Chip Industry Week In Review


SK hynix started mass production of 1-terabit  321-high NAND, with availability scheduled for the first half of next year. Rapidus will receive an additional ¥200 billion yen ($1.28B) from the Japanese government beginning in fiscal year 2025, reports Nikkei. This is on top of ¥920 billion yen ($5.98B) Rapidus has already received from the government in support of its goal to reach commer... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


CSIS issued a new report that says Intel is "not too big to fail, but too good to lose." The report noted that Intel is needed for national security, and that it must be viewed in a geopolitical context rather than from a purely business standpoint when it comes to funding the company. Japan's government is creating a 10 trillion yen (~$65 billion) fund for next-gen technologies, including A... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Europe's top court ruled in Intel's favor, voiding a $1.1 billion fine imposed by the European Union and dismissing charges of anti-competitive behavior. IBM released yield benchmarks for high-NA EUV, which serve as proof points that the newest advanced litho equipment will enable scaling beyond the 2nm process node. Also on the lithography front, Nikon is developing a maskless digital litho... » read more

Optimizing Wafer Edge Processes For Chip Stacking


Stacking chiplets vertically using short and direct wafer-to-wafer bonds can reduce signal delay to negligible levels, enabling smaller, thinner packages with faster memory/processor speeds and lower power consumption. The race is on to implement wafer stacking and die-to-wafer hybrid bonding, now considered essential for stacking logic and memory, 3D NAND, and possibly multi-layer DRAM stac... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Synopsys agreed to sell its Optical Solutions Group to Keysight for an undisclosed amount, in a deal deemed necessary for Synopsys to win regulatory approval for its planned acquisition of Ansys. The sale to Keysight is contingent on the Synopsys-Ansys deal going through. Meanwhile, Ansys has its own optical business. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) made the first awards for Microelectr... » read more

Reducing Risk In The Semiconductor Supply Chain


Companies that were hit with chip shortages during the pandemic are changing their strategies to prevent future problems, deploying a combination of supply chain mapping, second sourcing, and digital transformation. Those shortages caused a $200 billion loss for automotive manufacturers, and the disruptions were far more widespread, in many cases lasting for years. Companies of all sorts wer... » read more

Power Semis Usher In The Silicon Carbide Era


Silicon carbide production is ramping quickly, driven by end market demand in automotive and price parity with silicon. Many thousands of power semiconductor modules already are in use in electric vehicles for on-board charging, traction inversion, and DC-to-DC conversion. Today, most of those are fabricated using silicon-based IGBTs. A shift to silicon carbide-based MOSFETs doubles the powe... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


TSMC, Bosch, Infineon, and NXP will jointly invest in the European Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (ESMC), in Dresden, Germany, to provide advanced semiconductor manufacturing services. ESMC marks a significant step toward construction of a 300mm fab, which is expected to have a monthly production capacity of 40,000 300mm (12-inch) wafers on TSMC’s 28/22nm planar CMOS and 16/12nm finFET proce... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


The Chinese government is considering easing proposed rules that require foreign office equipment makers operating in the country to transfer key product technology to China, per Nikkei Asia. In April 2022, Chinese authorities began revamping their national standards to include a new requirement that key components, such as semiconductors and laser-related items, be designed, developed, and pro... » read more

Week In Review: Semiconductor Manufacturing, Test


TECHCET is forecasting semiconductor precursor revenues, both for high-ƙ metal dielectrics and low-ƙ dielectrics, will increase in the second half of 2023, rebounding from the current zero percent growth rate. Wafer start volumes are expected to rebound in 2024 with expansions in 2nm and 3nm logic devices. SEMI also predicts the global slump in semiconductor sales will end this quarter, gi... » read more

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