Chip Industry Week In Review

Global chips sales hit a record $56.9 billion in October, a 22% increase versus October 2023, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association. Also, global semiconductor equipment billings reached $30.38 billion in Q3 2024, a 19% YoY increase and 13% growth QoQ, SEMI reported.

TSMC commenced equipment installation for its 2nm fab in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, six months ahead of schedule. The 2nm technology is slated for volume production next year. Also, the company is in talks with NVIDIA to produce its Blackwell AI chips at TSMC’s Arizona facility, with production preparations underway for early 2025, according to Reuters. While the front-end manufacturing would occur in Arizona, the chips still would be shipped to Taiwan for packaging due to the lack of CoWoS (chip-on-wafer-on-substrate) capacity in the U.S.

Chip wars:

• The U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) announced new restrictions aimed to reduce China’s ability to produce advanced-node semiconductors for military applications, including AI and advanced weapon systems. The measures include controls on 24 types of semiconductor equipment, high-bandwidth memory (HBM), and related software tools, along with the addition of 140 entities to the Entity List.
• China condemned the latest U.S. action, then announced a ban on exports to the United States of gallium, germanium, antimony, and other high-tech materials, citing their potential military applications.
• The DoC also released a report on U.S. companies’ use of legacy chips manufactured by entities based in China.

New US Fundings:

• New CHIPS Act preliminary agreements for semiconductor manufacturing components were signed with Coherent for up to $33 million (Texas), SkyWater Technology Foundry for $16 million (Minnesota) and X-Fab for $50 million (expand Texas SiC fab).
• GlobalFoundries secured $9.5 million in federal funding to advance GaN-on-silicon semiconductor manufacturing at its Vermont facility. This funding supports GF’s efforts to scale 200mm GaN chip production, essential for high-performance, energy-efficient applications in RF, power control, and defense.
• The U.S. Department of Commerce finalized two CHIPS Act awards. SKC affiliate Absolics was awarded $75 million for a new facility that will make glass substrates for advanced packaging. Entegris was awarded $77 million for a manufacturing center that will produce liquid filtration products, as well as front-opening-unified pods (FOUPs).

Microchip will shut down its Tempe, Arizona wafer fab and pause its application for CHIPS Act funding, citing over-capacity.

Intel’s shakeup continues after Pat Gelsinger’s abrupt departure. Eric Meurice, former CEO/chairman of ASML, and Steve Sanghi, chairman and interim CEO of Microchip, have been appointed to Intel’s board of directors.

The CXL Consortium published the Compute Express Link (CXL) 3.2 Specification, which optimizes CXL Memory Device monitoring and management, enhances the functionality of CXL Memory Devices for OS and applications, and extends security with the Trusted Security Protocol.

Tenstorrent raised more than $693 million in Series D for its RISC-V-based AI processor IP, which it offers for customization as well as in complete systems.

The chip industry is pushing to quadruple the stack height of 3D NAND flash from 200 layers to 800 layers or more over the next few years, using the additional capacity will help to feed the unending need for more memory of all types.

Quick links to more news:

Global
In-Depth
Markets and Money
Security
Products and Partnerships
Automotive
Research
Events and Further Reading

Markets and Money

Recent fundings:

• Axiado raised $60 million in Series C for its trusted control/compute unit (TCU) that integrates key infrastructure security and management functions into an SoC.
• Akhetonics raised €6 million (~$6.3M) in seed funding for an all-optical cross-domain processor.

Earnings reports this week: Synopsys and Marvell.

New market reports:

• The European Semiconductor Industry Association reported on the latest semiconductor market forecast, predicting strong growth in 2024 and 2025.
• Global wafer foundry revenue grew by 9.1% QoQ in Q3 2024 to reach $34.9 billion, driven by demand for AI servers, flagship devices, and high-priced 3nm processes, according to TrendForce.

As part of its proposed acquisition of Spirent Communications, Keysight Technologies announced plans to divest Spirent’s high-speed Ethernet and network security business lines.

The U.S. Department of Energy awarded $118 million in funding to 10 centers for fundamental energy research in advanced microelectronics and other areas.

In-Depth

Semiconductor Engineering published its Auto, Security & Pervasive Computing newsletter this week, featuring these top stories:

• Tools Needed To Track, Catalog Hardware Vulnerabilities
• Radar, AI, And Increasing Autonomy Are Redefining Auto IC Designs
• Where Cryptography Is Headed

More reporting this week:

• Special Report: NAND Flash Targets 1,000 Layers
• The Evolution Of HBM
• Chip Companies Play Bigger Role In Shaping University Curricula

Global

NVIDIA is opening a Vietnam R&D center focused on AI.

Rebellions and SAPEON merged to form Korea’s first AI chip “unicorn,” a privately held startup company valued at $1 billion or more. The new company will operate under the name “Rebellions,” and be led by CEO Sunghyun Park.

VSMC, the recently formed joint venture by Vanguard and NXP, broke ground on its new $7.8 billion 300mm wafer fab in Singapore.

SEMI Europe released recommendations for the European Union’s 2024-2029 legislative term, urging policymakers to strengthen Europe’s semiconductor ecosystem. Key proposals include optimizing funding for the EU’s goal of a 20% global market share by 2030, aligning semiconductor initiatives with the Green Deal, and addressing the industry’s talent gap through education reform and skilled immigration policies.

The Silicon Europe Alliance, a coalition of Europe’s semiconductor/electronics clusters, named Frank Bösenberg, Managing Director of Silicon Saxony, to take over the chairmanship of the alliance for 2025.

UK‘s University of Oxford will play a lead role in a new Laboratory for AI Security Research, an £8.22 million government-funded initiative to strengthen Britain’s cyber resilience.

The Chicago Plan Commission approved plans to rezone more than 400 acres of land at the former U.S. Steel South Works facility to become a new quantum computing campus, reports WBEZ.

Security

Monitoring for cyberattacks is a key component of hardware-based security, but what happens afterward is equally important. Logging and cataloging identified hardware vulnerabilities to ensure they are not repeated is essential for security.

The looming threat of quantum computers breaking today’s encryption, and the stockpiling of encrypted data in preparation for a time when it can be decrypted, continue to haunt the security industry.

New and updated publications:

• CISA, NSA, the FBI and international partners published a guide for protecting communications infrastructure, following attacks by a China-affiliated threat actor that has compromised networks of major global telecommunications providers.
• CISA updated its TIC 3.0 Security Capabilities Catalog (SCC) to v3.2 and issued a number of alerts/advisories.
• Interface published a report, “Vulnerability Disclosure: Guiding Governments from Norm to Action.”
• CSIS published the transcript of a discussion on protecting IP for national security.
• ENISA published a report on the state of EU cybersecurity.

Recent security research:

• Transformers: A Security Perspective (UC Davis, et al.)
• When Random is Bad: Selective CRPs for Protecting PUFs against Modeling Attacks (Aalborg University)
• A 0.09-pJ/Bit Logic-Compatible Multiple-Time Programmable (MTP) Memory-Based PUF Design for IoT Applications (Fudan Univ. et al.)

Products and Partnerships

Alibaba-backed XREAL released AR glasses with an in-house co-processor, creating a spatial display from nearly any device and for anything the wearer sees.

Advantest introduced ACS Gemini, a virtual software platform that enables customers to develop and simulate machine learning applications for semiconductor testing.

Bruker announced the Dimension Nexus Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) designed for growing labs and multi-user facilities.

Cadence and AST SpaceMobile collaborated on the AST5000 ASIC, a custom, low-power architecture, to advance the latter’s mission to eliminate connectivity gaps and connect people globally with high-speed, space-based internet access.

Alphawave Semi joined the Ultra Accelerator Link Consortium (UALink), which is developing a standardized fabric interconnect for accelerator-to-accelerator communication.

Marvell announced a 3nm 1.6 Tbps PAM4 interconnect platform featuring 200 Gbps electrical and optical interfaces.

Destination 2D launched from stealth to provide CMOS-compatible graphene interconnects, which it claims have lower resistivity, better reliability, and higher energy efficiency than copper interconnects.

Menta deployed Arteris‘ network-on-chip IP in its MOSAICS-LP chiplet platform for AI computing at the edge.

Alice & Bob debuted its roadmap with the goal of producing a quantum chip with 100 high-fidelity logical qubits by 2030. And Equal1 announced a multi-tile quantum controller chip powered by Arm Cortex cores that operates at 300 millikelvin. It also demonstrated a silicon qubit array with high single and two-qubit gate fidelities.

PhysicsX is using high-fidelity simulation data generated with the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio to build its latest pre-trained deep physics model for aerodynamics.

Ansys and Cummins extended their collaboration to pursue carbon neutrality using simulation, accelerating Cummin’s time to market, saving costs, and improving sustainability across its portfolio of power solutions.

Blue Cheetah signed a strategic sales partnership with Micon Global.

Automotive

Increasing levels of autonomy in vehicles are fundamentally changing which technologies are chosen, how they are used and interact with each other, and how they will evolve throughout a vehicle’s lifetime.

LG and Ambarella partnered on AI-driven in-cabin vehicle safety with Ambarella’s CV25 chipset enabling LG’s DMS to perform real time analysis of high-res video from in-vehicle cameras.

StarPlus Energy, a JV of Stellantis and Samsung SDI, will receive a conditional U.S. government loan up to $7.54 billion to help finance up to two lithium-ion battery cell and module manufacturing plants in Kokomo, Indiana.

General Motors expects a restructuring of its JV with SAIC Motor in China to cost more than $5 billion, reports NBC. Also, GM reached a non-binding agreement to sell its stake in the Ultium Cells battery cell plant in Michigan to its JV partner LG Energy Solution, but GM’s ownership interest in Ultium Cells LLC remains.

The EU Commission and the European Investment Bank partnered to support investments in the EU’s battery manufacturing sector, with a €200 million loan guarantee to the InvestEU programme from the EU Innovation Fund.

Research

MIT researchers “demonstrated a fully integrated photonic processor that can perform all the key computations of a deep neural network optically on the chip.”

A CISPA faculty member received €2 million funding from the European Research Council for a project that seeks to develop new algorithms for more sustainable and efficient ML.

Three NIST researchers received 2024 Presidential Rank Awards: Nada Golmie for advancing wireless communications; John Kitching for pioneering low-power, chip-scale atomic clocks; and John Lehman who achieved transformative work on sensors for optical power measurements.

The U.S. Department of Defense and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration completed a study of the Lower 37 GHz band (37-37.6 GHz), leading to a shared-use framework for government and commercial users in this “innovation band.”

Brookhaven National Laboratory scientists mapped out quantum entanglement in protons.

Events and Further Reading

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

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