Chip Industry Week In Review


Infineon rolled out the world's first 300mm gallium nitride (GaN) wafer, opening the door for high-volume manufacturing of GaN-based power semiconductors. A 300mm wafer contains 2.3 times as many chips per wafer as a 200mm wafer. Fig.1: Infineon's 300mm GaN wafer. Source: Infineon The Semiconductor Industry Association released its 2024 State of the U.S. Semiconductor Industry report th... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Concerns mount on the use of American-manufactured semiconductors in Russian weapons, with Analog Devices, AMD, Intel and TI set to testify next week before the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Also, U.S. and other government agencies issued a joint advisory and more details about ongoing Russian military cyberattacks, espionage, and sabotage. The U.S. Commerce Departmen... » read more

Liquid Cooling, Meeting The Demands Of AI Data Centers


Many Porsche “purists” reflect forlornly upon the 1997, 5th generation, 996 version of the iconic 911 sports car. It was the first year of the water-cooled engine versions of the 911, which had previously been based on air-cooled engines since their entry into the market in 1964. The 911 was also the successor to the popular air-cooled 356. For over three decades, Porsche’s flagship 911 w... » read more

New AI Processors Architectures Balance Speed With Efficiency


Leading AI systems designs are migrating away from building the fastest AI processor possible, adopting a more balanced approach that involves highly specialized, heterogeneous compute elements, faster data movement, and significantly lower power. Part of this shift revolves around the adoption of chiplets in 2.5D/3.5D packages, which enable greater customization for different workloads and ... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


The Biden-Harris Administration announced preliminary terms with HP for $50 million in direct funding under the CHIPs and Science Act to support the expansion and modernization of HP’s existing microfluidics and microelectromechanical systems (“MEMS”) facility in Corvallis, Oregon. CHIPS for America launched the CHIPS Metrology Community, a collaborative initiative designed to advance ... » read more

Defining The Chiplet Socket


Experts At The Table: The semiconductor industry has been buzzing with the possibilities surrounding chiplets, but so far this packaging technology has been confined to large semiconductor companies that are vertically integrated. The industry has been attempting to open this up to a broader group of people. To work out what this means for chiplets, and what standardization will be required, Se... » read more

A HW-Based Correct Execution Environment Supporting Virtual Memory (Korea U., KAIST)


A new technical paper titled "A Hardware-Based Correct Execution Environment Supporting Virtual Memory" was published by researchers at Korea University, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and other universities. Abstract "The rapid increase in data generation has led to outsourcing computation to cloud service providers, allowing clients to handle large tasks without inve... » read more

3.5D: The Great Compromise


The semiconductor industry is converging on 3.5D as the next best option in advanced packaging, a hybrid approach that includes stacking logic chiplets and bonding them separately to a substrate shared by other components. This assembly model satisfies the need for big increases in performance while sidestepping some of the thorniest issues in heterogeneous integration. It establishes a midd... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology proposed a new EUV litho technology using only four reflective mirrors and a new method of illumination optics that it claims will use 1/10 the power and cost half as much as existing EUV technology from ASML. Applied Materials may not receive expected U.S. funding to build a $4 billion research facility in Sunnyvale, CA, due to internal government... » read more

Chip Security Now Depends On Widening Supply Chain


Securing chips is becoming more challenging as SoCs are disaggregated into chiplets, creating new vulnerabilities that involve hardware and software, as well as multiple entities, and extending threats across a much broader supply chain. In the past, much of the cyber threat model was confined to either hardware or software, and where multiple vendors were involved, various chips were separa... » read more

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