency combination operates at 128 Gbps per lane.
Arm and Meta teamed up for the latter’s new Llama 3.2 LLMs, which will run on Arm CPUs. Arm’s CPU-optimized kernels led to a 5x improvement in prompt processing and achieved 19.91 tokens per second in the generation phase. Meta also released new AR glasses.
Keysight became the new production certification test partner for UL Solutions’ Thunderbolt 5. The process will include Keysight’s Infiniium UXR B Series oscilloscopes, M8000 Series high-performance BERT, and ENA vector network analyzers.
Infineon released 135 V and 150 V MOSFETs, enabling higher efficiency in drives and switched-mode power supply (SMPS) applications such as server SMPS, solar optimizers, high-power USB chargers, and telecom.
Siemens released updates for its Simcenter Testlab, boasting a 50% overall efficiency gain in complex impact testing and incorporating physical test and simulation data to create virtual prototypes.
Japan’s Preferred Networks (PFN) selected Siemens’ PowerPro software to optimize the power efficiency of its next-gen AI processors.
Fig. 2: MN-Core2 AI processor chip from PFN. Image courtesy of: Preferred Networks Inc. Source: Siemens
Intel launched Xeon 6 with Performance-cores (P-cores), doubling the performance for AI and HPC workloads. It claims its new New Gaudi 3 AI accelerators offer up to 20 percent more throughput and 2x price/performance vs H100 for inference of LLaMa 2 70B1.
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory engineers developed a Quantum Instrumentation Control Kit (QICK), combining an RF board with control and readout hardware and open source software to control it, to bring quantum control electronics to market.
Fig. 3: Components of the QICK box, including the QICK open-source software and hardware components on an off-the-shelf radio frequency system-on-chip board (1) and the new customizable companion board (2). Photo: Sara Sussman. Source: Fermilab
Argonne National Laboratory researchers proposed a new way to design electrolytes for nearly any type of electrochemical process, aimed at EV batteries and decarbonized manufacturing of steel, cement, and various chemicals.
ORNL researchers created a new advanced microscopy tool to place atoms exactly where they are needed to give a material new properties, with potential for devices needed for quantum computing and communication. ORNL also built an AI model database to find new alloys for nuclear fusion facilities.
Fig. 4: An artistic rendering depicts direct writing using ORNL’s synthescope, a novel microscopy technique, to continuously insert tin atoms into graphene, opening possibilities for materials fabrication atom-by-atom. Credit: Ondrej Dyck/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy
Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:
| Event | Date | Location |
|---|---|---|
| SPIE Photomask Technology + EUVL | Sep 29 – Oct 3 | Monterey, CA |
| Strategic Materials Conference: SMC 2024 | Sep 30 – Oct 2 | San Jose, CA |
| IMAPS 2024: International Symposium on Microelectronics | Oct 1 – Oct 3 | Boston, Massachusetts |
| Rambus Design Summit | Oct 1 | Virtual |
| Memory Users Conference | Oct 1 – 2 | Virtual |
| 2024 IEEE Electronic Design Process Symposium (EDPS) | Oct 3 – 4 | SEMI facilities in Milpitas, CA |
| Packaging Chips with CHIPS: West Coast Summit | Oct 17 | Scottsdale, Arizona |
| 2024 OCP Global Summit | Oct 15 – 17 | San Jose, CA |
| DVCON Europe | Oct 15 – 16 | Munich, Germany |
| Hardwear.io Conference & Training | Oct 21 – 25 | Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| CadenceCONNECT: Jasper User Group | Oct 22 – 23 | San Jose, CA |
| NSTC Symposium and Microelectronics Commons Annual Meeting | Oct 28 – 30 | Washington, D.C. |
| Find All Upcoming Events Here | ||
Upcoming webinars are here.
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