Chip Industry Week In Review


By Adam Kovac, Karen Heyman, and Liz Allan. Europe's semiconductor footprint is growing in areas that previously had little association with chips. Silicon Box plans to build a panel-level foundry in northern Italy, funded in part by the Italian government. The deal is worth around €3.2 billion ($3.6B). In addition, imec will establish a specialized 300mm chip technology pilot line in M... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Adam Kovac, Karen Heyman, and Liz Allan. India approved the construction of two fabs and a packaging house, for a total investment of about $15.2 billion, according to multiple sources. One fab will be jointly owned by Tata and Taiwan's Powerchip. The second fab will be a joint investment between CG Power, Japan's Renesas Electronics, and Thailand's Stars Microelectronics. Tata will run t... » read more

Thinking Big: From Chips To Systems


Semiconductor Engineering sat down with Aart de Geus, executive chair and founder of Synopsys, to talk about the shift from chips to systems, next-generation transistors, and what's required to build multi-die devices in the context of rapid change and other systems. SE: What are the biggest changes you're seeing in the chip industry these days, and why now? de Geus: It's not just the siz... » read more

Backside Power Delivery Gears Up For 2nm Devices


The top three foundries plan to implement backside power delivery as soon as the 2nm node, setting the stage for faster and more efficient switching in chips, reduced routing congestion, and lower noise across multiple metal layers. The benefits of using this approach are significant. By delivering power using slightly fatter, less resistive lines on the backside, rather than inefficient fro... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Jesse Allen, Gregory Haley, and Liz Allan Intel officially launched Intel Foundry this week, claiming it's the "world's first systems foundry for the AI era." The foundry also showed off a more detailed technology roadmap down to expanded 14A process technology. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger noted the foundry will be separate from the chipmaker, utilize third-party chiplets and IP, and leverage... » read more

Why Chiplets Are So Critical In Automotive


Chiplets are gaining renewed attention in the automotive market, where increasing electrification and intense competition are forcing companies to accelerate their design and production schedules. Electrification has lit a fire under some of the biggest and best-known carmakers, which are struggling to remain competitive in the face of very short market windows and constantly changing requir... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Jesse Allen, Linda Christensen, and Liz Allan.  The Biden administration plans to invest more than $5B  for semiconductor R&D and workforce support, including in the National Semiconductor Technology Center (NSTC), as part of the rollout of the CHIPS Act. Today's announcement included at least hundreds of millions for the NSTC workforce efforts, including creating a Workforce Cente... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Jesse Allen, Gregory Haley, and Liz Allan. Cadence introduced an AI-based thermal stress and analysis platform aimed at 2.5D and 3D-ICs, and cooling for PCBs and electronic assemblies. The company also debuted a HW/SW accelerated digital twin solution for multi-physics system design and analysis, combining GPU-resident computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solvers with dedicated GPU hardwar... » read more

3D Integration Supports CIM Versatility And Accuracy


Compute-in-memory (CIM) is gaining attention due to its efficiency in limiting the movement of massive volumes of data, but it's not perfect. CIM modules can help reduce the cost of computation for AI workloads, and they can learn from the highly efficient approaches taken by biological brains. When it comes to versatility, scalability, and accuracy, however, significant tradeoffs are requir... » read more

Money Pours Into New Fabs And Facilities


Fabs, packaging, test and assembly, and R&D all drew major funding in 2023. Companies poured money into offshore locations, such as India and Malaysia, to access a larger workforce and lower costs, while also partnering with governments to secure domestic supply chains amid ongoing geopolitical turmoil. Looking ahead, artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, and data applications... » read more

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