Chip Industry Week In Review


By Jesse Allen, Karen Heyman, and Susan Rambo UMC and Intel will collaborate on the development of a 12nm semiconductor process platform to address high-growth markets, such as mobile, communications infrastructure, and networking. Apple reportedly pushed back the launch date of its long-awaited electric vehicle and scaled back the self-driving features to L2 driver assistance, according ... » read more

TSMC Reports 4Q2023 Earnings: N2 Still On Track For 2025 Production


TSMC reported their 4th quarter and end of year financial numbers for 2023. Year over year, net revenue was down 4.5% to NT$2,161.74 billion, but quarter over quarter revenue was essentially flat at NT$625.52 billion, so it appears that as 3nm is ramping up that revenue is improving. For the fourth quarter, 3nm contributed 15% of TSMC’s total wafer revenue, up from 6% in the third quarter ... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Jesse Allen, Gregory Haley, and Liz Allan Synopsys will acquire Ansys for about $35 billion in cash and stock. The deal will boost Synopsys' multi-physics simulation capabilities, which are essential for complex 3D-IC designs, where thermal density can have significant repercussions. The acquisition is expected to be finalized in the first half of 2025. Worldwide semiconductor revenue ... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Susan Rambo, Jesse Allen, and Liz Allan The U.S. government will provide about $162 million in federal incentives, under the CHIPS and Science Act, to help Microchip onshore its semiconductor supply chain. The move is aimed at securing a reliable domestic supply of MCUs and mature-node chips. “Today’s announcement will help propel semiconductor manufacturing projects in Colorado and O... » read more

Visa Shakeup On Tap To Help Solve Worker Shortage


Governments around the world are racing to train workers to design, manufacture, and package chips, but they are facing a talent shortfall that is expected to continue despite their best efforts — particularly for those engineers capable of designing and producing the most advanced chips. The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) predicts a U.S. chip worker shortfall of 67,000 by 2030, ... » 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

Proprietary Vs. Commercial Chiplets


Large chipmakers are focusing on chiplets as the best path forward for integrating more functions into electronic devices. The challenge now is how to pull the rest of the chip industry along, creating a marketplace for third-party chiplets that can be chosen from a menu using specific criteria that can speed time to market, help to control costs, and behave as reliably as chiplets developed in... » read more

Next-Gen Power Integrity Challenges


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss power integrity challenges and best practices in designs at 7nm and below, and in 2.5D and 3D-IC packages, with Chip Stratakos, partner, physical design at Microsoft; Mohit Jain, principal engineer at Qualcomm; Thomas Quan, director at TSMC; and Murat Becer, vice president at Ansys. What follows are excerpts of that conversatio... » read more

Making Heterogeneous Integration More Predictable


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss problems and potential solutions in heterogeneous integration with Dick Otte, president and CEO of Promex Industries; Mike Kelly, vice president of chiplets/FCBGA integration at Amkor Technology; Shekhar Kapoor, senior director of product management at Synopsys; John Park, product management group director in Cadence's Custom I... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Jesse Allen, Karen Heyman, and Liz Allan Japan's Rapidus and the University of Tokyo are teaming up with France's Leti to meet its previously announced mass production goal of 2nm chips by 2027, and chips in the 1nm range in the 2030s. Rapidus was formed in 2022 with the support of eight Japanese companies — Sony, Kioxia, Denso, NEC, NTT, SoftBank, Toyota, and Mitsubishi's banking arm, ... » read more

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