Latest Semiconductor News Released on July 16 to 22, 2023

Cadence to acquire Rambus PHY IP assets

Cadence Design Systems, Inc. and Rambus Inc. announced today that they have reached a definitive agreement for Cadence to acquire the Rambus SerDes and memory interface PHY IP business. Following the acquisition, Rambus will retain its digital IP business, including memory and interface controllers and security IP. The anticipated technology asset purchase will also reportedly bring to Cadence a proven and experienced PHY engineering team in the US, India and Canada, further expanding company's rich talent base in the field.

Cerebras Systems signs US$100 million AI supercomputer

Cerebras Systems said on Thursday it had signed a deal worth about $100 million to provide an artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputer to United Arab Emirates technology group G42, Reuters reported.

The deal comes as cloud computing providers around the world look for alternatives to Nvidia Corp.'s chips. Nvidia Corp., the market leader in AI computing, has outstripped demand for its products due to the rapid adoption of ChatGPT and other services. Cerebras is one of several startups looking to challenge Nvidia.

Silicon Valley-based Cerebras said G42 had agreed to buy three of Condor Galaxy systems, all of which would be built in the United States to speed deployment. The first will be finished this year, and the other two will go live in early 2024.

Ultra Ethernet Consortium wants to optimize networking for AI and HPC

Intel and Microsoft, plan to develop an open "Ultra Ethernet" solution stack to meet the growing networking demands of AI and high-performance computing workloads.

The companies announced their plans on Wednesday through a new group called the Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC), which seeks to "build a complete Ethernet-based communications stack architecture for high-performance networks" through "industry-wide collaboration."

UEC is founded by the Linux Foundation, the other founders include Broadcom, Cisco, Arista Networks, AMD, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Meta, and Evidian.

Broadcom's $69 billion VMware deal wins provisional UK clearance

The U.K.'s competition authority has said that it plans to greenlight Broadcom's $69 billion bid for virtualization software giant VMware, saying the deal would not reduce competition in the supply of key computer server products, Reuters reported.

EU regulators gave the go-ahead last week after the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) provisionally approved Broadcom's largest-ever takeover after the company offered some rivals interoperability remedies to resolve issues.

Stellantis inks $11bln in contracts for vital semiconductors

Stellantis said on Tuesday that it has signed contracts worth 10 billion euros ($11.2 billion) through 2030 with semiconductor makers to guarantee the flow of vital chips for electric vehicles and high-performance computing functions.

The company's semiconductor sourcing strategy is part of its Dare Forward 2030 plan, introduced in March 2022, to meet its financial goals of doubling net revenue by 2030 from 2021 and maintaining double-digit adjusted operating margins throughout the decade.

Tesla builds supercomputer since it can't get Nvidia chips

Elon Musk is willing to invest well over $1 billion to build an A.I. supercomputer he dubbed Dojo just because he can’t get his hands on enough of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s advanced A100 tensor core GPU clusters.

The EV visionary needs them to train both his “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) software currently sold for $15,000, as well as his Optimus humanoid robots under development to perform useful everyday tasks. 

“Frankly if they could deliver us enough GPUs, we might not need Dojo,” Musk told analysts on Wednesday during Tesla’s Q2 earnings call. “But they can’t, because they have got so many customers.”

TOP ten biggest MCU suppliers in 2022

According to the latest report from market research firm Yole Intelligence, among the top ten MCU revenue market share in 2022, NXP, Renesas Electronics and Infineon rank in the top three, followed by STMicroelectronics and Microchip in fourth and fifth, followed by Texas Instruments, Samsung, Nuvoton Technology, Silicon Labs and Huada Semiconductor.

Figure: 2022 TOP Ten Overall MCU Revenue Share (source from Yole Intelligence)

Combining the previous MCU rankings, it can be found that NXP, Renesas Electronics, Infineon, STMicroelectronics and Microchip are still in the top five positions, occupying more than 80% of the global MCU market.

Samsung develops industry's first GDDR7 DRAM chip

Recently, Samsung announced that it has completed the development of GDDR7 DRAM chips, which will be used in future cars, game consoles, PCs, servers and workstations.

Samsung's GDDR7 DRAM has a record-breaking bandwidth of 1.5TBps, 40% higher than GDDR6 DRAM. It has a speed of 32Gbps per pin thanks to enhancements to the PAM3 (pulse amplitude modulation) signaling method. PAM3 is a new memory standard that allows 50% more data to be sent in the same signaling cycle.

onsemi and BorgWarner expand strategic collaboration

onsemi announced that it will expand its strategic cooperation with BorgWarner on silicon carbide (SiC), a vehicle solution provider, with a total value of over US$1 billion. BorgWarner plans to integrate onsemi's EliteSiC 1200V and 750V power devices into its VIPER power modules. For a long time, the two parties have carried out strategic cooperation in a wide range of product areas, including EliteSiC devices.