Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers AMD has rolled out its new MI200 series products, the first exascale-class GPU accelerators. Using a fan-out bridge packaging technology, the MI200 series are designed for high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The MI200 series accelerators feature a multi-die GPU architecture with 128GB of HBM2e memory. Typically, the HBM2e memory stack a... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers TSMC posted its results for the quarter and confirmed its long-awaited plans to build a fab in Japan. It’s not a leading-edge fab, but rather a plant for 28nm/22nm processes. “The company confirmed plans to build a new fab in Japan for 22nm + 28nm,” said Aaron Rakers, an analyst at Wells Fargo, in a research note. “An average 22/28nm fab costs ~$4-5B range per 45k wspm. Fab ... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Valens Semiconductor began trading on the New York Stock Exchange as VLN after a merger with special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) PTK Acquisition Corp. Valens offers high-speed connectivity chips for the audio-video and automotive markets, including its HDBaseT technology for connectivity between ultra-HD video sources and remote displays and its in-vehicle high-speed links. The transacti... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive GM’s self-driving car Cruise and Alphabet’s Waymo have won permits to offer rides to passengers in California. Ford Motor Company announced it is expanding its electric pickup truck assembly lines. With SK Innovation, Ford will create a 3,600-acre mega campus in west Tennessee to produce electric trucks. The company estimates the campus will add 6,000 new jobs to the economy.... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers, OEMs Intel plans to establish foundry capacity at its fab in Ireland. The company has also launched the so-called Intel Foundry Services Accelerator to help automotive chip designers transition from mature to advanced nodes. The company is setting up a new design team and offering both custom and industry-standard intellectual property (IP) to support the needs of automotive custom... » read more

Bumps Vs. Hybrid Bonding For Advanced Packaging


Advanced packaging continues to gain steam, but now customers must decide whether to design their next high-end packages using existing interconnect schemes or move to a next-generation, higher-density technology called copper hybrid bonding. The decision is far from simple, and in some cases both technologies may be used. Each technology adds new capabilities in next-generation advanced pac... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Government policy The U.S. government hopes to build more fabs and expand its R&D efforts in the United States. To help enable those efforts, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer has introduced the new bipartisan U.S. Innovation and Competition Act. This combines Schumer’s Endless Frontier Act and other bipartisan competitiveness bills. It includes $52 billion in emergency supplem... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


M&A AMD will acquire Xilinx for $35 billion in an all-stock deal. "Joining together with AMD will help accelerate growth in our data center business and enable us to pursue a broader customer base across more markets,” said Victor Peng, Xilinx president and CEO. The deal is expected to close by the end of 2021. The acquisition of the programmable logic giant will leave only a few purepla... » read more

The Race To Much More Advanced Packaging


Momentum is building for copper hybrid bonding, a technology that could pave the way toward next-generation 2.5D and 3D packages. Foundries, equipment vendors, R&D organizations and others are developing copper hybrid bonding, which is a process that stacks and bonds dies using copper-to-copper interconnects in advanced packages. Still in R&D, hybrid bonding for packaging provides mo... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Edge, cloud, data center Cadence added new verification IP (VIP) for hyperscalar data centers that supports CXL – Compute Express Link, HBM3, and Ethernet 802.3ck. The VIP are part of Cadence’s Verification Suite. Cadence also released IP for 56G long-reach SerDes on TSMC’s N7 and N6 process technologies. Many Mentor, a Siemens Business, IC design tools are now certified TSMC’s N5 a... » read more

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