Latest Semiconductor News Released from June 11 to 17, 2023

Intel Announces Tunnel Falls Silicon Qubit Research Chip

Intel announced its latest quantum research chip, Tunnel Falls, a 12-qubit silicon chip, and made the chip available to the quantum research community. In addition, Intel is collaborating with the University of Maryland Physical Sciences Laboratory (LPS), the Parker College Qubit Collaborative Laboratory (LQC), and the National Quantum Information Science (QIS) Research Center to advance quantum computing research.

"Tunnel Falls is Intel's most advanced silicon qubit chip to date, and it draws on the company's decades of transistor design and manufacturing expertise," explained Jim Clarke, director of quantum hardware at Intel. "The release of it is part of Intel's long-term strategy to build a full-stack commercial quantum computing system.

Alphawave Semi expands collaboration with Samsung

Alphawave Semi, a global leader in high-speed connectivity to global technology infrastructure, announced an expansion of its ongoing collaboration with Samsung to include the 3nm process node.

Samsung Foundry platform customers now benefit from Alphawave Semi's state-of-the-art high-performance connectivity IP and chiplet technologies, including 112 Gigabit per second (Gbps) Ethernet and PCI Express Gen6/CXL 3.0 interfaces, for building complex SoCs systems to keep up with the rapidly growing demands of data-intensive applications, such as generative AI and huge data centers.

AMD and Nvidia GPUs consume TSMC's CoWoS capacity

According to DigiTimes, TSMC is on track to nearly triple its chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging capacity by the end of 2024, but even then Nvidia will consume half of the foundry's projected capacity. Meanwhile, AMD is also trying to book additional CoWoS capacity for next year.

TSMC intends to expand its CoWoS production capacity from the current 8,000 wafers per month to 11,000 wafers per month by the end of 2023, and then to about 20,000 wafers per month by the end of 2024.

Germany refuses additional subsidies to Intel's fab

A German official said the country might not provide additional subsidies for Intel to expand its chipmaking capacity in Europe. “There is no more money available in the budget, and we are now trying to consolidate the budget, not expand it” , German Finance Minister Christian Lindner said.

Intel's upcoming factory near Magdeburg, Germany, is expected to be the largest and most advanced semiconductor manufacturing plant in Europe, but its costs are increasing, so Intel intends to receive more supports from the German government.

Saga University develops world's first diamond semiconductor power circuit

A research team headed by Professor Makoto Kasu of the Faculty of Science and Engineering of Saga University succeeded in developing a diamond semiconductor power supply circuit for the first time in the world. It was demonstrated that high-speed switching and long-term operation, which were considered difficult until now, are possible. If this power supply circuit can be put into practical use, it is expected to be applied to the latest technologies such as the next-generation communication standard "6G" and quantum computers.

Top TSMC execs to visit Shanghai

Top executives from chip foundry TSMC will visit Shanghai to attend its annual tech forum called “China Technology Symposium” on June 21. TSMC’s Chief Executive Officer, Dr. C. C. Wei, Senior Vice President of Business Development, Dr. Kevin Zhang, and Senior Vice President of Europe and Asia Sales and Corporate Research, Dr. Cliff Hou, will personally present TSMC’s future technology trends and capacity planning. In addition, they will visit Alibaba, Biren Technology and other companies during this trip.

Macron to meet Elon Musk in Paris to talk Tesla investment

French President Macron said that he will meet with Tesla CEO Elon Musk on the 16th, and promote France as a location for Tesla to invest in a super factory. Macron said that we will discuss the artificial intelligence (AI), social media and regulatory framework. Further more, each other will also discuss issues such as cars and batteries, according to Bloomberg News.

South Korea chip sales to China down 80%

Under the influence of the global economic downturn and lower demand, South Korea's export value of display components (materials, parts and equipment) in the first four months of this year was halved compared with last year. Among them, South Korea's export of display equipment to China accounted for 40% of the total export of display equipment, but compared with last year, it dropped by 80% to US$110 million, according to Yonhap News Agency.

As the growth of China's display market is mainly LCD (liquid crystal display), and the Chinese government's policy of encouraging localization, competition for Korean display component orders has intensified.

Broadcom's acquisition of VMWare could win EU nod

Broadcom's $61 bln acquisition of cloud computing company VMware will receive conditional approval from the European Union, people familiar with the matter said, Reuters reported.

Whether the EU ultimately approves the deal will depend largely on the interoperability remedies Broadcom offers to rivals. And EU antitrust regulators plan to make a decision on the deal by July 17, and Broadcom declined to comment.

Micron to invest more than CNY4.3 billion in Xi'an factory

On June 16, Micron Technology announced that it plans to invest about 4.3 billion yuan in its packaging and testing plant in Xi'an, China in the next few years. The new plant announced this time will introduce a new production line for the manufacture of mobile DRAM, NAND and SSD products to strengthen the existing packaging and testing capabilities of the Xi'an plant.