Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test

On Sunday, a 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck the southeast region of Taiwan, causing devastation. TSMC officials reported “no known significant impact for now.” Market research firm TrendForce arrived at a similar conclusion based on its analysis of individual fabs.

The Biden administration announced appointment of the leadership team charged with implementing the US CHIPS and Science Act, led by Aaron “Ronnie” Chatterji, the White House coordinator for CHIPS Implementation. Other members include Michael Schmidt, director of the CHIPS Program Office; Eric Lin, interim director, CHIPS Research and Development Office; Todd Fisher, interim senior advisor, CHIPS Program Office; Donna Dubinsky, senior counselor to the Secretary for CHIPS Implementation; and J.D. Grom, senior advisor to the Secretary on CHIPS Implementation.

Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang stated that Moore’s Law is no longer driving semiconductor process at the recent GPU Technology Conference (GTC). “Moore’s law is dead. The ability for Moore’s Law to deliver twice the performance at the same cost, or at the same performance and half the cost, every year and a half is over. It’s completely over,” said Huang. He cited vertical stacking as the new means of achieving advanced device performance.

Manufacturing

The American Semiconductor Innovation Coalition (ASIC) — the group advocating for an efficient innovation hub of the National Semiconductor Technology Center (NSTC) and National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program (NAPMP) funded through the CHIPS and Science Act — has expanded its reach to include members representing all stages of the chipmaking supply chain. One goal is to build semiconductor R&D facilities in six months. New members of ASIC include NVIDIA, DuPont, and GlobalFoundries, which join Analog Devices, IBM, Microsoft, Micron, MIT, Synopsys, and others.

AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su plans to visit Taiwan in early October to meet major suppliers including TSMC and ASE.

Singapore’s Singtel is collaborating with Intel to establish a 5G Multi-access Edge Compute (MEC) incubator.

Siemens Digital Industries Software and United Microelectronics (UMC) are collaborating to develop and implement a new multi-chip 3D IC planning, assembly validation and parasitic extraction (PEX) workflow for UMC’s wafer-on-wafer and chip-on-wafer hybrid bonding technologies. UMC plans to soon offer these flows to its customers. 

Synopsys is now offering a unified hardware system for emulation and prototyping based on the Synopsys ZeBu EP1 emulation system. By adding prototyping functionality to Synopsys ZeBu EP1, a billion-gates emulation system, customers can take advantage of a single verification hardware system throughout their chip development lifecycle.

Brewer Science will host “Manufacturing Day 2022,” on October 7^th, which will feature an open house and guided tours of its Vichy, MO high-volume manufacturing facility.

IBM announced plans to acquire Dialexa, to spearhead IBM’s digital product engineering services.

Equipment and materials

proteanTecs has joined the UCIe (Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express) Consortium to introduce interconnect health monitoring to the expanding advanced packaging ecosystem.

Market research

According to Counterpoint Research, Qualcomm dominates the chipset market with >80% market share. The firm claims Qualcomm’s strong product portfolio and partnerships with tier-1 suppliers and automakers are helping Qualcomm. They expect MediaTek and Samsung to increase market share in 5G automotive connectivity.

Academic/Government

A research team led by Professor Junwoo Son and Dr. Minguk Cho (Department of Materials Science and Engineering) at South Korea’s POSTECH has succeeded in maximizing the switching efficiency of oxide semiconductor devices by inserting platinum nanoparticles.

Researchers at the University of Michigan developed a new nanophotonic material that is stable at temperatures of 1,100°C in air. This heterostructure of perovskite BaZr_0.5Hf_0.5O₃ (BZHO) and rocksalt MgO or similar materials may prove useful in solid-state energy conversion.

Further reading

Check out the recent Test, Measurement & Analytics newsletter and the Manufacturing, Packaging & Materials newsletter for these highlights and more: 

• Making 5G More Reliable
• Improving Redistribution Layers For Fan-Out Packages And SiPs
• Enabling Test Strategies For 2.5D, 3D Stacked ICs
• The Drive Toward More Predictive Maintenance
• Big Changes In Architectures, Transistors, Materials
• How to Compare Chips

Upcoming events:

• SPIE Photomask Technology/Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography, Sept. 25 – 29 (Monterey, CA)
• International Test Conference: ITC 2022, Sept. 25 – 30 (Anaheim, CA)
• IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture, Oct. 1-5 (Chicago, IL)
• Samsung Foundry Forum & SAFE Forum 2022 GLOBAL, Oct. 3 – 21 (5 countries)
• iMAPS-55th International Symposium on Microelectronics, Oct. 3 – 6 (Boston, MA)
• Semicon China, Oct. 5-7 (Shanghai, China)
• SEMI Pacific Northwest Forum, Nov. 3 (Beaverton, OR)