Chip Industry Week In Review


War impacts The Iran War's toll on the chip industry is widening. Over 95% of Taiwan's energy is imported, causing the country to secure alternative sources. Korea is also heavily dependent on energy imports from the Middle East. Shortages of key materials are cropping up everywhere. Helium from Qatar, the second largest producer behind the U.S., is constrained by hostilities in the Per... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Disruptions caused by the Iran conflict have taken about one third of the global helium supply off the market, an essential gas for semiconductor manufacturing, reports the World Economic Forum. Other potential impacts for the chip industry include bromine and other chemical shortages, logistical disruptions, and higher energy prices incurred by fabs in Asia. Top Deals IBM and Lam R... » read more

CPO Is Extending The Limits Of What’s Possible In AI Data Centers


Key Takeaways I/O architecture must be co-designed with compute from day one. Partitioning SoCs into heterogeneous chiplets (compute, EIC, PIC, lasers) directly affects power delivery, floor-planning, interconnect topology, and system scalability. Successful CPO designs require architects to think in multi-physics terms, balancing electrical signaling, thermal stability, optical beha... » read more

Laser Arrays May Simplify Co-Packaged Optics


Key Takeaways Moving photonic ICs into the same package as silicon helps improve performance, but lasers remain outside. A new monolithic laser array allows hundreds of colors, each individually software-tunable New options are being turned into products, which could help commercialize CPO. The move to co-packaged optics (CPO) holds the promise of putting photonic ICs (PICs)... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Big deals and fundings Teradyne and MultiLane are forming a joint venture, MultiLane Test Products (MLTP), to accelerate the development of test solutions for high speed data connections.  Teradyne will be the majority owner. Ricursive Intelligence raised $300M Series A for AI-driven IC design. IonQ plans to acquire SkyWater for ~$1.8B, creating a "vertically integrated full-stack q... » read more

What’s Next for 2.5D Packaging?


Interposers and bridges, two of the key elements for interconnecting multiple chips and chiplets in an advanced package, are undergoing fundamental changes in how they're built and assembled. Interposers are becoming thicker and more complex, while bridges are being used to reduce the assembled cost. Both efforts are facing new challenges. Interposers are effectively platforms on which mu... » read more

Chip Industry Technical Paper Roundup: Oct. 28


New technical papers recently added to Semiconductor Engineering’s library: [table id=486 /] Find more semiconductor research papers here. » read more

Photonics as a Carbon-Sustainable Solution for Next-Gen AI Hardware (Boston Univ., NY CREATES, Lightmatter, Cornell Tech)


A new technical paper titled "Photonics for sustainable AI" was published by researchers at Boston University, NY CREATES, Lightmatter and Cornell Tech. Abstract "The rising computational demands of Artificial Intelligence (AI) are driving a rapid surge in carbon emissions from the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector. Traditional CMOS-based computing is reaching its scali... » read more

Coloring Optical Signals For More Bandwidth In Data Centers


Copper cabling has been the workhorse for moving data inside of AI and HPC data centers, but fiber is nipping at its heels. Optics brings three possible bandwidth multipliers — wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM), the use of different modes, and polarization. Each has a role in longer-distance optical links, but the tradeoffs are different in the data center. WDM appears poised to boost... » read more

Chip Industry Technical Paper Roundup: August 26


New technical papers recently added to Semiconductor Engineering’s library: [table id=467 /] Find more semiconductor research papers here. » read more

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