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Pradeep’s Techpoints is media partner for Leti Innovation Days 2024
CEA-Leti, France, is organizing the Leti Innovation Days 2024, June 25-27, at Maison MINATEC Congress Center, Grenoble, France. It is my pleasure to inform you all that Pradeep’s Techpoints is a media partner for the event.
The world needs lower-power, more resource-efficient electronics for an array of use cases. The semiconductor industry is excited about the recent surge in investments. It is very good news for the global semiconductor industry. It will also create unprecedented opportunities. Partnerships will be instrumental to getting relevant, robust, and reliable products to markets faster.
Seven tracks
At Leti Innovation Days 2024, there will be seven tracks. Plenary session is generally the most attended. Other tracks are on: electronics and sustainability, tech for health, 3D heterogeneous integration, sense and act, new materials for computing, and RF and telecommunications.
Besides the plenary, I recommend 3D heterogeneous integration, and new materials for computing, Of course, you have the right to choose your own tracks! 😉
Laith Altimime, President, SEMI Europe, will kick off the plenary, talking about global collaborations enabling $1 trillion by 2030. Fabio Gualandris, President, Quality, Manufacturing & Technology, STMicroelectronics, will speak about innovate, integrate, elevate your lab-to-fab fast track. Sanjay Natarajan, SVP & GM, Components Research, Intel, will discuss the future of compute: accelerating Moore’s Law innovation. David Anderson, President, NY CREATES, and former SEMI USA President, and Coby Hanoch. CEO, Weebit Nano, also have presentations.
Electronics and sustainability track has sessions on water resource and climate resource, respectively. Tech for health track has sessions from Thales, Injectpower, Travera, CEA-Leti, etc. 3D heterogeneous integration track has speakers from Cerebras Systems, IBM Research, Lightmatter, etc. Talks will also be delivered by Prophesee, Siemens EDA, IBM Quantum Computing, CERN, Aledia, etc.
Sense and act track has speakers from STMicroelectronics, TDK, Philips MEMS Foundry, Bosch Sensortec GmbH, Horiba, Leti, etc. New materials for computing track has speakers from Intel, CEA, Aixtron, Tokyo Institute of Technology, ASM, Applied Materials, University of Tokyo, Merck, etc. Finally, the RF and telecommunications track has speakers from Soitec, Leti, Murata, Stellantis, HPE, etc.
The tech exhibition will have 50+ live presentations. One-health demonstrators and CEA-Leti will show technologies for medical imaging, medical devices, pharma, biotech R&D, and environmental monitoring for improved human, animal, and environmental health. Also on display would be the latest silicon breakthroughs and smart system solutions. Startups are crucial to getting new technologies from labs to the market. This year, you don’t want to miss the new LiDAR, sensing, and health startups.
CEA-Leti partners span the entire semiconductor value chain. Partners’ Corner will make their expertise available in one convenient location. CEA-Leti is supported by Carnot network of French RTOs. CEA is a key player in R&D and innovation in four key areas. These are: defense and security, low carbon energies (nuclear and renewables), tech research for industry, and fundamental research in physical sciences and life sciences.
This is my second appearance as media partner, having earlier been associated with Asia Photonics Week 2024, Singapore, March 2024.
Look forward to seeing you all in Grenoble! 😉
Accelerated computing has reached tipping point: Jensen Huang, Nvidia
Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO, presented the GTC 2024 keynote in San Jose, USA. He said that technology leaders are sitting here, heading companies that accelerate computing. $100 trillion of the global industry is represented here today.
CUDA has turned out to be a revolutionary model from Nvidia in 2006. In 2012, Alexnet happened. AI and CUDA made first contact in 2016, recognizing the importance of DGX1, with 170TP in the world’s first supercomputer.
In 2023, GenAI emerged, and a new industry begins. Software had never existed before, and it is a new category. We are now creating new type of tokens creating AI factories to generate new AI. A new industry has now emerged. We will discuss how we are going to do computing next. We will talk about new software, and apps, and how can we start preparing for what’s coming next!
Nvidia is at the intersection of computer graphics, physics, and AI — all intersecting inside a computer in omniverse, in virtual world simulation. Accelerated computing has reached the tipping point. The impact is dramatic, especially in our own. We are driving up the scale. We need to accelerate an entire industry, and bring the world into accelerated computing.
Talk about partnerships
Nvidia is partnering with Ansys, to accelerate their ecosystem. The apps they accelerate will have a major impact. The end users will have the most amazing apps, and system makers and CSTs would also benefit. We are also partnering with Synopsys. They have revolutionized the chip industry. Nvidia has created a library that accelerates computational lithography.
Nvidia also announced that TSMC and Synopsys are going into production with its computational lithography platform to accelerate manufacturing, and push limits of physics for the next generation of advanced semiconductor chips.
“Computational lithography is a cornerstone of chip manufacturing,” said Huang. “Our work on cuLitho, in partnership with TSMC and Synopsys, applies accelerated computing and generative AI to open new frontiers for semiconductor scaling.” Nvidia also introduced new generative AI algorithms that enhance the cuLitho, a library for GPU-accelerated computational lithography, dramatically improving semiconductor manufacturing process over current CPU-based methods.
“Our work with Nvidia to integrate GPU-accelerated computing in the TSMC workflow has resulted in great leaps in performance, dramatic throughput improvement, shortened cycle time and reduced power requirements,” said Dr. C.C. Wei, CEO of TSMC. “We are moving Nvidia cuLitho into production at TSMC, leveraging this computational lithography technology to drive a critical component of semiconductor scaling.”
“For more than two decades, Synopsys Proteus mask synthesis software products have been the production-proven choice for accelerating computational lithography — the most demanding workload in semiconductor manufacturing,” said Sassine Ghazi, President and CEO of Synopsys. “With the move to advanced nodes, computational lithography has dramatically increased in complexity and compute cost. Our collaboration with TSMC and Nvidia is critical to enabling angstrom-level scaling, as we pioneer advanced technologies to reduce turnaround time by orders of magnitude through the power of accelerated computing.”
Huang added that Nvidia is also partnering with Cadence Design Systems. To realize the benefits of GenAI, our society depends on use of the world’s data centers. To mitigate the potential impact of these on the environment, it is critical to more efficiently design, optimize, and manage them. Nvidia and Cadence have partnered, using Cadence Reality Digital Twin platform and Nvidia Omniverse to accomplish, and deliver success in AI era.
He said that we are also building supercomputers. In the future, companies like Cadence, Ansys, etc., will offer you AI co-pilots. We can create a future in digital twins. LLMs have benefitted mostly. We have now grown computational requirements quite a lot. We are also going to need much bigger GPUs.
Blackwell is here, along with Hopper!
In 2021, we built Selene supercomputer with 4,480 A100 GPUs. In 2023, we built the EOS, with 10,752 H100 GPUs. We now need even larger models. They need to be grounded in physics. We need even bigger GPUs in the future. He introduced a very big GPU, named after mathematician, David Blackwell. Blackwell GPU. He showed the Blackwell and Hopper GPUs. Hopper securely scales diverse workloads in every data center, from small enterprise to exascale high-performance computing (HPC) and trillion-parameter AI—so that brilliant innovators can fulfil their life’s work at the fastest pace in human history.
Blackwell platform is for trillion-parameter scale GenAI. Its partner, TSMC, will use 4NP in production. The GPU architecture has six transformative technologies for accelerated computing, help unlock breakthroughs in data processing, engineering simulation, EDA, computer-aided drug design, quantum computing and GenAI — all emerging industry opportunities for Nvidia. Among the many organizations expected to adopt Blackwell are Amazon Web Services, Dell Technologies, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, Tesla and xAI.
GPUs are also able to do mathematics right in the network. We also need to have the ability to detect a weak chip and swap with another. We also have the ability for encrypting data at rest, and in transit. While, its being computed, it is all encrypted. It is in trusted engine environment. We also handle decompression. All these capabilities keep Blackwell as busy as possible. Remember, a GPU is making tokens. Some call it inference, but it is appropriately generating the way computing is done. The future is generative! The way we compute is fundamentally different. He also announced Project Groot. This includes a new computer based on Blackwell. Project Groot will be available to humanoid robot makers.
DGX is bigger GPU
Nvidia now wants to have a bigger GPU. Therefore, we decided to scale, and improved computation by 8x times. In the last eight years, we have gone 1,000 times, and we have two years still to go. We have built another chip — NVLink Switch chip. It has 50 billion transistors, and almost the size of Hopper. It has four MV links, each, 1.8Tbps. We can have every single GPU talk to every other GPU at full speed, at same time.
We also have DGX GB200 NVL72 GPU. Huang had delivered the first DGX chip to OpenAI, which was 170 teraflops. This GPU is now 720 teraflops! We have the world’s first exascale machine in one rack. This is an exaflop AI system in one single rack. It connects 36 Grace CPUs and 72 Blackwell GPUs in a rack-scale design. GB200 NVL72 is a liquid-cooled, rack-scale solution that boasts a 72-GPU NVLink domain. This acts as a single massive GPU, and delivers 30X faster real-time for trillion-parameter LLM inference.
Our goal is to continuously drive down cost, and energy so they are directly proportional to each other’s cost and energy for computing. We can continue to expand and scale up the computation.
GBIP looking to expand semiconductor collaborations with Taiwan
Global Business Innovation Program, UK, organized a semiconductors event with ITRI, Taiwan.
David Campbell Molloy, Partnership Manager Asia, Innovate UK, presented the Global Missions Program. Innovation is the key to UK’s future growth and prosperity. Talking about Innovate UK and EPSRC within UKRI, it is the UK’s Research & Innovation agency. It is a key delivery body of HMG’s R&I policies and strategies. We support academic research and business.
Innovate UK mission is to help UK businesses grow through the development and commercialization of new products, processes, and services, supported by an outstanding innovation ecosystem that is agile, inclusive, and easy to navigate. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) mission is to support new ideas and transformative technologies that are foundations of innovations that improve our economy, environment and society, by investing in world-leading research and skills.
Innovate UK global programs to support businesses include Global Scoping Workshops, Global Expert Missions, Global Explorers, Global Business Innovation Programs, Global Incubator Programs, and Bilateral and multilateral R&D&I funding programs and access to Horizon Europe.
In Nov. 2022, a five-year MoU was signed between Innovate UK and the Department of Industrial Technology, Ministry of Economic Affairs, Taiwan, with commitment to strengthening joint R&D opportunities. Industrial Technology Research Institute or ITRI is the main delivery partner.
UK global business innovation
Louise Hooker, GBIP Program Lead, Innovate UK Business Growth, presented Global Business Innovation Program. Innovate UK is fully-funded competitive program delivered by IUK Business Growth. A national team of circa 270 innovation and growth specialist advisers provide specialist, tailored business support to help ambitious companies commercialize new products and services, and accelerate business growth
In the past 5 years, the program has supported +2,200 companies in key technology sectors to access markets of strategic importance. Significant focus is on Asian markets, notably Singapore, South Korea, and Japan. Taiwan has emerged in the last few years as a market of significant strategic importance. Like Singapore and South Korea, it has the benefit of bilateral funding from Innovate UK and ITRI.
A three-phase program aims to build capability, capacity, and drive collaboration. It is aimed at the most globally ambitious innovation- and technology-led companies with the greatest potential to scale internationally.
Clair Hsin-Fang Lee, Senior Business Manager/Europe Business Division, Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), gave an overview of Taiwan’s semiconductor ecosystem.
Introduction to Taiwan
Guy Robertson, Science and Innovation Network, British Office Taipei, gave an introduction to Taiwan. The British Office represents UK interests in Taiwan. UK and Taiwan enjoy a vibrant relationship in trade, science, culture, and education. SIN (the Science and Innovation Network) is here to improve links between researchers and early-stage start-ups in the UK and Taiwan.
SIN provides support for two key programs: UK-Taiwan Innovative Industries Program (I2P), a researcher placement program, and UK-Taiwan Collaborative R&D program (2nd call for proposals will be April 24).
Taiwan is a stable, vibrant democracy with a free press and independent judiciary. It holds presidential and legislative elections every four years, with one having just occurred earlier this year. It has a population of 23.6 million, with good transport, industry, and utility infrastructure on the North and West coasts.
Traditionally, China and US have been Taiwan’s two key markets, with 35 percent and 17 percent of exports share, respectively. Export dynamics are changing with the increasing emphasis on India and South-East Asia. Taiwan’s GDP per capita is $72,485, the 12th richest globally, and higher than Germany, France and Japan.
Taiwan has science and innovation strengths. These are 3.96 percent R&D investment as percentage of GDP (UK 2.9 percent). It ranks third in patents per capita, behind US and Japan. It ranks fourth in WEF Innovation Capability Index ranking (UK #8). About 262,000 are employed in R&D (251,000 in the UK). 25 percent of all degrees are engineering-related.
Taiwan is very famous for semiconductors, and is also dominant in contract manufacturing for the electronics industry. It has a 5+2 industrial policy focusing on Asian Silicon Valley, smart machinery, national defense, green energy, AI/cyber security + new agricultural industry and zero emissions.
Focus areas and opportunities
Iain Mauchline, Electronics, Sensors & Photonics Lead, Innovate UK, presented on the focus areas and opportunities. Talking about UK semiconductor strategy, semiconductors are 1 of the 5 technologies of tomorrow. They are critical to the UK’s economic and national security, and to strategic advantage that the UK will secure on the global stage.
Over the next 20 years, UK will secure areas of world leading semiconductor technologies of future by focusing on strengths in R&D, design and IP, and compound semiconductors. All of this will facilitate technological innovation, boost growth, and bolster international position to improve supply chain resilience. The UK government plans to invest up to £1 billion over the next decade.
In the recent Autumn statement, the Chancellor has clarified the government’s priorities for the UK Infrastructure Bank, to ensure it is able to invest in critical supply chains where it meets the Bank’s strategic objectives, including semiconductor manufacturing and critical minerals.
Regarding UK’s semiconductor strategy, UKSII Feasibility Study has results due in early 2024. The DSIT-commissioned study is to understand the technical and economic feasibility of developing specific capabilities to support commercial R&D, grow UK semiconductor sector, and contribute to supply chain resilience. It has five key capabilities under evaluation:
- Silicon prototyping and low volume piloting.
- Advanced packaging.
- Compound semiconductor open-access foundry.
- Access to EDA tools and design IP.
- An institutional framework that would provide strategic coordination for the sector.
Semiconductor Advisory Panel was established by DSIT to enable the government to work closely with industry to deliver the goals of the National Semiconductor Strategy on growing the UK sector, ensuring a stable supply of chips, and protecting the UK from national security risks associated with semiconductor technology.
ChipStart is a two-year pilot program backed by the UK government that will provide early-stage companies involved in design of semiconductors the technical and commercial help they need to help bring new products to market – and ultimately, improve lives and livelihoods in the long-term.
Semiconductor strengths
UK has several semiconductor strengths. In semiconductor design/IP, there are over 100 semiconductor design/IP companies. Global companies are also in IP, AI, SoCs, graphics, IoT, etc. It has a world leading chip-design sector with clusters, including those in Bristol, Cambridge, and Edinburgh.
In compound and novel material semiconductors, UK has 8 percent share of the global compound semiconductor market. It has a compound semiconductor cluster, CSconnected, in South Wales. World-leading companies are working with advanced materials. Research strengths of the UK includes photonics / photonic systems integration, integrated circuit design, compound semiconductors, embedded security, on chip, polymer electronic materials. and new and advanced materials for devices (spintronics, magnonics, etc.).
Semiconductor-related investments
Semiconductor-related investments by Innovate UK have been many. Digital Security by Design (DSbD) is worth £80 million. It is transforming technology to create more resilient and secure foundation for a safer digital future.
Driving the Electric Revolution (DER) is worth £80 million. It is looking at electrification technologies, including power electronics, machines and drives (PEMD), developing clean technology supply chains. Next comes commercializing quantum technologies worth £174 million. We are advancing commercialization of new products and technologies based on advances in quantum science.
Robots for Safer World is worth £112 million. We are advancing robotics and autonomous systems in extreme and challenging environments. Manufacturing and Skills Innovation projects is worth £18 million. We are supporting skills development and manufacturing scale up for the semiconductors industry. Lastly, compound semiconductor app catapult worth £80+ million. We are helping the UK companies exploit advances in compound semiconductor technologies.
UK-Taiwan collaboration
There are several opportunities for UK-Taiwan collaboration. Due to global nature of the supply chain, the UK understands need for international co-operation, and identified synergies and opportunities offered by collaborating more closely with Taiwan.
UK is a world leader in new and emerging semiconductor materials, design/IP, hardware security and research. Taiwan has a well-established semiconductor ecosystem with a vast network of suppliers and vendors, and benefits from manufacturing infrastructure that is needed to support a resilient supply chain.
Taiwan is also targeting increased development of novel materials and technologies, which align well with the UK’s areas of expertise, such as those in IC design, power electronics, silicon photonics, and future telecoms.
Collaborative efforts have been initiated via agreements between Innovate UK and Taiwan Department of Industrial Trade, and joint funding of R&D projects between ITRI and Innovate UK. It has been further supported by agreements between ITRI and CSAC.
During last year’s GBIP, exciting opportunities were identified in quantum, WBG power electronics, and photonics across the supply chain, i.e., government agencies (e.g., ITRI) universities (e.g., NYCU), Incubators/accelerators (e.g., TTU), and companies and trade organization (e.g., PIDA).
Louise Hooker, GBIP Program Lead , Innovate UK Business Growth, presented on the application and selection process. The application deadline is 22 March 2024. Innovation visits to Taiwan are on 31 May-8 June 2024, and on Sept. 1-7, 2024. An Exploitation Workshop will be in Birmingham, on Oct. 15, 2024.
CHIPS Digital Twin Manufacturing USA Institute industry day conducted successfully
Chips.gov, USA, recently organized the CHIPS Digital Twin Manufacturing USA Institute industry day.
CHIPS For America offers $39 billion for incentives, $11 billion for R&D, plus CHIPS initiatives from the other agencies, such as DoD, State, NSF, and Treasury. CHIPS R&D programs include metrology, NSTC, NAPMP, Manufacturing USA Institute, etc.
CHIPS Manufacturing USA Institute looks to establish one institute with the potential for significant impact on semiconductor manufacturing. The focus is on digital twins with a minimum expected NIST commitment of ~$200 million over a five-year period. We anticipate a greater than 1:1 cost share. There is analysis of RFI responses, industry feedback, listening sessions across 15+ engagements, and technology opportunities across the CHIPS R&D portfolio.
What is a digital twin?
Specifically, a digital twin is a virtual representation or model that serves as the real-time digital counterpart of a physical object or process.
Benefits include innovate faster and at less expense, access feasible for small and medium businesses, enhance training modalities, shorten process design and validation times, and improve facility performance.
Challenges include being able to produce and access data needed to validate digital twins, and power machine learning and AI tools. We also need strategic industry collaboration, which requires a neutral convener to build trust and bring together all parties to share the risks and rewards of working across boundaries. Significant financial investment is also required, which is out of reach for small and medium-sized manufacturers.
CHIPS Manufacturing USA Institute on digital twins for manufacturing processes includes decision based on inputs from Manufacturing USA – RFI for semiconductor-related Manufacturing USA Institutes, CHIPS R&D workshops, PCAST and CHIPS IAC recommendations, and stakeholder meetings.
Digital Twins to revolutionize lab-to-fab transitions
Carol Handwerker, Head of Technology Strategy, CHIPS Program Office, spoke about Digital Twins to revolutionize lab-to-fab transitions. Semiconductor industry needs are CHIPS for America Industrial Advisory Committee, SRC roadmap for microelectronics and advanced packaging technologies, NIST semiconductor metrology and standards workshops, and IPC workshop on advanced packaging and roadmap for Industry 4.0.
Industrial Advisory Committee has established five key capabilities aimed to lower the barriers to entry and success for innovators. These capabilities will rely on a network of physical and virtual facilities.
There is need to establish easily accessible prototyping capabilities in multiple facilities and enact the ability to rapidly try out CMOS+X at a scale that is relevant to industry. Create a semiverse digital twin. Pervasive AI-enabled deep learning and model development can be applied to semiconductor R&D, design, and manufacturing. Establish chiplets ecosystem and 3D heterogeneous integration platform for chiplet innovation and advanced packaging. Build an accessible platform for chip design and enable new EDA tools that treat 3D (monolithic or stacked) as an intrinsic assumption. Finally, create a nurturing ecosystem for promising startups.
There is also a need to identify a small number of application-driven grand challenges to inspire innovation across the computing stack and spans fundamental materials, equipment and process R&D; design and manufacturing.
We can improve computing energy efficiency by 1,000X in a decade including leveraging domain specific accelerators and architectures, and innovation in materials, process and equipment technologies. We can develop and implement next-generation semiconductor manufacturing that is 10X more capital and human-resource efficient, and achieve net zero emissions with minimum waste and demonstrated sustainable materials in the next decade. CHIPS Act R&D programs will prioritize additional application grand challenges with advice from stakeholders.
In semiconductor manufacturing process flow, ultimate product is a device. Co-design involves function, process, materials, and tools. There can be 1,000+ process steps, 70+ masks, hundreds of materials, and hundreds of different tools. Digital twin is an AI-enabled model development through an integrated system of tools, materials, processes, sensors, algorithms, data analytics.
An example is Micron with use of AI at the edge in a smart factory. AI can improve the factory efficiency, deploy IoT platform for early detection with IoT sensors (image, acoustic, video), visually examine large amount of data, and automatically provide diagnostics.
For innovation in semiconductor manufacturing, development of digital twins for semiconductor prototyping and manufacturing is necessary. AI-based model development through integrated (materials, equipment, process), along with metrology/sensors and AI/data analytics is needed.
Level 1 is the fixed flow. It is for innovations in chip design, process optimization, and yield improvement. No new materials, equipment, or processes are required. In Level 2 or modified flow, we can introduce and optimize new materials, equipment, and processes. AI yields new models and interactions. Level 3 is integrated with discovery. We can integrate manufacturing processes into discovery. AI created new models and interactions to reduce time to manufacturing readiness.
Digital Twin Institute vision
Eric Forsythe, Technical Director, CHIPS Digital Twin Manufacturing USA Institute, talked about Digital Twin Institute. The vision is to enable seamless integration of digital twin models into US semiconductor manufacturing, advanced packaging, and assembly industries, enabling rapid adoption of innovations and enhancing domestic competitiveness for decades. The mission is to foster a collaborative environment within the domestic semiconductor industry, enabled by the world’s first shared semiconductor Digital Twin process validation facility, industry-relevant research projects, and digital-twin supported workforce training.
Digital Twin Institute objectives include reduce the time and cost for chip development and manufacturing. Accelerate adoption of semiconductor manufacturing innovations. Increase access to semiconductor manufacturing training through adoption of digital twin-enabled tools. And, expand access to digital twin tools, solutions and frameworks.
Digital Twin Institute approach has four steps. First, establish shared physical facility. Next, competitively fund industry-led technical and workforce development projects. Third, digital framework for interoperable data and models. Fourth, create a shared marketplace of digital twin models.
Building Manufacturing USA
Mojdeh Bahar, Associate Director, Innovation and Industry Services, NIST, spoke about Manufacturing USA. It has a vision of securing US global leadership in advanced manufacturing.
The mission involves connecting people, ideas, and technology to solve industry-relevant advanced manufacturing challenges, enhance industrial competitiveness and economic growth, and strengthen our economic and national security.
To accelerate discovery to US production, we can create an effective collaboration environment for applied industry research to “bridge the gap” from discovery to production.
Common institute design involves an industry-led public-private partnership, with typically, $70-120 million federal investment. At least 1:1 match with private funds, and neutral convening for collaborations. Each institute should develop a unique technology. Institutes also address the education and workforce skills gap for their technologies.
Manufacturing USA network currently has 17 institutes and growing. Electronics has AIM Photonics, NextFlex, and Power America. Materials has IACMI, ALift, and AFFVA. Energy/environment has Rapid, Remad, CESMII, and EPIX. Digital/automation has America Makes, ARM Institute, Digital Manufacturing & Cybersecurity Institute, and Cymanii. Bio-manufacturing has biofab USA, NIMBL, and BioMADE.
Research to reality: EU digital solutions for meeting challenges
Belgian Presidency event: From Research to Reality – digital solutions for European challenges, was held today at The Egg, Brussels. It is dedicated to explore the dynamic interplay between cutting-edge research in digital technologies under the Horizon Europe and impactful digitalization initiatives within the Digital Europe Program. Wallonia, Brussels, and Flanders are three regions part of this initiative.
Luc Van den Hove, CEO of imec, said that imec is celebrating 40 years. He underscored the importance of microchips. The world is living in a world of polycrisis. That has a strong effect on the industry. The world is facing huge challenges.
Healthcare system, climate change are all seeing the effects and challenges. Deep-tech innovation is required to meet all of these challenges. Semiconductors will serve as the flyway for future digital technologies.
Chip technologies will enable cheaper diagnostics in healthcare. We have Si-based medical device platform. It has microfluids, photonics, sensing, and readout and actuation electronics. DNA sequencing is evolving towards a routine diagnostic technique. Bio-convergence has just started, alongside. Medical and pharma industries will become massive data industries. AI will also be used widely. The pharma companies will become data companies in future.
Automotive is also going through massive transformation. We already have sensors, in-cabin monitoring, LiDARs, ECUs, etc. We need cost-effective solutions, and sophisticated AI solutions to manage compute requirements. We will have more complex monolithic designs, and chiplet-based compute architectures. We are working with al major partners to make all this a reality. Car industry is facing a transition moment, similar to mobile phones in early 2000s.
All of this illustrates the importance of digital technologies, along with AI. Compute needs are exploding. We need a more aggressive semiconductor and compute systems roadmap. We are now having new HI techniques working. Microchip technology is now everywhere and all industries are going to need them. Semiconductor research enables CMOS devices, NAND, active memory, etc. We are now seeing the increased awareness of strategic importance of chips. There have been CHIPS Acts in EU and USA.
CHIPS Acts can create critical mass for accelerating innovation. Each region has its own specialization. We have to control everything. Self-sufficiency also leads to mediocrity. We have to combine best of the best, and complement each other’s mutual strengths. We should smartly reconnect regions to ensure we progress fast in all domains. We need strong collaboration across like-minded countries.
In EU, we have set up various labs-to-fabs. We are collaborating with Leti, Fraunhofer, etc. We are supporting and partnering with others. We are developing pilot lines. CHIPS Act is helping connect value chains across EU. We have seen growing collaboration. imec is working with hundreds of universities, leading suppliers, supporting the industrial value chain. We are positioning Europe as partner of the global value chain. CHIPS Acts should serve as the fuel to accelerate future innovation.
Towards new realities
Roberto Viola, Director-General of DG CONNECT, said Europe has war at its doorsteps. We are looking at optimizing value chains. We need to speed up with policy towards the new realities. We are seeing dependencies from Russia and China, especially. This is now an issue of security. EC has introduced the Joint Communication on the European Economic Security. Areas such as microelectronics, AI, quantum, biotech, etc., are all part of this. You also need data, algorithms, etc.
EU has the largest civil program, along with Horizon Europe and Digital Europe programs. We are now funding these. We need to federate excellency, as well. We need to make sure that they work together.
The narrative is very important right now. Elon Musk recently said they have done neural implant. EU is also advanced in this area. No one has mentioned that till this point. EU has been suffering due to this. We have invested more than Euro 100 billion. We need to signal our ambitions much better. We now need to deliver on human-centered vision.
EU now has the CHIPS Act. It is probably much better than other Acts. It is better, because we have looked at all of our excellencies. We have imec, and power electronics. The Rest of EU also needs to play on the same page. We can arrive from the pilot production to final products. Coupling is currently not clever. We need to work with right partners.
Automotive, telecom, robotics, healthcare, etc., are the strengths of Europe. Demand for these on the chip industry is quite huge. We are doing research, and attracting investments. Next comes AI, and it is going to shape a new world. We want to create two elements — an ecosystem around our supercomputers. These are assembled in Europe. They need to be upgraded with AI. The EU ecosystem should also rotate around these.
We also have GenAI for EU. Healthcare, biotech, energy, etc., are all key areas. GenAI is suited for DNA sequencing, transporting hydrogen and ammonia, etc. You need new material that can be synthesized using GenAI. Funding is also required. We are creating an ecosystem of all the leading parners.
Strong portfolio
Ana Barjasic, CEO, Connectology and EIC Board Member, said EIC has built a strong portfolio based on AI. We have also provided funds related to AI hardware and software, quantum, AI chips, etc. EIC Accelerator Challenge is also there. We are also contributing Euro 300 million for Chips Act developments.
From an investors’ perspective, if the risk of startups and technologies reduce, funding gradually increases. Mindset is also extremely important. We need to bring all research and innovative technologies to Europe. We have an entrepreneurial mindset. We need to be careful about designing and implementing the various mechanisms. The EIC is creating an impact in the ecosystem with an equity component. Instruments and incentives should also be aligned to get the right results.
Throwing money at a problem is not enough! We need to look at real impact and data. We need to also look at innovative jobs and the companies getting created, reducing geographical gap, gender gap, etc., as well. EIC is currently promoting geographical excellence.
We must challenge our mindsets, foster greater collaboration, and embrace engagement of genders and diverse cultures.
Semiconductor advancements, photonics in security, robotics, and medical apps key trends: APE 2024
Asia Photonics Expo 2024, to be held March 6-8, 2024, in Singapore, is the world’s leading holistic photonics platform for branding and business connection, focusing on the latest cutting-edge innovative technologies and the emerging application markets in Asia, aiming to promote the in-depth communication and business collaboration between the photonics upstream and downstream professionals.
Mirror against the success of the China International Optoelectronic Exposition, this is the first edition of APE where it is held in Singapore to serve the global market. The event is targeting about 400 exhibitors, across 15,000 sqm exhibition size.
How is the Asian photonics industry gathering speed today? Jeslyn Teo, Marketing Executive, APE 2024, stated that the show floor is currently reaching full capacity, with only a limited number of slots remaining. The response to visitor registration has been highly encouraging, reflecting a significant level of interest in the event.
Our partnerships have garnered good backing from key entities within the Singapore government, including EDB, LUX, and Enterprise Singapore. Additionally, we have received substantial support from esteemed media partners and trade associations, both locally and internationally. We will be consistently updating the platform with the latest developments.
Emerging trends
Next, what are the emerging trends in photonics? She said forthcoming trends in photonics take center stage in APE 2024. They are not only spotlighted, but also actively promoted and supported. Here are some of the top trends that will be showcased in APE 2024.
Semiconductor advancements in photonics are expected to play a pivotal role, influencing the development of cutting-edge technologies in electronic devices. Photonics applications in security are poised to revolutionize surveillance and authentication systems, enhancing overall safety measures.
In the realm of robotics, photonics is anticipated to contribute significantly, improving sensing and imaging capabilities. Medical applications of photonics are gaining momentum, with innovations in diagnostics and treatment methods.
Lastly, the integration of photonics in intelligence driving and information communications is set to reshape the landscape of transportation and communication systems.
The comprehensive coverage of these trends at APE 2024 not only highlights their significance but also provides a platform for exploration, collaboration, and further advancements in the dynamic field of photonics.
Finally, what are the visitors going to experience at APE 2024? She noted that APE 2024 show floor will present a wide range of technology and solutions in these application industries — semiconductors, security, robotics, medical, and intelligence driving and info communications. In addition, the event provides networking opportunities with industry professionals, leaders and key decision makers.
There is also premium and complimentary content happening in APE 2024, providing up-to-date market trends, insights and updates on the current photonics technologies and their applications.
Pradeep’s Techpoints is a media partner with Asia Photonics Week 2024.
IFA Berlin 2023 to feature Sustainability Village, robotics, and more!
IFA Berlin 2023, to be held at Messe Berlin, Germany, Sept. 1-5, is now sold out! It is the best trade show in the world for consumer electronics and home appliances. It is spread across 26 halls and 130,000sqm. 48 countries will be represented by 2,059 customers. Over 180,000 visitors are expected from 144 countries.
IFA 2023 has exceeded 2022 both in terms of number of customers and square meters. All of our major customers have confirmed for the show in 2023. New customers to IFA account for 30 percent of the overall exhibition and sponsorship revenue in 2023. The USA will have 53 customers spread across 1,800 sqm. From the US market, there are speakers from Amazon, IBM, Meta, Nationwide, Paramount, etc.
Sustainability Village
This year, IFA 2023 will, for the first time, welcome a dedicated Sustainability Village with its own onsite ‘mend and repair shop’ tackling e waste, a sustainability stage that will host a comprehensive conference program on sustainability best practices, interactive workshops and a dedicated exhibitor area.
Exhibitors include Shelley, Fairphone, Miele, Fair Cobalt Alliance, Ambient Photonics, CleanR, Rhinosheld, IFA Nursery powered by Treedom, Wertgigant. ZVEI, VDA and ZVEH are hosting a House of Smart Living, and Miele is showcasing the Eco pod. There are 50 speakers
including Miele, Decarbonize, Treedom Fairphone , Ecovadis Global Reporting Initiative.
Alongside the content programme, there are three interactive Fairphone Workshops on Urban Mining. A volunteer ran Mend & Repair Workshop will run on Saturday 2nd September. Global thought leaders will share how they, and their organizations are rising to complex challenges and demonstrating tangible results that drive efficiencies.
IFA NEXT
Taking over Hub 27, we see over 400 startups, up from 127, from across the globe showing us the next big things the tech Industry has in store! Our own dedicated IFA Next Stage Area will be showcasing inspiring entrepreneurs, fierce pitch battles and industry experts.
BSH Startup kitchen is an area full of the latest kitchen and cooking specific tech. Spacious
Investors lounge, where, with our partners Funded House, we will help connect the most exciting founders of over 100 startups with knowledgeable investors.
Startup Safari guided tours will take place twice daily for an easy way to view a wide selection of this years. Over 200 investors are registered, including representatives from Earlybird, Pegasus Tech Ventures and Techstars. Berlin Startup Night are full of partners and are bringing a selection of their brightest startups.
IFA Leaders Summit
IFA Leaders Summit will be a high-level content program. Exclusive main stage will have the most influential figures in the industry coming together to explore the most critical and meaningful topics that are shaping consumer electronics and home appliances today.
From technologists, innovators, and inventors to retail executives, thought leaders, and influencers, we will bring together the most radical thinkers. Latest developments in the next-gen tech, the future of smart homes, IoT trends, AI-powered devices, robotics, cloud gaming, the changing face of retail, and much more, will be on display.
Diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) program has a dedicated stage for women in tech and allies who will speak about how to accelerate progress towards diversity and inclusion in the tech industry. Key themes are the path to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI); the future of humanity depends on diversity; Leveraging technology for DEI; Reducing bias in the digital age; and Creating safe and inclusive culture.
House of Robots
Established within the Robotics Hub, the House of Robots is an immersive experience, brand new for IFA 2023.
This activation will display four of the leading robotics providers from across the globe, providing visitors an opportunity to experience, interact and learn about such a range of different robots.
- Miroki by Enchanted Tools: Founded by Jérôme Monceaux, who had already helped create the robots Pepper and Nao, Enchanted Tools recently unveiled Miroki, the prototype of a new generation of humanoid robots that are both wondrous and useful. Mirokaï is part of a ground breaking new species of service robots created by Enchanted Tools (ET), addressing worker shortages in essential sectors like healthcare. ET is composed by a team of 50
mechatronics and AI experts, led by Jérôme Monceaux, former EVP at Aldebaran/Softbank Robotics, and co-creator of robots Nao and Pepper. - Circle Assembly Robot and Robot Dog Spot by CeTI: Both a large scale, detailed industrial robot displaying the efficiency of Robots and the roaming, interactive animal inspired Dog Robot, presented by research centre CeTI.
- Desi by SingularityNET: Desi is a humanoid robot and the lead vocalist of the Jam Galaxy Band. Desi runs on music and electricity, and is on a mission to share her belief that the world can be changed for the better through the power of AI in the creative arts.
- Go2 by UniTree: An other RobotDog, with a self developed 4D LIDAR L1 with 360×90 hemispherical ultra-wide recognition, super-small blind spot and a minimum detection.
At IFA 2023, Desi will not only be on display at the House of Robots but also perform a bespoke, never before seen duet with a DJ at the Opening Reception. Desi will go on stage with SingularityNET’s COO during the DE&I event.
We will also have the Berlin Tech Week. Key highlights will also be presented by Honor, HiSense, FC Union Berlin, SpaceX, KWEBBELKOP, etc.
Visitors can also get to see the sights of Berlin, such as the Brandenburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie, Reichstag, etc. For those interested, The Brandenburg Gate is an 18th-century neoclassical monument in Berlin, built on the orders of Prussian king Frederick William II after restoring the Orangist power by suppressing the Dutch popular unrest.
Checkpoint Charlie was the best-known Berlin Wall crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War, as named by the Western Allies. The Reichstag is an internationally recognizable symbol of democracy and the current home of the German Parliament.
Additive manufacturing supported by photonics, robotics, and laser-related developments
European Photonics Industry Consortium (EPIC) recently organized a session on additive manufacturing. Lasers benefit advanced and additive manufacturing throughput increase and energy-consumption reduction. This session looked at how are photonics, robotics, and further laser-related developments can support in this endeavor.
The speakers were Fernando Lasagni, CTO, Materials & Processes, CATEC, Spain, Wolfgang Waldhauser, Research Group Leader, Joanneum Research, Austria, Bernard Revaz, CEO, AMiquam, Switzerland, Ms. Agnė Butkutė, Senior Researcher / Head of Research Group, Femtika, Lithuania, Robert Kirchner, MD, Heteromerge, Germany, Amin M’Barki, Co-Founder & CEO, Hummink, France, and Maxime Delmée, CEO and Founder, AM 4 AM, Luxembourg.
Metal additive manufacturing for space
Talking about the trends and certification in metal additive manufacturing for space industry, Fernando Lasagni, CATEC, said the company has been fostering customers and partners. Customers include Airbus, Invap, ITP Aero, IberEspacio, Anteral, Alestis, Egile, Renishaw, etc. Areas include primary/load carrying and secondary structures, strategies for AM industrialization, for various entities.
There are ways to fly space/aeronautic hardware. CATEC caters to specific standards for aerospace sectors and space agencies. ECSS-Q-ST-70-80-C is for processing and quality assurance requirements for metallic powder bed fusion for space apps, as per European Space Agency (ESA). NASA has NASA-STD-6030 for additive manufacturing requirements for spacecraft systems, and NASA-STD-6033 for additive manufacturing requirements for equipment and facilities control. Among OEMs, Airbus has AIMS standard for power bed hardware.
Parts classification has different methods, such as thermal treatments, finishing methods, inspection, and qualification route to be defined, as per criticality of the part. Eg., critical and structural failure can result1 in loss of spacecraft, major components, loss of life, or loss of control of spacecraft, as per ESA. For an aircraft OEM, eg., structural, critical parts failure could lead to accident/incident.
CATEC has an objective of additive manufacturing verification plan (AMVP). It assures the accomplishment of AI-related AM processes. Examples are with ECSS, determining process allow-ables to be agreed with customers. For OEMs, it is necessary to accomplish mechanical properties/chemical composition, etc., as per specific given values.
CATEC has a prototype verification plan (PVP), where it specifies preliminary hardware fabrication process, and PVP, including all manufacturing steps and post-build operations. Then, we can have the manufacturing readiness review (MRR). For hardware production, all activities are performed as per PVP.
CATEC is part of the ESA odessey to Jupiter. European Space Agency will launch the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) mission on April 13 from a spaceport in French Guiana. After an odyssey of eight years, the explorer will reach Jupiter in 2031 which will be set off on an Ariane 5 launcher.
Metal 3D printing for medical apps
Wolfgang Waldhauser, Joanneum Research, talked about the challenges and opportunities of metal 3D printing for medical application. It does applied research is selective laser melting (SLM), or laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF).
We are now doing personalized implants through additive manufacturing. This is part of an ongoing national project, CAMed. We are finding the optimal printing parameters. We are also doing cytotoxicity tests, and biomechanical tests, etc.
We have new planned Horizon Europe project in future. The goal is to develop scientific, technological, and medical basis for bearing implants made of resorbable and non-resorbable metals and composite materials with the help of additive manufacturing. We will equip these implants with suitable sensor technologies. We are also developing digital twin of selected implants.
We are looking for partners in the development of functionalized AM-manufactured implants, with expertise in FEM calculations for design of load-bearing implants, etc. They must have interest in Pyzoflex sensor technology, and have expertise in creating digital twins for medical.
QC for additive manufacturing
Bernard Revaz, AMiquam, spoke about in-situ quality control for additive manufacturing. There are major hurdles in growth of metal AM solution. It includes in-process compliant QC and NDT, machine and process agnostic, digital interfaces with AM ecosystem, and generate Cpk for SPC. We make the testing digital.
AMiquam has a breakthough in QC for additive manufacturing. Smart recoater instrumented, using our proprietary electromagnetic sensors measuring the critical sublayer quality. It also does QC using compliant NDT sensors. We use proprietary EC-instrument-on-a-chip as a key technology differentiator.
Laser-based hybrid microfabrication
Ms. Agnė Butkutė, Femtika, spoke about laser-based hybrid microfabrication solutions. We are doing multi-photon polymerization (MPP) using unlimited 3D architecture, and ultra-high spatial resolution. We also do selective laser etching (SLE), developing arbitrary 3D shapes from fused silica glass. Functional samples include MPP in polymers, and SLE in glass. There are applications across sensors, micro-optics, scaffolds, microfluidics (lab-on-chip), nozzles, photonics, etc.
Functional 3D micro-printing
Robert Kirchner, Heteromerge, talked about functional 3D micro-printing and the power of in-situ material exchange in 2-photon polymerization (2PP). The challenge in optics fabrication is aberrations. An optical aberration refers to a defect in a lens design, which causes the light to spread out, instead of focusing, to form a sharp image. Suitable apps are medical imaging, smart glasses, photonics packaging, etc.
2PP is used in high-resolution 3D printing. He talked about Heteromerge’s technology that enables you to do that. You have material exchange to receive printing material. Heteromerge has unique advantages such as automated and fast material exchange, perfect placement, and substrate independent of active devices and wafer-level. He also presented customer results.
We developed a multi-material processing system as add-on to existing 2PP system. We offer full system technology and service, and offer process development and joint feasibility studies with new customers. We also look for your micro-additive needs to make them come true with our printing solutions.
High-precision capillary printing
Amin M’Barki, Hummink, spoke about the high-precision capillary printing. Hummink is a leading developer and supplier of high-precision capillary printing (HPCAP), a revolutionary technology for display and semiconductor industry. It is in advanced discussions with tier-one equipment manufacturers to scale up technology, and reach HVM capability by 2024.
He showcased the HPCAP technique by Hummink. There is automatic adaptation to surface roughness and topography. You can have unique freedom of design using any material over any surface. HPCAP technology apps are across flip-chip, waveguide, biosensor, FOWLP repair, display repair, wafer bonding, FOWLP, QLED and QNED, FOLED, microLED, microlens, etc.
Use case of HiperAl
Maxime Delmée, AM 4 AM, presented a use case of HiperAl in production of new metal powders for additive manufacturing by cold plasma technology. Metal manufacturing has challenges such as laser/matter interaction, high thermal gradient, and reactive metals. There is high reflectivity of metal powders, sensitivity to oxidation, etc.
Our atmospheric cold plasma treatment (LU101177) allows dispersion of ceramic particles on surface of metallic powders to enhance the properties and processability of conventional alloys. It is making available many conventional alloys, and also creating new alloys for AM process. All of this is CO2 neutral.
Our technology has been applied to aluminum alloy, leading to our first product — HiperAl. It has exceptional mechanical properties, is corrosion-resistant, and compatible with majority of AM equipment. HiperAl has been designed to sustain AM constraints.
Antonio Castelo, PhD, Technology Manager for Bio-Medical and Lasers at EPIC, was the moderator.
IFA Berlin 2023 promises to be huge this year!
The world has changed and the importance of the trade show as buying platform has declined! At a press conference, Oliver Merlin, MD / Geschäftsführer of IFA Management GmbH, said that the strength of IFA is immense! It is the best trade show in the world for consumer electronics and home appliances.
For IFA trading, the customer geo split is spread across participation from 44 countries so far, for 2023. Germany 21 percent and China 12 percent represent a third of the IFA 2023 customer base. IFA 2023 has already exceeded the 2022 show in both number of exhibitors and space allocated. New customers to IFA are projected to account for 30 percent of the overall exhibition and sponsorship revenue in 2023.
The current terrain plan includes audio, communication and connectivity, computing and gaming, fitness and digital health, global markets, home and entertainment, household appliances, IFA Next, image and video, mobility, robotics hub, and sustainability village. Visitor registration is now live!
New features galore
IFA is working closely with all the major retailer and buying groups to ensure broad participation from the buying and retailing community. We have put together a curated program for the retailers, so they can maximize their time at the show. The retailer is the king! We are working with the entire retailer ecosystem to build the most comprehensive platform for buyers and sellers in home appliances and consumer electronics.
There are new features and content. Some are IFA Leaders Summit, Gaming and eSports Arena, Sustainability Village, House of Robots, Digital Content, and IFA Next.
IFA Leaders Summit is an exclusive main stage, where the most influential figures in the industry will come together to explore the most critical and meaningful topics that are shaping consumer electronics and home appliances today. They range from technologists, innovators, and inventors to retail executives, thought leaders, and influencers. They will talk about latest developments in next-gen tech, the future of smart homes, IoT trends, AI-powered devices, robotics, cloud gaming, the changing face of retail, and much more.
Generative AI
IFA 2023 will look at the promise and potential of the generative AI. AI has become all pervasive with applications ranging from predictive analytics to robotics, AI has become one of the most critical topics for 2023. As AI continues to evolve from simply analyzing existing data to now being able to create new text, images, and videos, it raises questions about how this development will shape the debate between augmentation vs. automation.
The launch of ChatGPT, the intelligent chatbot , has shown that generative AI is set to have implications for several industries as it gives them access to more sophisticated tools.
Fight for global chip supremacy
There is the technology arms race, and the fight for global chip supremacy going on! Today, semiconductor chips are the backbone of new technologies and innovations. Chips are at the core of AI, quantum computing, nanotechnology, self driving cars and much more.
However, producing them is an incredibly complex and high stakes endeavor. Only a few companies are trusted to make them, something that was highlighted by the global shortage that is exacerbated by the pandemic. Chips are now a key arena of geopolitical competition.
Sustainability Village first time!
This year, IFA 2023 will, for the first time, welcome a dedicated Sustainability Village with its own onsite ‘mend and repair shop’ tackling e-waste, a comprehensive conference program (forum) on sustainability best practices, a dedicated exhibitor area and networking focused on connecting sustainability leaders with the wider IFA community.
Top themes include European Commission legislation, with new legislation being implemented with the ‘Right to Repair’ proposal, a touchpoint in 2030 on progress with the European Green Deal, and Germanys new Supply Chain Act. It means that companies must now act to be compliant.
Global supply chains are a key area when it comes to the reduction of carbon emissions for this sector. This area provides opportunity to review the manufacturing process, transportation and returns from end to end.
Circular Economy and E-waste is another area manufacturers are getting increasing involved in as part of a sustainability strategy, companies are increasingly offering a recycling facility for broken/unwanted technology to prolong the life of a device instead of throwing it away.
We will look at Smart Homes technology, and what this means for sustainability, energy bills that have exploded exponentially. This tech has been accelerated in popularity and focus. The main issues are in the implementation to ensure that the different devices can ‘speak’ to one another, and maximize energy consumption efficiently. Understanding and meeting customers increasing expectations on sustainability is also there. Customers now expect products to be manufactured ethically, and for companies to operate as sustainably as possible.
House of Robots too!
This year we are establishing an exclusive Robotics Hub as a new zone at IFA. This zone will include the House of Robots as an immersive experience. The world’s most advanced robots are joining the House of Robots as confirmed residents, these include Desi (social robot) by SingularityNET and Mirokai (social robot) by Enchanted Tools (Robotics startup).
Desdemona aka Desi is a humanoid robot and the lead vocalist of the Jam Galaxy Band. Created and built by David Hanson, and programmed by Ben Goertzel, Desi is the younger sister of the Sophia robot and part of the SingularityNET ecosystem. Desi uses AI to write her own lyrics, sings and she is also a DJ!
Mirokaï is part of a ground-breaking new species of service robots created by Enchanted Tools. ET is addressing worker shortages in essential sectors like healthcare. ET is composed by a team of 50 mechatronics and AI experts. It is led by Jérôme Monceaux, former EVP at Aldebaran/Softbank Robotics, and co creator of robots Nao and Pepper.
And, IFA Next
The innovation zone of IFA will be bigger and better than ever this year. The startup hub at IFA located in Hub 27 is the heart of innovation at the event. It will unveil the newest and most innovative technology in the industry, and will be bigger and better than ever. 500+ startups are bringing future technology to life. Corporate innovation labs will showcase newest technology. There will be dedicated content to help startups grow and expand their brands.
To dramatically increase the scale and develop the proposition of IFA Next, we have partnered with international experts and local heroes. The Next Web, based in Amsterdam, is a leading innovation and startup organization running conferences, a media platform and innovation and startup consultancy. They employ 25 startup scouts! They will be focusing on startup participation, content agenda, networking activities and production values of the zone.
Another is Berlin Start up Night! At the heartbeat of startups in Berlin, this partnership will deliver an even stronger offering onsite in terms of scale and participation of startups. They will also host the famous B SUN night showcasing the top talents and an awards ceremony. We will also have the Berlin Tech Week. The purpose of this festival is to create a legacy within the city, and to connect the global consumer tech community in Berlin. Our aim for IFA is to amplify the event as ‘THE place to be for tech and innovation.’
IFA Management has recruited Ms. Cornelia (Conny) Schwobe. She will be playing a pivotal role in guiding IFA’s growth and direction in multiple areas, such as AI, eMobility, metaverse, and more.
We are also working with the City of Berlin with Berlin Partners, Visit Berlin, and the Berlin Convention Office to increase IFA’s visibility and presence across the city at tourist offices, airports, stations and iconic city locations to turn the city red and create a buzz around the town. Asia Berlin Week is a partnership that integrates the BerlinTechWeek brand into the Asia Berlin Summit taking place at City Hall Berlin on 12-13 June. IFA has also joined the Berlin Partner Start up delegation at London Tech Week, which runs from 12-16 June.
Innovation Media Briefing (IMB) will return on 5-6 July in Berlin.
PS: The Indian wrestlers’ plight is unbearable. Someone, please do something about this, please! Ensure that justice gets delivered!
Round-up 2022: War, chips, and back to overseas travels!
Year 2022 has been quite eventful! With the Russia-Ukraine war, alongside Covid-19, things have gone downward for the global semiconductor industry. Next year, we all hope that the industry bounces back much more stronger.
Semicon dip in 2023?
World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) released its semiconductor market forecast generated in Nov. 2022. Following a strong growth of 26.2 percent in 2021, WSTS revised its forecast down to a single-digit growth for the worldwide semiconductor market in 2022 with a total size of $580 billion, up 4.4 percent, for 2022.
For 2023, the global semiconductor market is projected to decline by -4.1 percent to $557 billion, driven by the memory segment, according to WSTS. Will that happen? Let’s see!
Some categories are still expected to see double-digit year-over-year growth in 2022, led by analog with 20.8 percent, sensors with 16.3 percent, and logic with 14.5 percent growth. Memory is expected to turn negative in the forecast, and decline 12.6 percent year-over-year. In 2022, all geographical regions are seen to show double-digit growth except Asia Pacific. Asia Pacific is likely to decline 2 percent. Americas is expected to show growth of 17 percent, Europe 12.6 percent, and Japan 10 percent, respectively.
TrendForce, Taiwan, has said that YoY growth of NAND Flash demand bits will stay under 30 percent from 2022 to 2025 as demand slows for PC client SSDs. Recent headwinds in the global economy have caused a demand freeze in the wider consumer electronics market. Enterprise SSDs will succeed as major driver of demand bit growth in future. TSMC has also made moves in the USA, and now, is targeting Europe. More of that later!
Review 2022
In Jan. 2022, Future Horizons said that the global semiconductor industry grew 26 percent in 2021, and was likely to grow 10 percent in 2022. This was later revised down to 4 percent growth for 2022.
CEA-Leti organized a photonics workshop in Feb. 2022, where they talked about silicon photonics for AI, and integration of electronics and photonics. Dr. Nicky Lu, CEO and Founder, Etron, and Managing Board Director, Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association (TSIA), spoke about start of tera-scale-integration era with optimized heterogeneous and monolithic integration at the fifth annual heterogeneous integration symposium, in Feb. 2021. Heterogenous integration impacts Silicon 3.0. Monolithic and heterogenous integration (MHI) has led to the Si4.0 era that is now ongoing.
March 2022 had HAXPES-Lab and what it can do for the electronics industry. There were key developments and implications of MWC 2022. DIGITALEUROPE, EU, had a webinar on how the Ukrainian IT industry was still standing against all odds, in March 2022.
ISQED 2022 was in April 2022, with Dr. Chi-foon Chan, Co-CEO, Synopsys discussing how to thrive in our changing environment. Digital Ts — threads, twins, technologies, and transformation, from Digital Twin Consortium (DTC), was another event.
May 2022 had MegaChips entering the US market for edge AI chips market. Display Week 2022 saw Ross Young discuss the smartphone and smartphone display market outlook. AR/VR market trends and technology outlook was presented by Guillaume Chansin, Director of Display Research, DSCC, at Display Week. It was in May that Future Horizons revised the semiconductor outlook for 2022 to 6 percent. Later, SEMI Arizona and Texas Chapters, USA, had a seminar on workforce shortage—meeting challenges for the semiconductor industry.
Semiconductor innovations
Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA) had a conference on how diversity increases profitability. It looked at what managements can do to accelerate diversity. Honolulu, Hawaii, was the place for 2022 VLSI Symposium that looked at technology and circuits as critical infrastructure of future. Dr. Y. J. Mii, Senior VP of R&D, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC), presented on semiconductor innovations, from device to system.
Intel 4 CMOS with advanced FinFET transistors optimized for high-density and HPC came to the fore, and there was a workshop on cryogenic electronics for quantum computing. CHIPKIT emerged as an agile, re-usable open-source framework for test chip development. We had the OpenROAD project — open source platform for IC design innovation at VLSI Symposium 2022. Chips in Europe looked at advancing innovation in semiconductor industry, by SEMI Europe.
BloombergNEF summit in New Delhi talked about 2-4x investment that was needed to meet the net-zero targets by 2050. Semiconductor Industry Association-Semiconductor Research Corp., (SIA-SRC), USA discussed the future of semiconductor hardware. At Automatica 2022, Siemens’ showcased NX industrial electrical design to boost engineering productivity.
In July 2022, I wrote about why more women are definitely needed in semiconductors! Boreas Technology advised how piezo haptics will create their own market by introducing novel haptic apps. At Semicon West 2022, Ms. Laurie E. Locascio, Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology Director, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), talked about how all parts of the US Chips Act need to be closely co-ordinated.
Andrea Lati, Director, Market Analysis, TechInsights, mentioned the semiconductor capital spending and equipment outlook for 2022. Christian Gregor Dieseldorff, Senior Principal Analyst, SEMI, discussed the trends and forecast for fab equipment spending, capacities, and new fabs.
NASA invites me!
Dr. Michael McCreary, Chief Innovation Officer, E Ink Corp., at Flex 2022, Semicon West 2022 stated how electrophoretic display was changing the look of autos, transportation, and beyond. Dr. Dawson Cagle, Program Manager, IARPA, talked about how IARPA’s smart e-pants were weaving electronics into textiles. In July, I was invited to attend NASA’s SpaceX CRS-25 launch to International Space Station. That was really something spectacular to behold!
Dr. Ms. Kate Darling, leading expert in Robot Ethics and MIT Media Lab Research Specialist, MIT Media Lab, talked about the future of human-robot interaction at Sensors Converge 2022. SIA discussed investing in innovation: blueprint for enduring American semiconductor leadership. Silicon-based quantum computing as a disruptive paradigm, was presented by Dr. Maud Vinet, Quantum Hardware Program Manager, CEA Leti, at Scaling and Lithography Tech Talks, Semicon West 2022.
Aug. 2022 saw how the EU Chips Act was necessary for accelerated digital transformation. I clarified whether people think I am very good in semiconductors? Dr. Henning Schröder, Group Leader, Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Micro-integration IZM, presented on glass-based quantum photonic packaging.
Agri-PV harvesting the opportunities of solar + farming started off Sept. 2022. Quantum dot imagers bridging SWIR accessibility gap was presented at SEMI MEMS & Sensors Summit 2022. Malcolm Penn, Future Horizons, revised global semiconductor growth forecast to +4 percent for 2022; with downturn likely ahead in 2023! Let’s see!
New materials required
SEMICON Taiwan 2022 Power & Opto Semiconductor Forum addressed how new materials are required to solve technology challenges, and support growth of electronics. SEMI, USA, looked into the future of computing in 2040. Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress (CSPC), USA organized a conference on the US Chips Act and implementation. Xecs, Europe, maintained its focus on electronic components and systems.
Oct. 2022 had a session on time-sensitive networking (TSN) and future of connectivity by the Industry IoT Consortium (IIC). Satellite quantum key distribution moving to industrialization phase was discussed by the European Photonics Industry Consortium (EPIC). I also made my first overseas trip to Dubai, post the pandemic, to attend an event.
In Nov. 2022, SEMI, Northwest Chapter, USA, organized a conference on ‘The Future of More Than Moore—Chiplets, Advanced Packaging, and More’. Ms. Amy Leong, SVP, CMO, GM Emerging Growth/M&A, FormFactor Inc., presented on strategy for wafer probe in a chiplet world. Luc Van den hove, President and CEO, imec, discussed how future of scaling needs system-level thinking and STCO at IMT 2022. Japan intimated how it was gearing up to re-transform computing power and semiconductors.
Las Vegas and KA
Las Vegas, USA, welcomed me back, again, after 15 years, for an industry event. May I also mention KA, a spectacular show from Cirque de Soleil, that I witnessed. Featuring 80 artists from around the world, KÀ is a gravity-defying production featuring powerfully emotive soundtrack that enhances the innovative blend of acrobatic feats, Capoeira, puppetry, projections, and martial arts. Great experience! I also bumped into an angel or Pari, mid-air, en route to New York. 🙂
Next, there was Semicon Europa 2022 in Munich, Germany, which included ITF Beyond 5G. Among the topics discussed were compound semiconductor epitaxy core of next-gen connectivity. Chips are now the new oil, was proclaimed by Laith Altimime, President, SEMI Europe! I cannot express how happy I am to hear this! More of it later!! There were talks about building scalable and ultra-coherent quantum computers with carbon nanotubes, metaverse, future of air travel, among topics at Semicon Europa 2022. Later, there was IEEE Standards Association (SA) workshop on 5G and beyond in New Delhi.
Dec. 2022 began with an SIA seminar that looked at the growing challenge of semiconductor design leadership. Design costs are rising with every new technology node. Moore’s Law scaling has not been keeping pace. New improvements are required in design and packaging.
There are challenges to global semiconductor manufacturing. Geopolitical tensions are creating risks of disruption and shortages. Semiconductor industry is suffering from a lack of attractiveness and qualified talent. Besides, we have global warming threat and need for sustainability programs. Countries also need to create enough incentives for manufacturing investments.
Still in Dec. 2022, the 68th International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) 2022 was held in San Francisco, USA. IEDM celebrated its 75th birthday this year. There were five focus sessions on advanced heterogeneous integration: chiplets and system-in-packaging, quantum information and sensing, special topics in non-von Neumann computing, DNA digital data storage transistor-based DNA sequencing, and bio-computing, and implantable-device technology.
Fusion ignition achieved
US Department of Energy (DOE) and DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced the achievement of fusion ignition at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)—a major scientific breakthrough decades in the making that will pave the way for advancements in national defense and the future of clean power. On December 5, a team at LLNL’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) conducted the first controlled fusion experiment in history to reach this milestone, also known as scientific energy breakeven, meaning it produced more energy from fusion than the laser energy used to drive it.
For the first time, researchers produced more energy from fusion, than used to drive it. This promises further discovery in clean power and nuclear weapons stewardship. This historic, first-of-its kind achievement will provide unprecedented capability to support NNSA’s Stockpile Stewardship Program, and will provide invaluable insights into the prospects of clean fusion energy. It would be a game-changer for efforts to achieve President Joe Biden’s goal of a net-zero carbon economy.
TSMC leads
On December 6, TSMC announced that besides TSMC Arizona’s first fab, which is scheduled to begin production of N4 process technology in 2024, it has started construction of a second fab, scheduled to begin production of 3nm process technology in 2026. When complete, TSMC Arizona’s two fabs will manufacture over 600,000 wafers per year, with estimated end-product value of more than US$40 billion.
TSMC is also reportedly in advanced talks for setting up its first potential European plant in Dresden, Germany. The plant could begin construction by 2024. This will be probably signed sometime in 2023.
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) organized a session on US CHIPS and Science Act. Ms. Gina Raimoldo, Secretary of Commerce, USA, said teams are working to ensure implementation and future impact of US Chips Act. USA is also nudging TSMC to do more in the USA.
Dec. 16, TrendForce reported that YMTC may abandon the market for 3D NAND Flash by 2024 following the US Government’s decision to place it on entity list. Well, that may be bad news for China and flash memory market.
That reminds me! I came across a post on LinkedIn, where technologies were being discussed for semiconductors by lots of big names. Ok, my name was not included! 🙂 That’s fine. Here is a list that may be looked up: nanosheets, vertical-transport nanosheet field-effect transistors (VTFETs), compound semiconductor epitaxy, quantum communications, biosensors, glass-based quantum photonic packaging, 3D hybrid electronics, piezo haptics, system-on-multichip (SoMC) architectures, tera-scale-integration, KOOL DRAM, etc. Oh, it was my BDSM moment, surely! 😉
And, that’s it, folks! 🙂 One sincerely wishes that the global semiconductor industry, and semiconductor market, are back to the top again, in 2023. Warm wishes to everyone for a very successful and vibrant 2023.
PS: Edson Arantes do Nascimento, or Pele, Brazil, and football world’s superstar, is no more. Rest in peace, ‘O Rei’, the greatest!
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