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Commentary / Analysis

• Scale FD-SOI to 7nm? Yes, We Can (Thursday Nov. 16, 2023)
  Why set the target at 10 nm when you can aim further? EC Thierry Breton raised the ante, proposing to scale FD-SOI down to 7 nm.
  
  
• Imagination to lay off 20% of staff (Tuesday Nov. 14, 2023)
  Imagination Technologies plans to lay off 20% of its employees, reports Reuters. The company blamed the business environment.
  
  
• OEMs' Sourcing Strategies Need to Account for Node Sizes (Tuesday Nov. 14, 2023)
  From late 2019 to early this year, the surge of artificial intelligence, machine learning, electric vehicles, 5G and the internet of things drove supply and demand fluctuations across most wafer node sizes in the semiconductor supply chain.
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Manufacturing Industry Set for Q4 2023 Recovery, SEMI Reports (Monday Nov. 13, 2023)
  The global semiconductor manufacturing industry is on track for recovery in the fourth quarter of 2023, setting the stage for continued growth in 2024, SEMI announced today in its Q3 2023 publication of the Semiconductor Manufacturing Monitor (SMM) Report, prepared in partnership with TechInsights.
  
  
• Server Processors in the AI Era: Can They Go Greener? (Thursday Nov. 09, 2023)
  The more power-efficient they get, the more the data center’s workload pulls them back to a more distant starting point.
  
  
• Will 1.4-nm help Samsung catch up with TSMC, IFS? (Thursday Nov. 09, 2023)
  Samsung, playing a distant second to TSMC for quite some time, has vowed to launch the 1.4-nm chip manufacturing node by 2027, leapfrogging both TSMC and Intel Foundry Services (IFS) by a wide margin.
  
  
• RISC-V Pioneer SiFive Takes Stock, Realigns, Moves Forward (Thursday Nov. 09, 2023)
  After SiFive announced it would downsize its staff, EE Times Europe caught up with Dave Miller, head of corporate communications at SiFive, to understand the reasons for the layoffs, the impact on the RISC-V ecosystem, the resonance in Europe and what’s next.
  
  
• Nvidia Trains LLM on Chip Design (Thursday Nov. 02, 2023)
  Nvidia has trained its NeMo large language model (LLM) on internal data to help chip designers with tasks related to chip design, including answering general questions about chip design, summarizing bug documentation, and writing scripts for EDA tools.
  
  
• Worldwide Silicon Wafer Shipments Fall in Q3 2023, SEMI Reports (Thursday Nov. 02, 2023)
  Worldwide silicon wafer shipments decreased 9.6% quarter-over-quarter to 3,010 million square inches in the third quarter of 2023, a 19.5% drop from the 3,741 million square inches recorded during the same quarter last year
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Sales Increase 1.9% Month-to-Month in September (Thursday Nov. 02, 2023)
  SIA today announced global semiconductor sales for the month of September 2023 increased 1.9% compared to August 2023 and fell 4.5% compared to September 2022.
  
  
• Global Silicon Wafer Shipment Growth to Bounce Back in 2024 After 2023 Decline, SEMI Reports (Thursday Oct. 26, 2023)
  Global shipments of silicon wafers are projected to decline 14% in 2023, to 12,512 million square inches (MSI) from the record high of 14,565 MSI in 2022 before bouncing back in 2024 as wafer and semiconductor demand recovers and inventory levels normalize.
  
  
• Layoffs at SiFive as RISC-V upstart faces a crossroads (Wednesday Oct. 25, 2023)
  SiFive, a prominent player in the RISC-V design arena, is going through a radical makeup. While layoffs at one of the early RISC-V startups are making headlines in trade media, what’s happening underneath is a significant shift in its business model.
  
  
• CXL Gets Off the Drawing Board (Friday Oct. 20, 2023)
  Despite hitting its third iteration, workloads that utilize the Compute Express Link (CXL) protocol are only now starting to become production ready.
  
  
• How Arm Total Design is built around 5 key building blocks (Friday Oct. 20, 2023)
  The ecosystem has been Arm’s key strength and is evident from its latest initiative: Arm Total Design.
  
  
• US extends China chip ban (Thursday Oct. 19, 2023)
  In a complex 450 page document the US has extended its ban on chip sales to China to devices that are below the leading edge.
  
  
• CXL Gets Off the Drawing Board (Thursday Oct. 19, 2023)
  Despite hitting its third iteration, workloads that utilize the Compute Express Link (CXL) protocol are only now starting to become production ready.
  
  
• Analysts Debate Latest U.S. Export Controls (Thursday Oct. 19, 2023)
  The latest export controls announced by the U.S. government on semiconductors and chipmaking tools are “not welcome,” one analyst says.
  
  
• Electronic System Design Industry Posts $4 Billion in Revenue in Q2 2023, ESD Alliance Reports (Monday Oct. 16, 2023)
  Electronic System Design (ESD) industry revenue increased 5.3% to $3,962.7 million in the second quarter of 2023 from $3,763.6 million in the second quarter of 2022
  
  
• TSMC looks to standardise chiplet protocols in "world changing" move (Monday Oct. 09, 2023)
  TSMC is looking to develop a standard data format for chiplet designs that would be used by all the EDA design tool and assembly and test providers.
  
  
• Using Open-Source Hardware to Speed Product Development (Thursday Oct. 05, 2023)
  Can I build a commercial product based on Arduino? Can I utilize a board’s schematics and CAD files and create my own design? EE Times Europe spoke with Arduino’s Adriano Chinello to find out the licensing requirements.
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Sales Increase 1.9% Month-to-Month in August (Thursday Oct. 05, 2023)
  SIA today announced global semiconductor industry sales totaled $44.0 billion during the month of August 2023, an increase of 1.9% compared to the July 2023 total of $43.2 billion but 6.8% less than the August 2022 total of $47.2 billion.
  
  
• China Gears Up for Chip Dumping, Ex-DoC Official Says (Thursday Sep. 28, 2023)
  China’s government has used dumping to destroy overseas tech industries and take them over, former Department of Commerce (DoC) Under Secretary Nazak Nikakhtar told EE Times.
  
  
• How the Worlds of Chiplets and Packaging Intertwine (Thursday Sep. 28, 2023)
  Chiplets mark a new era of semiconductor innovation, and packaging is an intrinsic part of this ambitious design undertaking. However, while chiplet and packaging technologies work hand in hand to redefine the possibilities of chip integration, this technological tie-up isn’t that simple and straightforward.
  
  
• EU Turns Rivals into Allies (Monday Sep. 25, 2023)
  For the sake of domestic security and global competitiveness, the EU turns a blind eye to business rivalries.
  
  
• Arm shares return to offer price (Monday Sep. 25, 2023)
  Eight days after its IPO, Friday’s market close saw Arm shares at 32 cents above the $51 offer price after hitting $63 in the days immediately after the offer.
  
  
• Q2 Revenue for Top 10 Global IC Houses Surges by 12.5% as Q3 on Pace to Set New Record, Says TrendForce (Friday Sep. 22, 2023)
  Fueled by an AI-driven inventory stocking frenzy across the supply chain, Q2 revenue for the top 10 global IC design powerhouses soared to US $38.1 billion, marking a 12.5% quarterly increase.
  
  
• Global 200mm Fabs to Reach Record High Capacity by 2026, SEMI Reports (Thursday Sep. 21, 2023)
  Semiconductor manufacturers worldwide are projected to increase 200mm fab capacity by 14% from 2023 through 2026, adding 12 new 200mm volume fabs (excluding EPI) as the industry reaches a record high of more than 7.7 million wafers per month (wpm).
  
  
• SMIC Well on Its Way to 5-nm Breakthrough, Observers Say (Thursday Sep. 21, 2023)
  Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) is likely to, in the next few years, again defy the U.S. government by manufacturing chips with feature sizes as small as 5 nm, industry insiders told EE Times.
  
  
• Intel launches compact RISC-V Nios processor core (Thursday Sep. 21, 2023)
  Intel has launched a new, compact soft core for its FPGA devices based on the RISC-V open instruction set architecture.
  
  
• Nordic combines Arm and RISC-V for "remarkable" EEMBC benchmarks (Thursday Sep. 21, 2023)
  Nordic Semiconductor has announced EEMBC benchmarks for its forthcoming multi-protocol nRF54H20 wireless microcontroller, which combines multiple Arm Cortex-M33 processors and multiple RISC-V coprocessors “optimised for specific types of workloads”