Latest Semiconductor News Update on Nov 12 to 18, 2023

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman ousted

Sam Altman has been fired as the CEO of OpenAI. The company says it made the change after a “deliberative review process” by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities.

However, according to the latest news, efforts by a group of OpenAI executives and investors want to reinstate Sam Altman to his role as chief executive officer reached an impasse over the makeup and role of the board, according to people familiar with the negotiations.

Rapidus, University of Tokyo plan 1-nm chip tech with French research institute Leti

Japanese chipmaker Rapidus and the University of Tokyo are collaborating with French research institute Leti to develop 1nm process technology.

The partners will begin actively exchanging personnel and sharing technology as early as next year. Leti will contribute its expertise in chip components to build the infrastructure to supply 1nm products. And Rapidus has cooperated with IBM and Belgian R&D group Imec to achieve the goal of mass production of 2nm chips in 2027. And 1nm semiconductors are expected to enter the mainstream as soon as the 2030s.

Microsoft introduces two new chips for AI

Microsoft announced two AI Chips on Wednesday at the Microsoft Ignite conference: The first, its Maia 100 artificial intelligence chip, could compete with Nvidia’s highly sought-after AI graphics processing units. The second, a Cobalt 100 Arm chip, is aimed at general computing tasks and could compete with Intel processors.

Microsoft said the chips are the final piece of the puzzle as Microsoft delivers infrastructure systems that include everything from chip selection, software and servers to racks and cooling systems that are designed from the top down to be customized based on internal and customer needs.

PCI-SIG announces "CopprLink" PCIe cable name

PCI SIG said this week that that it is developing cabling specifications for PCIe 5.0 and PCIe 6.0 interfaces at 32 GT/s and 64 GT/s data transfer rates. The new cable specification will be released in Q1 2024 and will be named CopprLink, possibly to avoid confusion with existing OCuLink cables and emphasize its copper characteristics.

CopprLink 5.0 and 6.0 specifications are designed for data centers and servers. They are designed to connect motherboard to backplane, card to backplane, motherboard to expansion cards (such as accelerators), rack to rack, board to board within a rack, and even chips for PCIe 5.0 to PCIe 6.0. The purpose is to provide some additional flexibility for situations where the typical PCIe link on the printed circuit board is inefficient or cannot be established for some reason.

Global fab utilization to drop 67% in Q4 2023

The global chip market will return to year-on-year growth in Q4 2023, but fab utilization is expected to fall to 67% as inventory sales increase, according to industry group SEMI.

Electronic equipment sales are expected to grow 22% sequentially in Q4 2023, following 7% growth in Q3 2023. Although conditions have improved, chip manufacturing indicators remain weak.

Samsung plans to launch 3D AI chip packaging technology

Samsung Electronics plans to launch advanced 3D chip packaging technology next year to compete with foundry leader TSMC. The company will use SAINT technology to integrate the memory and processors needed for high-performance chips, including AI chips, in a smaller form factor.

Samsung plans to launch three technologies under the SAINT brand: SAINT S - vertical stacking of SRAM memory chips and CPUs; SAINT D - involving vertical packaging of processors such as CPUs and GPUs and DRAM memory; SAINT L will be used for stacking application processors (APs).

Chinese memory chip maker YMTC sues Micron for patent infringement

China’s leading flash memory maker Yangtze Memory Technologies Co (YMTC) has filed a lawsuit against US memory chip maker Micron Technology for patent infringement, accusing the American tech giant of “freeriding” to protect its market share.

The patents accused of infringement involve advanced 3D NAND technology, the products named in the suit include YMTC’s 96-, 128-, 176- and 232-layer NAND flash memory chips. These products occupy an important position in the market and are widely used in various consumer electronics products such as smartphones, tablets, and personal computers.

GPU tech supplier Imagination Technologies to lay off 20%

Imagination Technologies plans to lay off 20% of its employees, reports Reuters. According to an internal source, the company said it is cutting jobs due to the challenging "business environment" over the past 18 months, and every department will be affected, as many as 130 jobs in the UK are at risk.

Nvidia unveils H200, its newest high-end chip for AI

Nvidia officially released its new generative AI GPU chip H200 on Nov 13, as well as the AI server platform HGX H200 equipped with this GPU and other products. This GPU is an upgraded model of the H100. It still uses the Hopper architecture and TSMC 4nm process technology. According to Nvidia’s official website, the GPU chip of the H200 has not been upgraded, and the core number and frequency have not changed. The main upgrade is to carry HBM3e video memory for the first time, and the capacity has increased from 80GB increased to 141GB.

Thanks to the newly upgraded HBM3e chip, the H200's memory bandwidth can reach 4.8TB/s, which is 43% higher than the H100's 3.35TB/s. But this is far from reaching the upper limit of HBM3e. If compared with traditional x86 servers, the memory performance of H200 can be up to 110 times.