The European Supreme Court ruled in favor of Intel, voiding a $1.1 billion fine imposed by the European Union and dismissing charges of anti-competitive conduct.
IBM has released a high NA EUV yield benchmark. This serves as proof that modern advanced litho equipment enables scaling beyond the 2nm process node. On the lithography front, Nikon is also developing a maskless digital litho system for advanced packaging applications with 1µm line/space resolution for release in 2026.
Figure 1: High NA EUV lithography enables continuous scaling of copper damascene interconnects down to 21nm pitch using single exposure patterning. Source: IBM.
According to the South China Morning Post, Xiaomi has reportedly successfully taped out China’s first 3nm mobile chip. Few details, including performance metrics, have been made public.
Is the wide bandgap market starting to change direction? According to Reuters, Wolfspeed is building a 3 billion euro factory in Germany focused on automotive SiC chips, citing slow adoption of EVs. I canceled my plans to do so. Meanwhile, Texas Instruments is quadrupling its gallium nitride (GaN) power semiconductor manufacturing capacity, increasing production capacity at its existing Texas GaN facility and its just-started Aizu facility in Japan.
CSIS Published recommendations for policymakers on mitigating risks in the semiconductor supply chain.
Lam Research is using augmented reality (XR) technology in a pilot to identify issues early in the virtual construction phase, provide real-time instructions during tool construction, and detect ergonomic issues early. , reducing the number of accidents on site.
A major lithium mine in Nevada has received US government approval. The Rhyolite Ridge Lithium-Boron Mine is expected to provide enough lithium to power 370,000 EVs annually.
Synaptics has expanded its operations in Hsinchu, Taiwan, building on its existing presence in Taipei. The Hsinchu facility will be home to teams developing AI-enabled edge devices for IoT across consumer, automotive, enterprise, and industrial applications.
A US government news report states:
The United States will set aside up to $1.6 billion to fund advanced packaging research and development under the CHIPS Act. Hemlock Semiconductor could receive up to $325 million under the U.S. CHIPS Act to increase production of semiconductor-grade polysilicon. Natcast has announced its strategic plan for the operation of the National Semiconductor Technology Center. The U.S. Tax Administration has announced final regulations regarding a 25% tax credit for certain investments in semiconductor manufacturing facilities and equipment, including wafer production. The White House issued a memorandum on advancing leadership in AI, specifically for national security.
The RISC-V Summit was held this week in Santa Clara, California, and highlighted the following recent announcements:
RISC-V International has approved the RVA23 profile standard, which is essential for software portability across many hardware implementations and helps avoid vendor lock-in. SiFive has announced the availability of the HiFive Premier development board. Microchip expands its 64-bit portfolio with the PQS-enabled PIC64HX microprocessor. Fractile integrates Andes RISC-V vector processors with an in-memory computing architecture.
Quick links to other news:
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market report
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Events and details
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Semiconductor Engineering published its Manufacturing, Packaging, and Materials newsletter this week, featuring the following top articles:
More reports this week:
market and money
This week’s acquisitions:
Celestial AI has acquired the silicon photonics intellectual property of Rockley Photonics. Mycronic has acquired Modus High-Tech Electronics, a provider of automated optical inspection systems.
Oriole Networks has raised $22 million for photonics technology to build a network of AI chips and combine their processing power to speed up LLM training.
Earnings releases from chip industry (and adjacent) companies coming out this week include SK Hynix, Texas Instruments, and IBM.
Marketing reports released this week:
According to SEMI’s latest silicon shipment forecast, global shipments of silicon wafers are expected to decline by 2% in 2024, with a strong 10% recovery delayed until 2025. IDTechEx predicts the global chiplet market will reach $411 billion by 2035, driven by HPC demand across areas such as data centers and AI. Yole Group predicts that wafer fabrication equipment revenue will reach $133 billion in 2024, and the overall market will reach $165 billion by 2029. Yole also noted that advanced packaging revenue increased 5% to $10.9 billion in Q2 2024, and expects sales to reach $133 billion in Q3 2024. I’m predicting it. 15.5% for $12.6 billion. Techcet expects the semiconductor chip manufacturing materials market to grow 3% to 4% in revenue in 2024, with total revenue exceeding $84 billion by 2028. TrendForce predicts that mature process capacity will grow 6% in 2025, primarily driven by fabs in China.
safety
Introducing large-scale language models into EDA flows can significantly reduce the time, effort, and cost of designing secure chips and systems, but can open the door to more sophisticated attacks. There is also.
Recent security research:
Machine learning-based side-channel attack detection in FPGA SoCs (Karlsruhe IT) Research on SoC security verification methods at pre-silicon stage (University of Florida) Protection: Progressive RTL obfuscation with ThrEshold control techniques during architecture synthesis (U.H.Hyderabad, etc.)
IBM launches Guardium Data Security Center with integrated SaaS-first data security capabilities in hybrid cloud, AI, and quantum transformation.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has accused four companies of making materially misleading disclosures about cybersecurity risks and intrusions.
CISA issued numerous warnings/advisories and supported the Department of Homeland Security’s “See Something, Say Something” campaign.
product news
Arteris announced the availability of a pre-validated data center solution combining its Ncore cache coherent interconnect IP with SiFive’s P870-D CPU. Pre-validated solutions are intended to provide data centers with fast, low-risk development cycles.
Arm has released ExecuTorch beta, which combines its computing platform with the framework from Meta’s PyTorch team. New technology targets AI models on edge devices. ExecuTorch is available on Arm’s Cortex-A CPUs and Ethos-U NPUs and integrates a microkernel optimized for 4-bit quantization.
Arm also announced a client compute subsystem that improved time to first token for AI applications by 46%. CSS incorporates an Arm Cortex-X925 CPU and Immortalis-G925 GPU to process AI applications on smartphone devices.
Keysight and Siemens EDA have expanded their partnership to integrate the former’s Advanced Design System and the latter’s Xpedition Enterprise Suite of EDA tools. This product is used for the design of digital systems and RF circuits and is included in Keysight’s Advanced Design System 2025 and Siemens’ Xpedition Enterprise Release 2409.
Siemens EDA also introduced the latest version of Solid Edge software, including Solid Edge X, which is accessible as a secure, cloud-enabled Software as Service. The new version includes several improvements, including workflow and user interface improvements, more advanced customization, advanced sheet metal design, and enhanced collaboration features.
Toray has debuted high-speed laser transfer and bonding technology for mounting optical semiconductors made from indium phosphide and other III-V compounds onto silicon substrates.
Tanaka Kikinzoku has uncorked a palladium alloy designed for probe pins used in the final inspection stage of semiconductor packages.
SK Keyfoundry has expanded its portfolio of high-voltage foundry services with high-voltage IC processes.
Universal Robots announced the UR AI Accelerator, which includes features such as pose estimation, tracking, object detection, path planning, and image classification.
car
Infineon has released CoolSiC Schottky diode 2000V G5. It is the first discrete SiC diode with a breakdown voltage of 2000 V, suitable for applications with DC link voltages up to 1500 VDC and rated currents of 10 to 80, making it ideal for solar power generation and EV charging. is.
Workhorse Group has selected Siemens’ Xcelerator portfolio to streamline its activities in manufacturing electric trucks for sustainable last-mile deliveries.
NHTSA launched an investigation into Tesla after receiving four reports of vehicles colliding in poor visibility areas of the road while in full self-driving mode.
Stellantis and Factorial are road-testing certain EVs with solid-state batteries.
the study
Researchers at Dongguk University have developed a self-compliant memristive device capable of multi-level operation and a crossbar array for forming neural networks.
Researchers at the University of Sydney used a laser to generate guided sound waves through a special glass onto the surface of a chip, allowing light and sound to interact. This design has potential as an environmental sensing and information processing device, and stimulated Brillouin scattering technology has potential in 5G/6G networks.
TU/e researchers proposed inverse estimation of multiscale models with ML-based reduced surrogates, which can be applied to semiconductor manufacturing.
imec explored how silicon nitride photonics can help develop proteomics solutions that require the identification and quantification of the full spectrum of proteins within a cell or tissue.
Events and details
Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:
Event Date Location NSTC Symposium and Microelectronics Commons Annual Meeting October 28-30 Washington, DC IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO 2024) November 2-6 Austin, Texas Hardware and Workshop on Architecture Support (HASP) November 2, 2024 Austin, Texas International Test Conference November 3-8 San Diego, California Phil Kaufman Award Ceremony and Banquet November 6 San Jose, California WISH | Women November 7 San Jose, California IEEE PAINE Conference: Physical Assurance and Inspection of Electronic Equipment November 12-14 Huntsville, Alabama SEMICON Europa November 12-15 Munich Advanced Packaging Conference (APC) November 13 Munich Infineon’s GaN Roadshow November 19, San Jose, CA Ansys IDEAS User Conference India 2024 November 20, Bengaluru, India 2024 SIA Awards Dinner November 21, San Jose, CA Find all upcoming events here
Upcoming webinars include topics such as memory verification, thermal and signal integrity analysis of multi-die packages, and enhancing IC design with digital twins and EDA.
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