Chip Industry Week In Review


SK hynix and TSMC plan to collaborate on HBM4 development and next-generation packaging technology, with plans to mass produce HBM4 chips in 2026. The agreement is an early indicator for just how competitive, and potentially lucrative, the HBM market is becoming. SK hynix said the collaboration will enable breakthroughs in memory performance with increased density of the memory controller at t... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Applied Materials may scale back or cancel its $4 billion new Silicon Valley R&D facility in light of the U.S. government's recent announcement to reduce funding for construction, modernization, or expansion of semiconductor research and development (R&D) facilities in the United States, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. TSMC could receive up to $6.6 billion in direct funding... » read more

Engineers Or Their Tools: Which Is Responsible For Finding Bugs?


Experts at the table: Finding and eliminating bugs at the source can be painstaking work, but it can prevent bigger problems later in the design flow, when they are more difficult and expensive to fix.  Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss these issues with Ashish Darbari, CEO at Axiomise; Ziyad Hanna, corporate vice president R&D at Cadence; Jim Henson, ASIC verification software... » read more

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, Gregory Haley, and Liz Allan. Cadence plans to acquire BETA CAE Systems for $1.24 billion, the latest volley in a race to sell multi-physics simulation and analysis across a broad set of customers with deep pockets. Cadence said the deal opens the door to structural analysis for the automotive, aerospace, industrial, and health care sectors. Under the terms of the agreement, 6... » read more

Increased Automotive Data Use Raises Privacy, Security Concerns


The amount of data being collected, processed, and stored in vehicles is exploding, and so is the value of that data. That raises questions that are still not fully answered about how that data will be used, by whom, and how it will be secured. Automakers are competing based on the latest versions of advanced technologies such as ADAS, 5G, and V2X, but the ECUs, software-defined vehicles, an... » 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

2.5D Integration: Big Chip Or Small PCB?


Defining whether a 2.5D device is a printed circuit board shrunk down to fit into a package, or is a chip that extends beyond the limits of a single die, may seem like hair-splitting semantics, but it can have significant consequences for the overall success of a design. Planar chips always have been limited by size of the reticle, which is about 858mm2. Beyond that, yield issues make the si... » read more

Accellera Preps New Standard For Clock-Domain Crossing


Part of the hierarchical development flow is about to get a lot simpler, thanks to a new standard being created by Accellera. What is less clear is how long will it take before users see any benefit. At the register transfer level (RTL), when a data signal passes between two flip flops, it initially is assumed that clocks are perfect. After clock-tree synthesis and place-and-route are perfor... » read more

Blog Review: Feb. 28


Synopsys' Emilie Viasnoff suggests that employing virtual sensors when developing an autonomous driving system helps aid in sensor design and minimizes the hazards associated with extensive real-world driving. Cadence's Anthony Ducimo introduces a methodology for embedded BootROM verification that relies only on standard RTL verification toolchains to reveal bugs, identify unused sections of... » read more

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