The Chip Insider®– SEMI ITPC Highlights and Notables

SEMI ITPC Highlights and Notables: Christophe Fouquet, ASML… sees EUV innovations furthering lithography cost reductions for “the next 15 years.” But there’s also a strategic pivot afoot at ASML with the first shipments of the XT:260 i-line scanner for advanced packaging... Naga Chandrasekaran, Intel… interesting were the hints given about turning around Intel’s fortunes. One was that the introduction of BSP (BackSide Power)… a full generation ahead of TSMC with BSP. The other key advantage… most importantly, his push to change Intel’s culture by focusing on… Prabu Raja, Applied Materials, pointed to the need for more energy-efficient compute being realized with the kind of materials systems engineering his team is so famous for… Hyun-Woo Kim, Samsung Electronics, covered the need for custom HBM solutions to “enhance energy efficiency…” Standards result in commoditization, which the memory makers are frightfully avoiding by focusing on value, not cost.

Woong Sun Lee, SK hynix: … his focus on the social issues of moving from being a monolithic IC player to the world of HBM ICs via Heterogeneous Integration. Babak Sabi, Amazon Web Services (AWS), gave an excellent dissertation on why hyperscalers do their own “silicon innovation.” The bottom line is … the real difference … is like the difference between qualifying and winning a race… Most important was to understand the implications of “Scale out and Scale up.” … he projects real density issues that must be faced. The dilemma with 3D transistor scaling is more thermal problems. Thermal management in data centers starts at the chip… “Reduce temperature by 3 degrees C and it saves millions. Also, we “have to move to optical. Copper runs out of gas after 1-to-2 meters. In 2 to 3 years it will be here.” Subramanian Iyer, UCLA … pointed out the often-overlooked fact that “chiplets are the equivalent of a hard IP block. Importantly, there are “no standards. AIB died, then UCIe failed.

Now each company has its own standards.” He does not see an open chiplet ecosystem or market coming … As for future technologies on the horizon, Steven Johnston, EMD Electronics / Merck KGaA, spoke on “Bioconvergence -- the next wave in technology convergence.”

His slide on the impact of today’s technology convergence was the stunning mind-blower of the conference. Did you know … The other was from Prineha Narang, UCLA, on Quantum Computing…

“Cost is important... Value is decisive.” — G. Dan Hutcheson