New developments have emerged on the implementation of the U.S ‘CHIPS and Science Act’. More news this week include both Nvidia and Qualcomm advocating the unification of automotive electronic functions in a single system-on-chip. But first, an EDA update.

Synopsys’ unified emulation and prototyping system

Synopsys has announced what it claims is “the industry’s first” unified hardware system for emulation and prototyping, based on its ZeBu EP1 emulation system. Unification enables a single verification hardware system to be used throughout the entire chip development lifecycle. According to Synopsys, users of the ZeBu EP1 system have achieved 19 MHz emulation and 100 MHz prototyping clock performance, enabling them to run large amounts of software pre-silicon and accelerate project schedules. The unified hardware system allows users’ verification and software development requirements to drive how and when to shift capacity between emulation and prototyping, rather than having to estimate early on how much of each resource might be needed.

U.S. CHIPS Act updates: leadership team, innovation coalition

The U.S. government has announced the leadership team which will be responsible for the implementation of the CHIPS and Science Act. Members of the team are Ronnie Chatterji, Michael Schmidt, Eric Lin, Todd Fisher, Donna Dubinsky, and J.D. Grom. Individual roles and bios are detailed in this press release.

More than 100 businesses, startups, universities and nonprofits have formed the American Semiconductor Innovation Coalition (ASIC) with the specific goal of being selected by the Department of Commerce as the partner of choice for the newly created ‘National Semiconductor Technology Center’ and ‘National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program’ – both funded through the recently passed ‘CHIPS and Science Act’. Among others, ASIC members include AMD, Analog Devices, Ansys, Applied Materials, Cadence, DuPont, GlobalFoundries, IBM, KLA, Microsoft, Micron, MIT, Nvidia, Samsung, Siemens EDA, Synopsys, Texas Instruments. Some of the coalition members are headquartered in Europe, such as ASML, CEA-Leti, Fraunhofer, imec and Yole Développement. In terms of academic institutions, the ASIC member list currently published on the coalition website does not include neither Stanford University nor UC Berkeley. ASIC claims the ability to stand up an NSTC innovation hub in as little as six months. Among its key capabilities, the coalition mentions the already existing Albany NanoTech Complex.

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According to a Reuters report, the Biden administration plans next month to broaden curbs on U.S. shipments to China of AI chips and semiconductor equipment. The new regulations would be based on restrictions communicated in letters earlier this year to KLA, Lam Research and Applied Materials. The letters forbade these companies from exporting chipmaking equipment to Chinese factories that produce chips with sub-14 nanometer processes unless the sellers obtain Commerce Department licenses. Some of the sources quoted by Reuters said the regulations would likely include additional actions against China.

Cadence new verification platform

The new Cadence Verisium AI-Driven Verification Platform is a suite of applications leveraging big data and AI to optimize verification workloads, boost coverage and accelerate root cause analysis of bugs. Verisium is built on the new Cadence Joint Enterprise Data and AI (JedAI) Platform and is natively integrated with the Cadence verification engines. The initial suite in the Verisium platform includes multiple apps using machine learning to automate tasks such as regression failure triage; pinpoint potential bug hotspots caused by source code revisions; analyze waveforms looking for the root cause of a test failure; predict which source code check-ins are most likely to have introduced failures. More Verisium apps offer a debug solution from IP to SoC and from single-run to multi-run; and full flow IP and SoC-level verification management.

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Major news updates this week include the first insights into how US taxpayers’ money will be used to support the domestic semiconductor industry. Among the other updates, fast-charging car batteries getting closer to mass production.

Details of U.S. CHIPS Act implementation

The U.S. Department of Commerce has released its implementation strategy for the $50 billion CHIPS Act. The program, called ‘CHIPS for America’, will be housed within the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Approximately three quarters of the incentives funding, around $28 billion, will be targeted to establish domestic production of leading-edge logic and memory chips that require the most sophisticated manufacturing processes available today. Arguably, Intel and Micron will be the main beneficiaries of this share. At least a quarter of the available CHIPS incentives funding, or approximately $10 billion, will be devoted to new manufacturing capacity for mature and current-generation chips, new and specialty technologies, and for semiconductor industry suppliers. The remaining $11 billion will be invested in new R&D initiatives – a National Semiconductor Technology Center, a National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program, up to three new Manufacturing USA Institutes – and in NIST metrology R&D programs.

Some details about the conditions under which applicant companies will be granted ‘CHIPS for America’ funding have been provided by US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo during a press briefing at the White House. “This is not a blank check for companies,” she said.  “This is not for them to pad their bottom line.”  (…) “CHIPS funds cannot be used for stock buybacks. CHIPS funds are not intended to replace private capital,” she added. Raimondo then addressed issues specifically concerning China, explaining that beneficiary companies “are not allowed to use this money to invest in China, they can’t develop leading-edge technologies in China, they can’t send latest technology overseas.” (…) “Companies who receive CHIP funds can’t build leading-edge or advanced technology facilities in China for a period of 10 years. Companies who receive the money can only expand their mature node factories in China to serve the Chinese market,” she said.

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More U.S. and western European tech companies have reportedly closed their Russian operations: among them Dell, Logitech, Ericsson and Nokia. Another significant update on geopolitical matters is the export ban on some Nvidia and AMD products (see below). However, the effectiveness of sanctions against China is a debated issue – see, for example, this EETimes article – and reverse engineering on a SMIC chip has provided additional surprises: TechInsights has found many similarities in process technologies, designs and innovations between SMIC’s 7-nanometer and TSMC’s 7-nanometer nodes. According to TechInsights, also, it is a notable achievement for SMIC having moved from 14-nanometer to 7-nanometer in just two years, without access to the most advanced western equipment and technologies.

Export restrictions on some advanced Nvidia GPUs and AMD accelerators

Nvidia and AMD have reportedly been told by the US government to halt exports of certain high-performance chips and systems to China. As for Nvidia, the restrictions cover A100 and forthcoming H100 GPUs, and any systems that include them, effective immediately. AMD has reportedly been given new requirements by the US Department of Commerce that will hit shipments of its MI250 accelerator to China. In a regulatory filing, Nvidia said that the export restrictions are due to a potential risk of the products being used by, or diverted to, a “military end user.” Both companies said the new mandate also covers a ban in export to Russia.

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