Week In Review: Semiconductor Manufacturing, Test

Global semiconductor sales reached $574 billion in 2022, and U.S. semiconductor companies accounted for sales totaling $275 billion, or 48% of the global market, according to the 2023 Factbook released by the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA).

DRAM and NAND prices likely will continue to fall further this quarter because production cuts have not kept pace with weakening demand, according to a new report from TrendForce. DRAM prices are expected to drop another 13% to 18%, while NAND prices are expected to fall between 8% and 13%.

Meanwhile, SiC wafer revenues are expected to grow by 22% in 2023. This is even faster than 2022, when revenues climbed 15% year-over-year. Overall 2022 to 2027 CAGR growth for SiC is estimated to be approximately 17%, according to a new report by Techcet.

Data Leakage is becoming a bigger issue for chipmakers as chips become increasingly complex and heterogeneous. There is scant oversight as more data is stored and utilized by chipmakers for other designs.

Advantest shipped its 10,000^th V93000 SoC test system to Infineon Technologies. The milestone system is a V93000 configuration developed to address the diverse testing needs of power, analog, microcontroller and sensor ICs used in automotive and microcontroller applications.

Bruker announced it has finalized the acquisition of ZONTAL, an innovative platform provider for the digital transformation of the analytical laboratories. It also integrates biopharma technical data.

Fujifilm entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the semiconductor high-purity process chemicals (HPPC) business, CMC Materials KMG Corporation (KMG), from U.S.-based Entegris.

Keysight released its 2022 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Report and 2022 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Report, highlighting the company’s recent achievements.

TEL received the Texas Instruments 2022 Supplier Excellence Award for the second straight year.

USJC and Denso announced the first shipment of insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBT), which have entered mass production at a USJC 300mm fab. The announcement comes just a year after the companies announced their partnership to develop this critical power semiconductor used in electric vehicles.

FuriosaAI, a South Korean AI company, selected proteanTecs’ deep data analytics solutions in their next-generation AI accelerators targeted at hyperscale data centers.

Siemens announced it has been positioned by Gartner in the Leaders quadrant of the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) for the sixth consecutive time.

Products/Technology

Nordson Test and Inspection exhibited its CyberOptics SQ3000 multi-function system for AOI, SPI and CMM, along with the X3 AXI system at SMTConnect, in Nuremberg, Germany.

Infineon and Hon Hai Technology Group (Foxconn) announced a long term partnership in electric vehicles to jointly develop  more efficient and intelligent systems based on silicon carbide (SiC), leveraging Infineon’s automotive SiC innovations and Foxconn’s experience in automotive systems.

Keysight released a new Universal Signal Processing Architecture (USPA) prototyping platform, enabling complete chip prototyping and verification, pre-tapeout, in a real-time development environment integrating digital twins of fully-compliant, standards-based signals. Keysight also obtained a FiRa Consortium validation for its automated ultra-wideband (UWB) PHY Conformance Test Tool, enabling rapid testing of physical layer (PHY) conformance of  FiRa UWB-based products.

PDF Solutions announced the successful implementation at Silicon Motion of its unified Big Data Analytics platform, which helps eliminate conflicts and redundancies in data handling.

Synopsys announced an agreement between its Software Integrity Group and ReversingLabs that provides software development and security teams with a comprehensive software supply-chain risk-management solution.

Applied Intuition and NI are collaborating to provide reliable test systems for the validation of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Autonomous Driving (AD) technology.

Texas Instruments  introduced a functional safety-compliant, isolated SiC gate driver, the UCC5880-Q1 that lets EV engineers design more efficient traction inverters that improve vehicle range by up to 7 miles per charge.

Cyber Defense Magazine named MITRE Engage as the Market Leader for Deception-Based Security in its Cyber Security Research Award program.

Research

Scientists at NIST’s Physical Measurement Laboratory are ready to license an extreme small-scale measurement technology for applications such as thin-film processing, semiconductor fabrication and inspection, and sterilization of medical equipment. The Photonic Calorimeter is a chip-based dosimeter for inexpensive manufacturing and operation and to measure absolute dose at an unprecedented small physical scale.

Cyber Defense Magazine named MITRE Engage the Market Leader for Deception-Based Security in its Cyber Security Research Award program.

Further reading

See our Manufacturing, Packaging and Materials newsletter for these feature articles:

• Nanoimprint Finally Finds its Footing
• Assist Layers: The Unsung Heroes of EUV Lithography
• Smarter Ways to Manufacture Chips

Read our Test, Measurement & Analytics newsletter for these highlights and more:

• Pinpointing Timing Delays Can Improve Chip Reliability
• 3D Structures Change Wire Bond Inspection
• Optimizing Scan Test for Complex ICs

Upcoming events in the chip industry:

• ITF World 2023: Imec’s flagship event on semiconductor advances & deep-tech solutions, May 16 – 17, (Antwerp, Belgium)
• Annual ESD Alliance Membership Meeting & Outlook, May 18 (Santa Clara, CA)
• International Memory Workshop, May 21 – 24 (Monterey, CA)
• Embedded Vision Summit, May 22 – 24 (Santa Clara, CA)