Chip Industry Week In Review


ECTC Panel-level packaging, hybrid bonding, new substrates, and fine-pitch interconnects topped the list of advanced packaging technologies at ECTC this week. Among the announcements: ASE launched an automated 310mm × 310mm panel-level packaging production line. Expected to enter production in the first half of 2027, the line is compatible with FOCoS and FOCoS-Bridge pa... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


The IEEE ISSCC conference was held this week in San Francisco. Among the highlights: IBM detailed an AI accelerator based on its new inferencing dataflow architecture. CEA-Leti presented a chip-scale, ultra-fast, battery-operated EPR spectrometer. QuTech introduced a cryo-CMOS SoC with NV centers in diamond. UTokyo showed its low-jitter PLL architecture for beyond 5G/6G. Imec d... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


Government funding/defunding NIST is terminating funding for the SMART USA Institute, a CHIPS Act research center focused on digital twins, prompting congressional concern that the decision disrupts active awards and weakens U.S. semiconductor R&D commitments. Korea Zinc was awarded $210M in CHIPS Act funding towards a new $6.6B Tennessee advanced smelter and minerals processing facility,... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


SK hynix is ramping HBM manufacturing capacity to meet explosive demand for AI data centers. The company will launch 16-stack HBM4 next year, and up to 12-stack HBM4E. HBM5 and HBM5E will be introduced between 2029 and 2031, reports Business Korea. China will not have access to NVIDIA’s most advanced chips, President Trump told 60 Minutes. The Dutch economy minister said Nexperia's chip... » 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

Chip Industry Week in Review


Check out the Inside Chips podcast for our behind-the-scenes analysis. Newly proposed U.S. legislation called the Chip Security Act would use location verification tracking as a tool to help combat chip smuggling. This follows a report by the Economist that showed Taiwan exports of advanced chips to Malaysia in the first quarter has nearly reached 2024 totals, heightening concerns that China... » read more

Global IC Fabs And Facilities Report: 2024


The chip industry made significant capital investments this year to build new fabs and facilities or expand existing premises. A number of sites were dedicated to SiC, GaN, DRAM, HBM, along with packaging and assembly by OSATs, and essential gases, chemicals, and other components. More than a dozen R&D centers were also established for 8-inch wafers, EUV, and advanced packaging. Investments... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Siemens announced plans to acquire Altair Engineering, a provider of industrial simulation and analysis, data science, and high-performance computing (HPC) software, for about $10 billion. Altair's software will become part of Siemens' Xcelerator portfolio and provide a boost to physics-based digital twins. Onto Innovation bought Lumina Instruments, a San Jose, California-based maker of lase... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Amkor will provide turnkey advanced packaging and test services to TSMC in Amkor's planned facility in Peoria, Arizona, in a deal announced on Thursday. The companies jointly specified the packaging technologies, such as TSMC’s Integrated Fan-Out (InFO) and Chip on Wafer on Substrate (CoWoS). President Biden signed into law a bill that exempts some semiconductor projects funded by the U.S.... » read more

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