Chip Industry Week In Review

GlobalFoundries will create a new center for advanced packaging and testing of U.S.-made essential chips within its New York manufacturing facility.

A flurry of announcements on advanced semiconductors and AI rolled out this week as U.S. President Biden wrapped up his term:

• The Biden-Harris Administration released an Interim Final Rule on Artificial Intelligence Diffusion to strengthen U.S. security and economic leadership in AI. The rule aims to ensure responsible global AI development by streamlining chip sales to allies, setting security standards, and restricting access to advanced AI systems for countries of concern.
• CSIS released an emergency podcast on the AI Diffusion rule. The SIA released a statement of disappointment. And NVIDIA characterized it as sweeping overreach.
• The U.S. Department of Commerce tightened export controls on advanced semiconductors and added 16 entities, including China’s Sophgo Technologies, to the Entity List to prevent China from acquiring chips for military and surveillance applications.
• President Biden also signed an executive order to accelerate the development of AI infrastructure in the United States. The order directs federal agencies to expedite the creation of large-scale data centers and clean power facilities at government sites, ensuring their interconnection with the electric grid and streamlining the permitting process.

Other U.S. CHIPS Act government funding were announced, including

• New preliminary agreements:
  • MACOM will receive up to$70 million to expand and modernize its semiconductor facilities in Massachusetts and North Carolina, to increase domestic production of critical components for defense and telecom. (The company also announced a five-year, $345 million investment plan.)
  • Four separate non-binding agreements were issued for:
    • up to $105 million for Analog Devices to expand and modernize facilities in the U.S. for RF systems and mature node semiconductor manufacturing;
    • up to $79 million for Coherent to expand SiC substrate and epitaxial wafer production in Pennsylvania;
    • up to $10.3 million for IntelliEPI to enhance epitaxy wafer production in Texas;
    • to $52.1 million for Sumika to build a facility in Texas for ultra-high purity chemicals used in semiconductor manufacturing.
• The U.S. government also finalized these previously announced awards:
  • $53 million in funding to HP from the CHIPS Incentives Program to expand and modernize its semiconductor facility in Oregon.
  • $1.4 billion in CHIPS National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program funding, including $300 million to Absolics, Applied Materials, and Arizona State University for advanced substrates and materials research, and $1.1 billion to Natcast for managing advanced packaging capabilities at the NSTC Prototyping and Advanced Packaging Piloting Facility in Arizona.
  • NIST awarded Natcast up to $6.3 billion over 10 years to operate the National Semiconductor Technology Center (NSTC).
• $210 million was awarded to six technology hubs with a focus on advancing semiconductor research and development, including areas like GaN-based semiconductors.
• Sivers Semiconductors secured contracts worth up to $30 million with the NEMC hub under the CHIPS Act to develop advanced mmWave chips for 5G/6G and electronic warfare applications.

Imec published its lower cost/low effort strategy for introducing 2D materials, targeting them at mature nodes and lower-performing devices. Imec also provided a research update on a novel 3D buffer memory for AI and machine learning,

Special Report: What’s The Best Way To Sell An Inference Engine? The hardware choices for AI inference engines are chips, chiplets, and IP. Multiple considerations must be weighed.

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In-Depth
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Events and Further Reading

Global

In Asia:

• Infineon broke ground on a new semiconductor backend production site in Thailand aimed at meeting the growing demand for power modules. The company also formed a new business unit that combines existing Sensor and RF businesses into one organization called SURF.
• India’s Indichip Semiconductors and Japan‘s Yitoa Micro Technology, in a JV, signed an MoU with the Andhra Pradesh government to set up India’s first private semiconductor fab, reports Times of India.
• Japan plans to spend $1 billion to support its chip design industry, Nikkei Asia reported.
• UMC’s Fab 12A in Taiwan became the first semiconductor foundry to be recognized as a “Global Lighthouse” by the World Economic Forum for its successful implementation of Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies.

CSIS published two new reports: “Silicon Island: Assessing Taiwan’s Importance to U.S. Economic Growth and Security” and “Back & Forth: Intel and the Semiconductor Industry.”

In the U.S.:

• The SIA released recommendations for the incoming Trump-Vance Administration and Congress.
• TSMC has begun producing advanced 4-nm node chips at its Arizona facility, reports Reuters.
• Polar Semiconductor signed a technology licensing agreement with Israel’s Tower Semiconductor to enable domestic production of Tower’s TS18 Power Management process.
• IonQ will work with the U.S. Air Force Research Lab on a $21.1 million project to install quantum network infrastructure and establish free-space optical links from ground stations to drones.

In Europe:

• The Netherlands expanded export controls for advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment, effective April 1, 2025.
• The EU’s Chips JU adopted an amendment to its Multiannual Work Program for 2023 to 2027.

In-Depth

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

• Using Test And Metrology Data For Dynamic Process Control
• Screening for Known Good Interposers
• DFT At The Leading Edge

And its Low-Power High-Performance newsletter featured these articles:

• Special Report: What’s The Best Way To Sell An Inference Engine?
• Power Budgets Optimized By Managing Glitch Power
• 2025: So Many Possibilities

More reporting this week:

• AI Won’t Replace Subject Matter Experts
• Startup Challenges In A Changing EDA World

Markets and Money

Intel will spin out its venture capital arm, Intel Capital, into a standalone fund under a new name. Intel will remain an anchor investor.

The global semiconductor chip manufacturing materials market is set to grow nearly 8% in 2025, driven by AI-related demand and a recovery in other sectors like automotive and mobile, forecasts TECHCET. Despite geopolitical tensions, the market is expected to top $84 billion by 2028, with strong growth in areas like ALD/CVD, lithography materials, and wafers.

EDA and IP revenue increased 8.8% in Q3 2024, dragged down from the double-digit growth of recent quarters by a softening in sales to China.

TSMC released fourth quarter financials.

Recent fundings and deals:

• Onto Innovation secured a $69 million deal with a leading DRAM manufacturer for its optical metrology products, signaling a potential recovery in the DRAM market. The company also announced the Iris G2 system, a film metrology platform.
• Seeqc raised $30 million for its cryogenic chip-based system for quantum control and readout.
• Quantum Brilliance raised $20 million in Series A for room temperature diamond-based quantum computers.
• Photon IP raised €4.8 million in seed funding to integrate silicon photonics with active III-V materials.
• Vertical Compute, a startup and imec spinoff aimed at overcoming limitations in AI processing, secured €20 million in seed funding.
• The Vermont Gallium Nitride Tech Hub was awarded $23.7M from the U.S. Economic Development Administration.
• NXP secured a €1 billion loan from the European Investment Bank to support its research and development efforts in key technologies like automotive processors, advanced radar, and secure edge identification across its European facilities.

Acquisition news:

• The EU Commission approved Synopsys’ proposed acquisition of Ansys in Phase 1 (See Synopsys comment). More reviews are pending.
• Onsemi completed its $115 million acquisition of Qorvo’s silicon carbide JFET business.
• Network security company BTQ Technologies acquired Cimtech Technology’s compute-in-memory IP.
• Micross Components acquired Integra Technologies, a U.S.-based OSAT provider specializing in semiconductor assembly and testing for high-reliability markets such as aerospace, defense, medical, and automotive.

AI chipmaker Blaize listed on the NASDAQ after the completion of its merger with SPAC BurTech Acquisition Corp.

Security

Recent security research:

• Leveraging ASIC AI Chips for Homomorphic Encryption (Georgia Tech, MIT, Google, Cornell)
• Modern Hardware Security: A Review of Attacks and Countermeasures (BITS Pilani, et al., in India)
• Comb Frequency Division Multiplexing: A Non-Binary Modulation For AirGap Covert Channel Transmission (IETR, et al.)

The U.S. Justice Department and FBI announced they had conducted an international operation to delete PlugX malware from thousands of computers infected by Chinese hackers calling themselves Mustang Panda and Twill Typhoon.

CISA and partners published an AI cybersecurity collaboration playbook and the agency issued a number of alerts/advisories.

Product News

Lam Research’s dry photoresist technology has been qualified for direct-print 28nm pitch back end of line (BEOL) logic at 2nm by imec for advanced semiconductor manufacturing at 2nm and below.

Onto Innovation launched new 3D interconnect process control technologies, including the 3Di for bump control in HBM and advanced logic, and the EchoScan for void detection in wafer bonding.

Infineon developed a capacitive micromechanical ultrasonic transducer (CMUT), enabling new industrial and medical use cases. The monolithic integration of MEMS and ASICs reduces the noise floor by 20X and improves the absolute signal by 1,000X compared to conventional piezoelectric ceramics of a similar size.

Fig. 1: CMUT in eWLB package. Source: Infineon

RIKEN adopted Siemens’ emulation and high-level synthesis platforms to conduct architecture and design space exploration of AI accelerator devices.

Keysight debuted a network visibility partner program that integrates third-party security and monitoring solutions directly into its network packet brokers.

SiTime Corporation uncorked a single-chip timing solution for SmartNICs and switches in AI data centers.

MZ Technologies unveiled an integrated chiplet/package EDA tool to address thermal and mechanical stress in the pre-layout stage of 3D-IC design.

YorChip and Chipcraft teamed up on a low-power 8-bit 200Ms/s ADC chiplet. It combines the ADC from Chipcraft’s GNSS chip along with YorChip’s chiplet PHY technology.

Automotive

The U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security finalized the rule to secure connected vehicle supply chains, banning certain hardware and software from China or Russia.

Norway is on track to be the first all-electric country, reports BBC. However, that distinction is misleading. Oil and gas sales contribute roughly a fifth of the country’s GDP, according to Statista.

Infineon launched a new MOTIX family of full-bridge ICs for smart brushed DC motor applications, such as automotive door, mirror, seat, body and zone control modules.

Level 3 autonomous EVs will account for 10% of new models by 2030, according to TrendForce.

Argonne National Laboratory reported on the potential of lithium-sulfur batteries while Stanford University reported on sodium-ion batteries.

Research

Rice University researchers achieved a breakthrough in materials science by demonstrating that carbon nanotube (CNT) fibers can be fully recycled without any loss in their structural or mechanical properties.

Argonne and a South Korean national laboratory, ETRI, will develop silicon sensors for a future Electron-Ion Collider.

USC Viterbi researchers developed a pulse-mode electron paramagnetic resonance chip that can perform both continuous-wave and pulse mode EPR.

Events and Further Reading

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

Upcoming webinars are here.

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