Back in December, we reported that Tower Semiconductor was one of several semiconductor manufacturers that was considering building a fab in India, largely due to government subsidies. Since then, Intel has stepped in and bought Tower Semiconductor and has taken over the negotiations with the Indian government. What has also come to light is that Tower Semiconductor has been in discussions with the Indian government for over a decade, but apparently the two parties have been unable to come up with a suitable agreement. Tower Semiconductor was apparently ready to cancel any plans on building in India as late as September 2021, but the more recent government initiative renewed their interest.

As to exactly what kind of fab Intel would build, is unclear at this point in time, but it might still be a MEMS fab or it could simply be a testing and packaging plant. Regardless of what kind of facility it'll be, it's interesting that Intel decided to keep the ongoing plans from Tower Semiconductor going. Tower Semiconductor mostly manufactured for fabless companies and were producing some two million wafers a year. It's likely that Intel will carry on producing for the same companies at the same terms for now, although as Tower Semiconductor gets integrated closer with the Intel foundry, things could change.

Update: The Intel acquisition of Tower Semiconductor has gone through for a value of $5.4 billion, at a price of $53 per share. Through the deal, Intel adds Tower Semiconductor's infrastructure, IP, technicians, logistics and clients to its portfolio. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said that "Tower's specialty technology portfolio, geographic reach, deep customer relationships and services-first operations will help scale Intel's foundry services and advance our goal of becoming a major provider of foundry capacity globally." He then added that "This deal will enable Intel to offer a compelling breadth of leading-edge nodes and differentiated specialty technologies on mature nodes - unlocking new opportunities for existing and future customers in an era of unprecedented demand for semiconductors." The original story follows.

Intel is reportedly looking to increase its manufacturing capability - and its cadre of wafer-purchasing clients - by acquiring Israeli semiconductor manufacturer Tower Semiconductor. If true, the deal will bring seven additional foundries to Intel's existing infrastructure, capable of 2 million wafer starts per year. The foundries are located across three continents: Tower Semiconductor owns and operates a 150 mm and a 200 mm fab in Migdal Haemek, Israel; two 200 mm fabs in the United States (Newport Beach, California and San Antonio, Texas); two 200 mm fabs in Japan; and one additional 300 mm fab in Japan. The deal could be finalized as soon as this week.

Today, the Commission proposes a comprehensive set of measures to ensure the EU's security of supply, resilience and technological leadership in semiconductor technologies and applications. The European Chips Act will bolster Europe's competitiveness, resilience and help achieve both the digital and green transition. Recent global semiconductors shortages forced factory closures in a wide range of sectors from cars to healthcare devices. In the car sector, for example, production in some Member States decreased by one third in 2021. This made more evident the extreme global dependency of the semiconductor value chain on a very limited number of actors in a complex geopolitical context. But it also illustrated the importance of semiconductors for the entire European industry and society.

The EU Chips Act will build on Europe's strengths - world-leading research and technology organisations and networks as well as host of pioneering equipment manufacturers - and address outstanding weaknesses. It will bring about a thriving semiconductor sector from research to production and a resilient supply chain. It will mobilise more than €43 billion euros of public and private investments and set measures to prevent, prepare, anticipate and swiftly respond to any future supply chains disruption, together with Member States and our international partners. It will enable the EU to reach its ambition to double its current market share to 20% in 2030.

From 2020 to 2025, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12-inch equivalent wafer capacity at the world's top ten foundries will be approximately 10% with the majority of these companies focusing on 12-inch capacity expansion, which will see a CAGR of approximately 13.2%, according to TrendForce's research. In terms of 8-inch wafers, due to factors such as difficult to obtain equipment and whether capacity expansion is cost-effective, most fabs can only expand production slightly by means of capacity optimization, equating to a CAGR of only 3.3%. In terms of demand, the products primarily derived from 8-inch wafers, PMIC and Power Discrete, are driven by demand for electric vehicles, 5G smartphones, and servers. Stocking momentum has not fallen off, resulting in a serious shortage of 8-inch wafer production capacity that has festered since 2H19. Therefore, in order to mitigate competition for 8-inch capacity, a trend of shifting certain products to 12-inch production has gradually emerged. However, if shortages in overall 8-inch capacity is to be effectively alleviated, it is still necessary to wait for a large number of mainstream products to migrate to 12-inch production. The timeframe for this migration is estimated to be close to 2H23 into 2024.

Tachyum today announced that it was selected by the Slovak Republic to participate in the latest submission for the Important Projects of Common European Interest (IPCEI), to develop Prodigy 2 for HPC/AI. Prodigy 2 for HPC/AI will enable 1 AI Zettaflop and more than 10 DP Exaflops computers to support superhuman brain-scale computing by 2024 for under €1B. As part of this selection, Tachyum could receive a 49 million Euro grant to accelerate a second-generation of its Tachyum Prodigy processor for HPC/AI in a 3-nanometer process.

The IPCEI program can make a very important contribution to sustainable economic growth, jobs, competitiveness and resilience for industry and the economy in the European Union. IPCEI will strengthen the EU's open strategic autonomy by enabling breakthrough innovation and infrastructure projects through cross-border cooperation and with positive spill-over effects on the internal market and society as a whole.

Worldwide semiconductor revenue increased 25.1% in 2021 to total $583.5 billion, crossing the $500 billion threshold for the first time, according to preliminary results by Gartner, Inc.

"As the global economy bounced back in 2021, shortages appeared throughout the semiconductor supply chain, particularly in the automotive industry," said Andrew Norwood, research vice president at Gartner. "The resulting combination of strong demand as well as logistics and raw material price increases drove semiconductors' average selling price higher (ASP), contributing to overall revenue growth in 2021.

MediaTek today announced the world's first live demo of Wi-Fi 7 technology, highlighting the capabilities of its forthcoming Wi-Fi 7 Filogic connectivity portfolio. MediaTek is currently showcasing two Wi-Fi 7 demos to key customers and industry collaborators to demonstrate the technology's super-fast speeds and low latency transmission.

"The rollout of Wi-Fi 7 will mark the first time that Wi-Fi can be a true wireline/Ethernet replacement for super high-bandwidth applications," said Alan Hsu, corporate vice president and general manager of the Intelligent Connectivity business at MediaTek. "MediaTek's Wi-Fi 7 technology will be the backbone of home, office and industrial networks and provide seamless connectivity for everything from multi-player AR/VR applications to cloud gaming and 4K calls to 8K streaming and beyond."

The Taiwanese President, Tsai Ing-Wen, told local media that she believes that Taiwan can become self-sufficient when it comes to semiconductor equipment, although this is obviously not something that would happen overnight. A large part of why this has even been considered seems to be the current pandemic, as although Taiwan might not have suffered much from the pandemic itself, the nation has suffered when it comes to imports, as just in time production and delivery systems have broken down, which has affected most industries in Taiwan.

In 2021 Taiwanese semiconductor companies invested some NT$1 trillion (~US$36.3 billion), of which 70 percent was in equipment, according to the President, with around NT$600 billion (~US$21.8 billion) of that money being towards imported equipment. It also shows that local semiconductor equipment makers have a lot of work to do, especially if they're intending to catch up with their international competitors. The President also mentioned that the local semiconductor equipment industry grew by 28.7 percent in 2021, although it was still relatively small at NT$116.7 billion (~US$4.2 billion), but she was quoted as saying that she's 100 percent certain that Taiwan has the ability to make all semiconductor equipment the [local] industry needs.

ASML, the company that makes semiconductor fab machinery that powers most of today's cutting-edge foundries, has reported a fire incident in one of its plants near Berlin. The company reports that the incident occurred at night, none of its employees are injured, and that the fire is extinguished. The company says that it does not know at this point how the incident affects supplies, since it hasn't undertaken a damage-assessment. The Berlin plant of ASML manufactures components of silicon lithography equipment, including some key mechanical and optical components, such as wafer tables and clamps, reticle chucks and mirror blocks. ASML inherited this plant when it acquired Berliner Glas in 2020.

Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation has succeeded in developing the world's first stacked CMOS image sensor technology with 2-Layer Transistor Pixel. Whereas conventional CMOS image sensors' photodiodes and pixel transistors occupy the same substrate, Sony's new technology separates photodiodes and pixel transistors on different substrate layers. This new architecture approximately doubles saturation signal level relative to conventional image sensors, widens dynamic range and reduces noise, thereby substantially improving imaging properties. The new technology's pixel structure will enable pixels to maintain or improve their existing properties at not only current but also smaller pixel sizes.

A stacked CMOS image sensor adopts a stacked structure consisting of a pixel chip made up of back-illuminated pixels stacked atop a logic chip where signal processing circuits are formed. Within the pixel chip, photodiodes for converting light to electrical signals, and pixel transistors for controlling the signals are situated alongside each other on the same layer. Increasing saturation signal level within form-factor constraints plays an important role in realizing high image quality with wide dynamic range.

Over the past couple of months there have been a lot of calls for more investment into the semiconductor industry due to the current shortage of many different kinds of semiconductors. As we've seen, several government organizations have already started working on how to woo chip makers to their part of the world and the latest nation to join the fray is India.

Unlike the US and the EU where so far no firm budgets have been approved, India has already approved a US$10 billion incentive plan for semiconductor, as well as display panel manufacturers who are willing to consider India as the next location for their new fabs. According to Reuters, the Indian government is said to cover up to 50 percent of the project cost of new semiconductor and display panel fabs. So far it seems like at least three companies are interested in the scheme for semiconductor manufacturing, namely Tower Semiconductor out of Israel, Foxconn and an unnamed Singaporean consortium.

Due to material shortages caused by insufficient semiconductor supply, to date, power management IC (PMIC) prices remain on an upward trend, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. Average selling price (ASP) for 1H22 is forecast to increase by nearly 10%, reaching a record six year high.

In terms of the global supply chain, in addition to the production capacity of major IDM manufacturers including TI, Infineon, ADI, STMicroelectronics, NXP, ON Semiconductor, Renesas, Microchip, ROHM (Maxim has been acquired by ADI and Dialog by Renesas), IC design houses such as Qualcomm and MediaTek (MTK) have obtained a certain level of production capacity from foundries. Of these, TI is in a leadership position and the aforementioned companies possess a combined market share of over 80%.

The Federal Trade Commission today sued to block U.S. chip supplier Nvidia Corp.'s $40 billion acquisition of U.K. chip design provider Arm Ltd. Semiconductor chips power the computers and technologies that are essential to our modern economy and society. The proposed vertical deal would give one of the largest chip companies control over the computing technology and designs that rival firms rely on to develop their own competing chips. The FTC's complaint alleges that the combined firm would have the means and incentive to stifle innovative next-generation technologies, including those used to run datacenters and driver-assistance systems in cars.

"The FTC is suing to block the largest semiconductor chip merger in history to prevent a chip conglomerate from stifling the innovation pipeline for next-generation technologies," said FTC Bureau of Competition Director Holly Vedova. "Tomorrow's technologies depend on preserving today's competitive, cutting-edge chip markets. This proposed deal would distort Arm's incentives in chip markets and allow the combined firm to unfairly undermine Nvidia's rivals. The FTC's lawsuit should send a strong signal that we will act aggressively to protect our critical infrastructure markets from illegal vertical mergers that have far-reaching and damaging effects on future innovations."

Samsung Electronics, a world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, today announced that it would build a new semiconductor manufacturing facility in Taylor, Texas. The estimated $17 billion investment in the United States will help boost production of advanced logic semiconductor solutions that power next-generation innovations and technologies.

The new facility will manufacture products based on advanced process technologies for application in areas such as mobile, 5G, high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI). Samsung remains committed to supporting customers globally by making advanced semiconductor fabrication more accessible and meeting surging demand for leading-edge products.

Fujitsu Semiconductor Memory Solution Limited has launched new 8 Mbit FRAM MB85R8M2TA with parallel interface, which is the first product to guarantee 100 trillion read/write cycle times in Fujitsu's FRAM product family. Evaluation samples are currently available. The new product achieves both high-speed operations, approximately 30% faster access speed, and low power consumption, 10% less operating current, compared to Fujitsu's conventional products. This memory IC is an ideal replacement of SRAM in the industrial machines that require high-speed operation.

FRAM is a non-volatile memory product with superior features of high read/write endurance, fast writing speed operation and low power consumption, and it has been mass-produced for over 20 years. Fujitsu has been providing 8 Mbit FRAM MB85R8M2T with parallel interface since June 2018. While promoting the product, the company heard voices of customer requirements such as guaranteed writing endurance of more than 10 trillion times, operation as fast as SRAM and TSOP package compatibility to SRAM. Fujitsu is now pleased to introduce its new 8 Mbit FRAM product satisfying these requirements, maintaining FRAM's unique feature of lower power consumption.

TSMC (TWSE: 2330, NYSE: TSM) and Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation ("SSS") today jointly announced that TSMC will establish a subsidiary, Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing, Inc. ("JASM"), in Kumamoto, Japan to provide foundry service with initial technology of 22/28-nanometer processes to address strong global market demand for specialty technologies, with SSS participating as a minority shareholder.

Construction of JASM's fab in Japan is scheduled to begin in the 2022 calendar year with production targeted to begin by the end of 2024. The fab is expected to directly create about 1,500 high-tech professional jobs and to have a monthly production capacity of 45,000 12-inch wafers. The initial capital expenditure is estimated to be approximately US$7 billion with strong support from the Japanese government.

Under definitive agreements reached between TSMC and SSS, SSS plans to make an equity investment in JASM of approximately US $0.5 billion, which will represent a less than 20% equity stake in JASM. The closing of the transaction between TSMC and SSS is subject to customary closing conditions.

IDC expects the semiconductor market to grow by 17.3% in 2021 versus 10.8% in 2020. According to IDC, the industry will see normalization and balance by the middle of 2022, with a potential for overcapacity in 2023 as larger scale capacity expansions begin to come online towards the end of 2022. Growth is driven by mobile phones, notebooks, servers, automotive, smart home, gaming, wearables, and Wi-Fi access points, with increased memory pricing. IC shortages are also expected to continue easing through 4Q21 as capacity additions accelerate.

"The semiconductor content story is intact and not only does it benefit the semiconductor companies, but the unit volume growth in many of the markets that they serve will also continue to drive very good growth for the semiconductor market," says Mario Morales, Group Vice President, Enabling Technologies and Semiconductors at IDC.

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) today announced Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA and a trailblazer in building accelerated computing platforms, is the 2021 recipient of the industry's highest honor, the Robert N. Noyce Award. SIA presents the Noyce Award annually in recognition of a leader who has made outstanding contributions to the semiconductor industry in technology or public policy. Huang will accept the award at the SIA Awards Dinner on Nov. 18, 2021.

"Jensen Huang's extraordinary vision and tireless execution have greatly strengthened our industry, revolutionized computing, and advanced artificial intelligence," said John Neuffer, SIA president and CEO. "Jensen's accomplishments have fueled countless innovations—from gaming to scientific computing to self-driving cars—and he continues to advance technologies that will transform our industry and the world. We're pleased to recognize Jensen with the 2021 Robert N. Noyce Award for his many achievements in advancing semiconductor technology."

Samsung Electronics today reported financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2021. Total consolidated revenue was KRW 63.67 trillion, a 20% increase from the previous year and a record for the second quarter. Operating profit increased 34% from the previous quarter to KRW 12.57 trillion as market conditions improved in the memory market, operations normalized at the Austin foundry fab, and as effective global supply chain management (SCM) helped maintain solid profitability for the finished product businesses.

The Semiconductor business saw a significant improvement in earnings as memory shipments exceeded previous guidance and price increases were higher than expected, while the Company strengthened its cost competitiveness. For the Display Panel Business, a one-off gain and an increase in overall prices boosted profits.

Semiconductor manufacturing is no easy task. Every company in that business knows that, and the hardships of silicon manufacturing have been felt by even the greatest players like Samsung and Intel. Today, according to the latest report from Business Korea, Samsung is again in trouble with its 5 nm node. It has been reported previously that Samsung is struggling with yields of its 5 nm node, however, we didn't know just how much until now. According to the sources over at Business Korea, Samsung's 5 nm semiconductor node is experiencing less than 50% yields. That means, for example, that out of 100 chips manufactured on a single silicon wafer, only half are functional. And that is not good at all.

Usually, for a node to go into high-volume manufacturing (HVM), the yielding rate needs to be around 95%. In case it is not at that level, manufacturing of that node is not very efficient and not very profitable. The V1 Line in Hwaseong, where this Samsung 5 nm is made, uses EUV tools to manufacture the new node. While the yields are currently below 50%, it is expected to improve as Samsung engineers tweak and tune the node and the tools that are running the facility. We can expect to hear more about the yields of this node in the coming months.

Intel's struggles with semiconductor manufacturing have been known for a very long time. Starting from its 10 nm design IP to the latest 7 nm delays, we have seen the company struggle to deliver its semiconductor nodes on time. On the other hand, Intel's competing companies are using 3rd party foundries to manufacture their designs and not worry about the yields of semiconductor nodes. Most of the time, that 3rd party company is Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). Today, thanks to some reporting from Nikkei Asia, we are learning that Intel is tapping TSMC's capacities to manufacture some of the company's future processors.

Citing sources familiar with the matter, Nikkei notes that: "Intel, America's biggest chipmaker, is working with TSMC on at least two 3-nm projects to design central processing units for notebooks and data center servers in an attempt to regain market share it has lost to Advanced Micro Devices and Nvidia over the past few years. Mass production of these chips is expected to begin by the end of 2022 at the earliest." This means that we could expect to see some of the TSMC manufactured Intel processors by the year 2023/2024.

Chinese semiconductor production is hitting new all-time highs. According to the report coming from South China Morning Post, citing the source over at the National Bureau of Statistics, Chinese semiconductor production has grown 37.6% in May of 2021, compared to the same month in 2020. The total chip output resulted in 29.9 billion chips in May, which is quite an impressive growth. In the first five months of this year, Chinese chipmakers have produced an amazing 139.9 billion chips, meaning that at the time of writing that number is much greater. If we compare the same five-month period of 2020, we can see that the chip output has grown 48.3% this year.

While the number of chips produced is not an ideal metric to monitor the growth of semiconductors in China, it is an indication of just how much the Chinese semiconductor industry is growing. The 48.3% growth in chip output is not small by any means, and we can't wait to see the report for the whole year.

Applied Materials, Inc. today unveiled a new way to engineer the wiring of advanced logic chips that enables scaling to the 3 nm node and beyond. While size reduction benefits transistor performance, the opposite is true in the interconnect wiring: smaller wires have greater electrical resistance which reduces performance and increases power consumption. Without a materials engineering breakthrough, interconnect via resistance would increase by a factor of 10 from the 7 nm node to the 3 nm node, negating the benefits of transistor scaling.

Applied Materials has developed a new materials engineering solution called the Endura Copper Barrier Seed IMS. It is an Integrated Materials Solution that combines seven different process technologies in one system under high vacuum: ALD, PVD, CVD, copper reflow, surface treatment, interface engineering and metrology. The combination replaces conformal ALD with selective ALD, eliminating a high-resistivity barrier at the via interface. The solution also includes copper reflow technology that enables void free gap fill in narrow features. Electrical resistance at the via contact interface is reduced by up to 50 percent, improving chip performance and power consumption, and enabling logic scaling to continue to 3 nm and beyond.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF ), the global leader in feature-rich semiconductor manufacturing, and GlobalWafers Co., Ltd. (GWC), one of the top silicon wafer manufacturers in the world, today announced an $800 million agreement to add 300 mm silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer manufacturing and expand existing 200 mm SOI wafer production at GWC's MEMC facility in O'Fallon, Missouri.

The silicon wafers produced by GWC are key input materials for semiconductors and an integral part of GF's supply chain. The wafers are used in GF's multi-billion dollar manufacturing facilities, or fabs, where they are used to manufacture the computer chips that are pervasive and vital to the global economy. Today's announcement expands GF's domestic silicon wafer supply from the United States.

Samsung Electronics plans to build a new cutting-edge semiconductor fab in Austin, Texas, according to an ETimes report. An official announcement to this effect will be made later today, when South Korean President Moon and U.S. President Biden are scheduled to hold their first Summit meeting, in Washington DC. The facility will offer third-party contract manufacturing of semiconductor chips on the 5 nanometer EUV process. Samsung has earmarked an investment of $18 billion toward the construction of this fab, which will be located close to the company's existing foundry in Texas, which manufactures chips on the 14 nm node. Samsung's investment is in response to rising demand of high-volume logic chips by major American firms such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Tesla.