United Microelectronics Corporation ("UMC" or "The Company"), a leading global semiconductor foundry, today announced that its Board of Directors has approved a plan to build a new advanced manufacturing facility next to its existing 300 mm fab (Fab12i) in Singapore. The first phase of this greenfield fab will have a monthly capacity of 30,000 wafers with production expected to commence in late 2024.

The new fab (Fab12i P3) will be one of the most advanced semiconductor foundries in Singapore, providing UMC's 22/28 nm processes. The planned investment for this project will be US$5 billion. UMC has operated as a pure-play foundry supplier in Singapore for more than 20 years and the location is also the company's designated R&D center for advanced specialty technologies. To account for the Fab12i expansion, the company's 2022 capex budget will be revised upward to US$3.6 billion.

The panic buying of chips persisted in 2Q21 owing to factors such as post-pandemic demand, industry-wide shift to 5G telecom technology, geopolitical tensions, and chronic chip shortages, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. Chip demand from ODMs/OEMs remained high, as they were unable to meet shipment targets for various end-products due to the shortage of foundry capacities. In addition, wafers inputted in 1Q21 underwent a price hike and were subsequently outputted in 2Q21. Foundry revenue for the quarter reached US$24.407 billion, representing a 6.2% QoQ increase and yet another record high for the eighth consecutive quarter since 3Q19.

At an Intel Labs virtual event today, Intel unveiled Horse Ridge II, its second-generation cryogenic control chip, marking another milestone in the company's progress toward overcoming scalability, one of quantum computing's biggest hurdles. Building on innovations in the first-generation Horse Ridge controller introduced in 2019, Horse Ridge II supports enhanced capabilities and higher levels of integration for elegant control of the quantum system. New features include the ability to manipulate and read qubit states and control the potential of several gates required to entangle multiple qubits.

"With Horse Ridge II, Intel continues to lead innovation in the field of quantum cryogenic controls, drawing from our deep interdisciplinary expertise bench across the Integrated Circuit design, Labs and Technology Development teams. We believe that increasing the number of qubits without addressing the resulting wiring complexities is akin to owning a sports car, but constantly being stuck in traffic. Horse Ridge II further streamlines quantum circuit controls, and we expect this progress to deliver increased fidelity and decreased power output, bringing us one step closer toward the development of a 'traffic-free' integrated quantum circuit."-Jim Clarke, Intel director of Quantum Hardware, Components Research Group, Intel.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF ) today announced the release and distribution of OpenAccess iPDK libraries optimized for its 22FDX (22nm FD-SOI) platform. With its best-in-class performance, power consumption, and broad feature integration capability, GF's differentiated 22FDX platform is the solution of choice for designers and innovators working in 5G mmWave, edge AI, Internet of Things (IoT), automotive, satellite communications, security, and other applications.

The open-standard based iPDK offers the same level of functionality and performance as PDKs designed for specific vendor tools, while helping enable interoperability and compatibility among different design tool suites. Tools including: the Custom Compiler solution from Synopsys; TannerTM software solutions from Mentor, a Siemens business; PathWave Advanced Design System (ADS) from Keysight Technologies; and any other tool supporting OpenAccess will now be able to use GF iPDK libraries for its 22FDX platform. GF's iPDK will consist of OpenAccess technology files, symbols, component description format (CDF), TCL callbacks, netlisting information, and PyCells.

The 22FDX iPDK is released and available alongside other EDA-specific 22FDX PDK bundles.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF ) today announced its embedded magnetoresistive non-volatile memory (eMRAM) on the company's 22 nm FD-SOI (22FDX ) platform has entered production, and GF is working with several clients with multiple production tape-outs scheduled in 2020. Today's announcement represents a significant industry milestone, demonstrating the scalability of eMRAM as a cost-effective option at advanced process nodes for Internet of Things (IoT), general-purpose microcontrollers, automotive, edge-AI (Artificial Intelligence), and other low-power applications.

Designed as a replacement for high-volume embedded NOR flash (eFlash), GF's eMRAM allows designers to extend their existing IoT and microcontroller unit architectures to access the power and density benefits of technology nodes below 28 nm.

Intel Labs, in collaboration with QuTech ‑ a partnership between TU Delft and TNO (Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research) ‑ outlines key technical features of its new cryogenic quantum control chip "Horse Ridge" in a research paper released at the 2020 International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco. The paper unveils key technical capabilities of Horse Ridge that address fundamental challenges in building a quantum system powerful enough to demonstrate quantum practicality: scalability, flexibility and fidelity.

"Today, quantum researchers work with just a small number of qubits, using smaller, custom-designed systems surrounded by complex control and interconnect mechanisms. Intel's Horse Ridge greatly minimizes this complexity. By systematically working to scale to thousands of qubits required for quantum practicality, we're continuing to make steady progress toward making commercially viable quantum computing a reality in our future," said Jim Clarke, director of quantum hardware, Intel Labs.

TSMC, the world's leading global innovator in semiconductor manufacturing, filed multiple lawsuits on September 30, 2019 against GlobalFoundries in the United States, Germany and Singapore for its ongoing infringement of 25 TSMC patents by at least its 40nm, 28nm, 22nm, 14nm, and 12nm node processes. In the complaints, TSMC demands injunctions to stop GlobalFoundries' manufacture and sale of infringing semiconductor products. TSMC also seeks substantial monetary damages from GlobalFoundries for its sale of infringing semiconductor products and unlawful use of TSMC's patented semiconductor technologies.

The 25 TSMC patents in the complaints relate to a diverse set of technologies, including FinFET designs, shallow trench isolation techniques, double patterning methods, advanced seal rings and gate structures, and innovative contact etch stop layer designs. These specific technologies cover the core features of mature and advanced semiconductor manufacturing processes. The patents at issue comprise just a small portion of TSMC's extensive portfolio that numbers more than 37,000 granted patents worldwide. TSMC was ranked one of the top 10 companies for U.S. patent grants last year, for the third consecutive year.

Intel today introduced the B365 Express desktop motherboard chipset as an in-between to its B360 Express and H370 Express chipsets. This model is part of Intel's optical enlargement of its motherboard chipsets to the 22 nm HKMG+ silicon fabrication node, to free up 14 nm++ for processors. Despite this, the TDP of the chipset remains unchanged at 6 Watts. The B365 has a couple of feature additions and subtractions over B360. To begin with it has a wider PCI-Express downstream root-complex, with 20 gen 3.0 lanes, on par with H370 Express. The B360, if you'll recall, only has 12 downstream PCIe lanes. This means B365 motherboards will have additional M.2 and U.2 connectivity.

According to the ARK specifications page for the B365 Express, this chip completely lacks integrated 10 Gbps USB 3.1 gen 2 connectivity. Perhaps the expanded downstream PCIe is really meant for motherboard vendors to use third-party USB 3.1 gen 2 controller chips. You still get eight 5 Gbps USB 3.0 ports (notice we didn't say USB 3.1 gen 1, because don't expect fast-charging features). The chipset also loses the latest generation Wireless AC integrated MAC. All of these point to the possibility of the B365 Express being a re-branded Z170 with locked CPU overclocking. Adding credence to this theory is the fact that while the B360 uses ME version 12, the B365 uses the older ME version 11. Much like the H310C, the B365 could include platform support for Windows 7.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES today launched a new semiconductor technology developed specifically to meet the ultra-low-power requirements of the next generation of connected devices. The "22FDX" platform delivers FinFET-like performance and energy-efficiency at a cost comparable to 28 nm planar technologies, providing an optimal solution for the rapidly evolving mainstream mobile, Internet-of-Things (IoT), RF connectivity and networking markets.

While some applications require the ultimate performance of three-dimensional FinFET transistors, most wireless devices need a better balance of performance, power consumption and cost. 22FDX provides the best path for cost-sensitive applications by leveraging the industry's first 22nm two-dimensional, fully-depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI) technology. It offers industry's lowest operating voltage at 0.4 volt, enabling ultra-low dynamic power consumption, less thermal impact, and smaller end-product form-factors. The 22FDX platform delivers a 20 percent smaller die size and 10 percent fewer masks than 28nm, as well as nearly 50 percent fewer immersion lithography layers than foundry FinFET.

"The 22FDX platform enables our customers to deliver differentiated products with the best balance of power, performance and cost," said Sanjay Jha, chief executive officer of GLOBALFOUNDRIES. "In an industry first, 22FDX provides real-time system software control of transistor characteristics: the system designer can dynamically balance power, performance, and leakage. Additionally, for RF and analog integration, the platform delivers best scaling combined with highest energy efficiency."

Intel Corporation today unveiled silicon characterization results for its 1 to 32 Gbps high-speed SerDes on the 14nm process. This 32 Gbps SerDes is the second SerDes offering and adds to the previously announced 1 to 16 Gbps GP 14nm SerDes. It will be available by end of this year.

Intel's 14nm SerDes family is the second generation of SerDes offering and is built on the success of Intel's 12 and 28 Gbps SerDes, which is currently in production on Intel's 22nm Tri-gate process technology. Intel's 14nm SerDes extends the operating range while reducing power by 20 percent and area by more than 40 percent as compared to Intel's 22nm SerDes offering. This announcement marks the first time that a 32 Gbps, multiprotocol SerDes has been validated on any sub-20nm foundry process.

Silicon Mechanics, Inc., announces availability of a range of products built with the newly launched Intel Xeon processor E5-2600v2 product family. Compared to the previous generation Intel Xeon processor, the new Intel Xeon processor E5-2600v2 (formerly known as Ivy Bridge-EP) features improved performance, energy efficiency, and security. Ideal for compute-intensive applications, the versatile new processor has been designed to serve as the heart of an efficient data center.

The new processor family promises to be up to 40 percent more energy efficient than a previous generation Intel Xeon processor-based server and up to 250 percent more energy efficient than a typical 4-year-old server. The Intel Xeon E5-2600v2 family can serve as a drop-in replacement for existing E5-2600 (Sandy Bridge-EP) CPUs. The Intel Xeon processor E5-2600v2 replaces Sandy Bridge 32nm lithography with 22nm 3-D Tri-Gate transistors, for improved performance and energy efficiency. Major performance improvements include higher core count, with up to 12 cores/24 threads, and up to 30 MB third-level cache - all in the same thermal design points (TDP) as previous generation Xeon processors. The new architecture offers higher clock speed, up to 3.5 GHz, as well as higher memory speed support, up to 1866 MHz.

As the massive growth of information technology services places increasing demand on the datacenter, Intel Corporation today outlined its strategy to re-architect the underlying infrastructure, allowing companies and end-users to benefit from an increasingly services-oriented, mobile world. The company also announced additional details about its next-generation Intel Atom processor C2000 product family (codenamed "Avoton" and "Rangeley"), as well as outlined its roadmap of next-generation 14nm products for 2014 and beyond. This robust pipeline of current and future products and technologies will allow Intel to expand into new segments of the datacenter that look to transition from proprietary designs to more open, standards-based compute models.

"Datacenters are entering a new era of rapid service delivery," said Diane Bryant, senior vice president and general manager of the Datacenter and Connected Systems Group at Intel. "Across network, storage and servers we continue to see significant opportunities for growth. In many cases, it requires a new approach to deliver the scale and efficiency required, and today we are unveiling the near and long-term actions to enable this transformation."

A system built with thousands of Intel processors and co-processors was just named the most powerful supercomputer in the world in the 41st edition of the Top500 list of supercomputers. The system, known as "Milky Way 2," includes 48,000 Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors and 32,000 Intel Xeon processors and operates at a peak performance of 54.9 PFlops (54.9 quadrillion floating point operations per second) -- more than twice the performance of the top rated system from the last edition of the Top500 list in November 2012. This is the first exclusively Intel-based system to take the top spot on the list since 1997.

Intel also announced the expansion of the Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors portfolio and revealed details of the second generation of Intel Xeon Phi products code named "Knights Landing." The new products and technologies will continue to radically increase the energy efficiency and performance of supercomputers worldwide.

At an industry event in Taipei today, Hermann Eul, general manager of Intel's Mobile and Communications Group, unveiled new details about the company's forthcoming Intel Atom processor-based SoC for tablets ("Bay Trail-T") due in market for holiday this year. Based on the new Silvermont microarchitecture, the next generation 22nm Intel technology for tablets and ultra-mobile devices will enable sleek designs with 8 or more hours of battery life2 and weeks of standby, as well as support Android* and Windows 8.1*.

Eul also spoke to recent momentum and announcements around the smartphone business and demonstrated the Intel XMM 7160 multimode 4G LTE solution, now in final interoperability testing (IOT) with Tier 1 service providers across North America, Europe and Asia. "The mobile category is undergoing a tremendous amount of innovation and constant change," said Eul. "As we look at growing it, we continue to invest in and accelerate our efforts across all aspects of mobility with a focus on smartphones, tablets and wireless communications. Intel's unique assets will enable more compelling and differentiated products and experiences, while at the same time helping to shape and lead markets in the future."

Today Intel introduced the new Intel Xeon processor E3-1200 v3 product family based on Haswell microarchitecture and the company's 22nm manufacturing process. When deployed in cloud data center environments, the new Intel Xeon processors will help reduce costs and increase media processing capabilities for cloud-based media service providers to better support customers wanting to upload and share videos with friends across different mobile devices. In addition to a better offering for cloud media workloads than discrete graphic-based servers, new Intel Xeon processors offer exceptional energy efficiency and lowest TDP ever at 13 Watts for highly dense environments like microservers. Get the Intel Xeon processor E3-1200 v3 product family fact sheet.

GIGABYTE Technology introduces today, in coordination with Intel's official launch, two initial models of single socket server/workstation motherboards designed for the brand new Intel Xeon processor E3-1200 V3 product family (former codename Haswell). Suitable for both rack and desktop tower integration, GIGABYTE introduces here ultra-flexible products featuring the latest technologies and built to deliver all the benefits and new features of this new CPU line in many professional application scenarios.

Still based on the 22 nm tri-gate lithography, this new generation of Xeon processors is built on Intel's latest microarchitecture and brings up to 15% computing power improvement and increased L3 cache across the line. In addition, this new generation also brings to the Xeon E3 family the support of 1600MHz ECC memory, Intel Trusted Execution and Virtualization technologies, as well as AVX 2.0 and TSX instructions. Last but not least, the Xeon E3-1200 V3 processors will include the latest Intel integrated graphics, which will bring the support of OGL3.2+, DirectX 11.1, and higher frequencies over the previous generation.

Intel Corporation today took the wraps off its brand new, low-power, high-performance microarchitecture named Silvermont. The technology is aimed squarely at low-power requirements in market segments from smartphones to the data center. Silvermont will be the foundation for a range of innovative products beginning to come to market later this year, and will also be manufactured using the company's leading-edge, 22nm Tri-Gate SoC manufacturing process, which brings significant performance increases and improved energy efficiency.

"Silvermont is a leap forward and an entirely new technology foundation for the future that will address a broad range of products and market segments," said Dadi Perlmutter, Intel executive vice president and chief product officer. "Early sampling of our 22nm SoCs, including "Bay Trail" and "Avoton" is already garnering positive feedback from our customers. Going forward, we will accelerate future generations of this low-power microarchitecture on a yearly cadence."

During her keynote at the Intel Developer Forum today in Beijing, Diane Bryant, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Datacenter and Connected Systems Group, discussed how her company is helping users harness powerful new capabilities that will improve the lives of people by building smarter cities, healthier communities and thriving businesses.

Bryant unveiled details of upcoming technologies and products that show how Intel aims to transform the server, networking and storage capabilities of the datacenter. By addressing the full spectrum of workload demands and providing new levels of application optimized solutions for enterprise IT, technical computing and cloud service providers, unprecedented experiences can be delivered.

ASUS today announced a new range of microATX motherboards with onboard HDMI and DVI ports for Intel and AMD processors with integrated graphics, and USB 3.0 ports with performance-enhancing ASUS USB 3.0 Boost technology. By removing the need for a discrete graphics card, the new motherboards provide a more affordable option for home entertainment PCs that can fully exploit high-performance USB 3.0 storage.

The latest Intel 22nm CPUs feature Intel HD 4000 integrated graphics, while AMD Socket FM2Athlon and A-Series APUshave integrated AMD HD 7000 Series discrete-level Radeon GPUs.The processors provide excellent 2D and 3D graphics performance, without the need for a separate graphics card, which in turn results in lower PC build costs.

In his keynote today at the Intel Developer Forum, Intel Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner said, "In the future, if it computes, it connects. From the simplest embedded sensors to the most advanced cloud datacenters, we're looking at techniques to allow all of them to connect without wires."

Rattner demonstrated for the first time a working, all-digital WiFi radio, dubbed a "Moore's Law Radio." The CTO explained that an all-digital radio follows Moore's Law by scaling in area and energy efficiency with such digital chip processes as Intel's latest 22nm tri-gate technology. System-on-chip designs for smartphones and tablet computers would be the most likely spot for the all digital radios to be integrated. The small size and lower cost of integrated digital radios will enable a host of new applications from wearable devices to "The Internet of Things" where devices such as home appliances with sensors can communicate with each other, exchange data and can be operated remotely.

Following last Friday's Q3 outlook lowering by Intel, market punters such as Merrill Lynch cut estimates. Vivek Arya, an analyst with the firm, cut its Q3 and Q4 estimates for Intel, while remaining optimistic about upcoming processes in the company's pitched battle with ARM in the lightweight SoC segment. Arya believes that with upcoming technologies, Intel has a fighting chance against ARM heavyweights. Said Arya in his report:

Next-gen chip manufacturing has become a 3-horse race between Intel, TSMC and Samsung, with Intel holding a 1 to 4 year lead, in our view. As we saw in 1H12, foundries were unable to ramp 28nm capacity, leading to product delays. Rising costs/ complexity (tri-gate) could further widen this gap. We believe this could enable Intel to gain a foothold (vs. zero today) in mobile over the next 2 years, as smartphone/tablet vendors look to Intel as a second or even primary source […] We firmly believe in Intel's ability to reliably produce the lowest cost and highest performance silicon can help it maintain a dominant position in servers/data centers (20% of sales, 10-15% CAGR), and transition from legacy PCs to next-gen smartphones, tablets, Ultrabooks and other converged devices in the next 1-2 years. Investors, meanwhile, benefit from a 3.6% div yield, $7.5bn in available buybacks (6% of mkt cap) and <10x PE.

Signaling its commitment to energy-efficient high- performance computing, Intel Corporation today announced that it will work with HP to help design and provide the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) with a supercomputing system that will drive research across a number of energy-related initiatives, including renewable energy and energy-efficient technologies. The new High Performance Computer (HPC) data center promises to become one of the world's most efficient installations.

The system is scheduled to deliver full compute capacity in the summer of 2013 and will feature approximately 3,200 Intel Xeon processors including current-generation Intel Xeon processor E5-2670, future 22nm Ivy Bridge based processors and approximately 600 new Intel Xeon Phi co-processors. The total peak performance of the system is expected to exceed 1 Petaflop (equivalent to a thousand trillion floating point operations per second) and it will be the largest supercomputer dedicated solely to renewable energy and energy efficiency research. Leading energy-efficient capabilities of Intel Xeon processors and Intel Xeon Phi co-processors combined with the new HP warm water cooling solution and innovative data center design will result in this facility likely being the world's most efficient data center with a power usage effectiveness (PUE) rating of 1.06 or better.

Eurocom Corporation, a developer of long lifespan, high performance, fully upgradable Notebooks and Mobile Workstations is shipping a small form factor ultraportable notebook capable of running multiple virtual machines and multiple operating systems with up to 16GB memory and 1 TB storage while weighing under 4 lbs.

"The EUROCOM Monster is capable of running up to 8 virtual machines due to its high performance hardware; Intel Core i7 3920XM processor, NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M graphics combined with 16GB DDR3-1600 memory and up to 1 terabyte of storage with up to 410 minutes of battery life. This is the perfect system for mobile professionals who need exceptionally capable hardware for such things as mobile server applications, technical presale, CUDA and OpenCL development on the go" Mark Bialic, Eurocom President.

Today during the Structure Conference in San Francisco, Jason Waxman, GM of the Cloud Infrastructure Group outlined Intel's vision and roadmap for microservers and discussed how they best suited to handle emerging "scale-out" applications. Waxman provided an update on Intel's roadmap for microservers including new generations of Intel Xeon processors and Intel Atom architecture based 22nm SoC chips codenamed "Avoton", both scheduled for 2013. In his blog Jason also talks about why within the new segment of servers it is the application that will decide which core - Intel Atom or Xeon - will be the optimal solution. Waxman's presentation can be found here.

The Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 product family reached a new supercomputing milestone as the fastest adopted new processing technology to power 44 systems, including 3 Petascale-class supercomputers on the 39th edition of the Top500 list announced today.

The "SuperMUC" supercomputer at LRZ in Germany, which ranked fourth on the list, delivers 2.9 PetaFLOPs of performance, making it the most powerful in Europe, as well as the largest installation based on the new Intel Xeon processors E5 family.