Also: hynix Advanced Packaging in Indiana; Fraunhofer Chiplet Center; Call to Unify Advanced Packaging Standards
Is the U.S. Government Becoming Wary of Intel Investment?
Toms Hardware, a great site for the latest info on microelectronic hardware, is noting that Intel is reportedly facing a delay in the release of its CHIPS Act funds promised by the government back in March 2024.
According to the CHIPS program, American chipmakers must meet due diligence checks to ensure that the billions of dollars Washington promised won’t go to waste before the federal government releases funds. The government will only release the earmarked investments once the winner has proven it can deliver. That was certainly never in question for Intel.
Intel is one of the biggest recipients of CHIPS monies with $8.5B plus another $11 billion in low-interest loans. It also received a 25% tax credit for up to $100 billion.
Toms Hardware notes Intel’s recent financial turmoil as Intel’s data center, CPU, and foundry businesses aren’t performing as expected. The company posted a $1.6B loss in 2Q24. This was followed up by Intel’s announcement that it will lay off 15% of its workforce. This is unsettling, since the CHIPS Act was designed to hire American workers into the chip industry, not terminate them.
“The company is actively fighting for its survival at the moment, with its board considering cutting non-performing assets like the suspension or cancelation of its Magdeburg, Germany chip fab and selling off its stake in Altera….”
In addition, IFTLE is sure that the government is also looking at Intel’s September announcement that it no longer plans to use its own ‘Intel 20A’ process node with its upcoming Arrow Lake processors, but instead will use external nodes, (likely from TSMC), for all of Arrow Lake’s chip components. Intel’s only manufacturing responsibilities for the Arrow Lake processors will be packaging the externally manufactured chiplets into the final processor.
Intel says its crucial next-gen ‘Intel 18A’ node remains on track for launch in 2025. Time will tell whether we will see 18A delayed or replaced like 20A.
On Sept 16th Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger pledged to keep U.S. investments related to the CHIPS Act in Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico and Ohio on track …Again…we will see!
SK hynix Indiana
The U.S. Department of Commerce and SK hynix have signed a preliminary memorandum of terms (PMT) to provide up to $450 million in proposed federal incentives under the CHIPS Act to establish a high-bandwidth memory (HBM) advanced packaging fabrication and research and development (R&D) facility.
The proposed CHIPS investment builds upon SK Hynix’s investment of approximately $3.87 billion in West Lafayette, Indiana, to build a memory packaging plant for artificial intelligence (AI) [i.e stacked memory]
With this announcement, the U.S. will have preliminary agreements with all five of the world’s leading-edge logic, memory, and advanced packaging providers.
SK hynix’s West Lafayette facility, located at the Purdue University Research Park, will be home to an advanced semiconductor packaging line that will mass-produce next-generation HBM. Mass production at the facility is expected to begin in the second half of 2028.
SK hynix will collaborate with Purdue on plans for future R&D projects, which include working on advanced packaging and heterogeneous integration with Purdue’s Birck Nanotechnology Center and other research institutes and industry partners.
Hynix has indicated that it plans to claim the Department of the Treasury’s Investment Tax Credit, which is expected to be up to 25% of qualified capital expenditures. In addition to the proposed direct funding of up to $450 million, the CHIPS Program Office would make up to $500 million of proposed loans – which is part of the $75 billion in loan authority provided by the CHIPS Act – available to SK Hynix under the non-binding PMT.
Fraunhofer Chiplet Center of Excellence
Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute has established the Chiplet Center of Excellence (CCoE), which aims at establishing a common understanding among the partners from research and industry and creating a suitable chiplet development methodology as well as a tool set.
This goal is supplemented by recommendations to shape a multi-vendor chiplet ecosystem. To support the success of these results in industrial practice, the methodological approaches are to be incorporated into standards. The center will be headed up by Andy Heinig.
The work of the CCoE, for the first two years, starting 2024, will focus on automotive applications and their specific requirements.
Call to Unify Advanced Packaging Standards
SEMI Japan president Masayuki Hamajima recently called for the semiconductor industry to unify packaging technology standards as soon as possible, particularly in the advanced packaging sector.
Hamajima emphasized that establishing international standards for backend processes of major semiconductor manufacturers such as Intel, Samsung and TSMC would effectively increase production capacity and address the current shortage of advanced packaging capabilities.
In an interview with Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Hamajima pointed out that with traditional process scaling facing technical and economic limitations, we have recently seen significant R&D and commercial capacity investments in advanced packaging technologies. Semiconductor companies like Intel, Samsung and TSMC are currently developing unique solutions for back-end processes. This has become so widespread that Hamajima contends that one cannot even remember the names/ acronyms for all of these unique back-end processes. Hamajima contends that these processes are significantly more fragmented than the front-end process standards of chip manufacturing.
For example, TSMC’s CoWoS packaging technology is considered key to the production of cutting-edge AI chips, but the company recently warned that it is working to increase production capacity to further meet market demand in the face of current supply shortages. Therefore, once packaging technology standards can be unified in the future, there will be opportunities for more companies to join in, thereby providing more product production capacity.
For the latest in Advanced Packaging stay linked to IFTLE…………………
