Chip Industry Week In Review

CSIS issued a new report that says Intel is “not too big to fail, but too good to lose.” The report noted that Intel is essential for national security, and that it needs to be viewed in a geopolitical context rather than from a purely business standpoint when it comes to funding the company.

Japan‘s government is creating a 10 trillion yen (~$65 billion) fund for next-gen technologies, including AI and semiconductors.

U.S. government funding:

• The Department of Commerce and Akash Systems signed preliminary terms for $18.2 million in direct CHIPS Act funding and $50 million in tax credits, aiming to advance AI and space chips with its diamond cooling technology.
• The Department of Defense invested an additional $160 million of CHIPS Act funds into the Microelectronics Commons program. Keysight will provide EDA software to six of the eight participating hubs.
• The Department of Energy will loan $481.5 million to South Korea’s SK Siltron CCS to expand manufacturing of EV semiconductor materials.

CSIS‘ Gracelin Baskaran gave seven recommendations for building U.S. critical minerals security, expressing concern about U.S. dependency on China and Russia for four materials essential to semiconductor production — germanium, gallium, palladium, and polysilicon.

The U.S. Department of Commerce reportedly sent a letter to TSMC imposing export restrictions on 7nm GPUs and AI chips destined for China.

NIST issued a final report on 98 Hardware Security Failure Scenarios: Potential Hardware Weaknesses.

Kulicke & Soffa and ROHM co-developed a copper-first hybrid bonding process. Hybrid bonding is gaining traction in advanced packaging because it offers the shortest vertical connection between dies of similar or different functionalities, as well as better thermal, electrical and reliability results.

SEMI reported that worldwide silicon wafer shipments increased 5.9% QoQ in Q3 2024 and registered 6.8% growth from  Q3 2023.

Special Report: Shift left is evolving from a buzzword into a much broader shift in design methodology and EDA tooling, and while it’s still early innings there is widespread agreement it will be transformative.

Quick links to more news:

Market Reports
In-Depth
Global
Security
Research
Product News
Events and Further Reading

Markets and Money

Collaborations and acquisition news:

• Lightmatter struck a deal with ASE to collaborate on a 3D-stacked photonics engine with pluggable fiber. The company also is partnering with Amkor.
• Pure Wafer, a U.S.-based provider of virgin silicon wafers, was purchased by ZMC, a private equity group, with hopes to fuel fab capacity expansion.
• NanoXplore, a provider of radiation-hardened FPGA SoCs for space and avionics, acquired Dolphin Design’s ASIC business from Soitec, This follows the earlier announcement that Jolt Capital will acquire Dolphin’s mixed-signal IP assets from Soitec.
• Sivers Semiconductors halted plans to spin out its photonics business through a sale to SPAC ByNordic Acquisition Corp.

In analyst reports:

• The global semiconductor packaging materials market is expected to grow at a 5.6% CAGR through 2028, reports TECHCET.
• The automotive semiconductor market is expected to grow 11% per annum between 2023 and 2029 to almost $100 billion, reports Yole.

AMD said it will lay off 4% of its global staff, or about 1,000 people, according to CNBC.

Earnings releases and outlooks this week:

• Applied Materials
• ASML (long-term outlook)
• GCT Semiconductor
• Infineon
• Tower Semiconductor 

Forefront RF raised £16 million (~$20.7 million) in Series A funding for its self-configuring tunable duplexer for cellular-enabled wearables.

In-Depth

Semiconductor Engineering published its Test, Measurement & Analytics newsletter,  featuring these top stories:

• Yield Management Embraces Expanding Role
• Advanced Packaging Drives Test And Metrology Innovations
• Balancing Parallel Test Productivity With Yield & Cost

And  its Low Power-High Performance  newsletter:

• Shift Left Is The Tip Of The Iceberg
• Managing The Huge Power Demands Of AI Everywhere
• New AI Data Types Emerge

More reporting this week:

• Scaling Performance In AI Systems
• RISC-V’s Software Portability Challenge

Global

TSMC launched its Taichung Zero Waste Manufacturing Center and signed a carbon capture MOU with the Taiwanese government.

South Korea’s government plans to introduce a law that would exempt semiconductor R&D personnel from the 52-hour workweek limit and allow direct government subsidies for semiconductor firms during initial investment phases, per Chosun Daily.

Samsung will expand its package facilities in South Chungcheong Province to boost production of HBM chips, reports The Korea Times.

Of the €380M European investment in the EU pilot plant for photonic chips, €133M is expected to be invested in the Netherlands.

The Center for Strategic & International Studies published reports on: What RISC-V Means for the Future of Chip Development; and Ensuring U.S. Leadership in AI.

California’s Pacific Gas and Electric Co. announced the first commercial installation of on-site generative AI deployment at a U.S. nuclear power plant. So what exactly happens if a nuke plant hallucinates?

Security

The CHERI Alliance officially launched and welcomed new partners from the UK, U.S., Taiwan, and India. Founded to tackle cybersecurity threats at the hardware level, the alliance aims to establish CHERI (Capability Hardware Enhanced RISC Instructions) as the new standard for memory safety and scalable software compartmentalization.

CISA, NSA, and partners issued their annual report on top routinely exploited vulnerabilities.

Recent security research:

• An Evidence-Based Curriculum Initiative for Hardware Reverse Engineering Education (Ruhr University Bochum, et al.)
• Caphammer: Exploiting Capacitor Vulnerability of Energy Harvesting Systems (University of Central Florida, et al.)
• Untrusted Code Compartmentalization for Bare Metal Embedded Devices (Rochester IT)
• Meta-Scanner: Detecting Fault Attacks via Scanning FPGA Designs Metadata (Karlsruhe IT, et al.)
• ShieldCXL: A Practical Obliviousness Support with Sealed CXL Memory (KAIST)

ENISA invited industry to provide comments on technical guidance for the NIS2 cybersecurity risk-management measures.

Sandia National Laboratories and Cerebras Systems unveiled a cluster of four Cerebras CS-3 systems to be used as a Sandia testbed to expand research into AI workloads for national security missions.

CISA issued a number of alerts/advisories.

Research

University of Kansas and University of Houston researchers received $1.8 million from NSF’s FuSe2 program to produce atomically thin memristors for neuromorphic computing, and to train workforce. The researchers are the first to demonstrate a sub-2nm memory.

Dual-Layer Thin-Film Transistor Analysis and Design was published by researchers at Oregon State University and Applied Materials.

Solving the Annealing of Mo Interconnects for Next-Gen Integrated Circuits was published by researchers at the National University of Singapore, A*STAR, and imec.

Technion Israel IT researchers developed a software package that enables computers to perform in-memory computing. Their concept is called PyPIM, for Python and Processing-in-Memory.

Skinetix, a spin-off from imec, and Vrije Universiteit Brussel developed smart sportswear that uses sensor data and a personalized AI model to provide quantified biomechanical insights.

Product News/Deals

Arteris and MIPS teamed up on a pre-verified reference platform to accelerate development of RISC-V-based chip designs for automotive, enterprise computing, and edge AI applications. The platform integrates Arteris Ncore cache coherent NoC IP and FlexNoC IP with MIPS P8700 processor core clusters.

Siemens Digital Industries Software updated its electronic systems design portfolio to provide a unified user experience with cloud connectivity and AI capabilities for its Xpedition, Hyperlynx, and PADS Professional PCB design and verification software. And Siemens’ NX X software for product engineering was made available on Microsoft Azure and integrated with generative AI and copilot features.

Infineon:

• Released a MOSFET that enables safe hot-swap in AI servers and battery protection for tools and vehicles.
• Launched its ModusToolbox Motor Suite for simplified motor control development.
• Is collaborating with Marelli on advanced E/E architectures.

Keysight expanded the frequency range of its handheld signal analyzers up to 170 GHz for mmWave signal analysis with the use of Viginia Diodes frequency extenders.

Micron introduced a fast, energy efficient 60TB SSD.

AMD introduced a new line of FPGA devices featuring CXL 3.1 and PCIe Gen6, with LPDDR5X support.

Samsung Electronics validated FiRa 2.0 secure test cases on its Exynos Connect U100 chipset using Keysight’s Ultra-Wideband (UWB) test solution.

Semifive included Synopsys’ UCIe controller and PHY IP as well as other IP solutions in its 4nm HPC CPU chiplet.

Vertiv is using Ansys’ optimization framework and data management software to scale design of customized data center cooling systems. And WEG used Ansys’ simulation solutions to develop its W80 AXgen electric motor for industrial applications including air compressors, water pump systems, and generators.

Events and Further Reading

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

Upcoming webinars are here, including automated AFM for inline hybrid bonding metrology in the semiconductor industry

Automotive, Security and Pervasive Computing
Systems and Design
Low Power-High Performance
Test, Measurement and Analytics
Manufacturing, Packaging and Materials