2022 Year in Review

Let’s start the new year with a quick recap of some of 2022 events and trends. A year marked by three significant anniversaries – the transistor, the microprocessor and AlexNet turning 75, 50, and 10, respectively – 2022 was also characterized by a dramatic and unexpected change of the global geopolitical and economic climate. War in Ukraine, the spike in energy prices, and inflation shaped a new scenario.

From chip shortage to capex drop

At the beginning of 2022 “the” problem was the chip shortage forcing several carmakers to halt their assembly lines, with governments asking foundries to increase capacity. Just a few months later, several chipmakers cut their planned capital expenditure citing weaker consumer demand. Among them Taiwanese foundry UMC, and South Korean memory maker SK hynix, which decided to cut its investment next year by more than 50% due to the deterioration of the memory market conditions. Market research firm IC Insights forecasts a -19% drop in total worldwide semiconductor capital industry spending in 2023.

An unprecedented amount of subsidies

In 2022, the escalation in geopolitical tensions – especially between the U.S. and China – prompted governments around the world to subsidize their domestic semiconductor industry, with the goal of gaining independence. An unprecedented amount of taxpayers’ money is set to benefit qualified applicants over the next few years: $52.7 billion in the U.S. (CHIPS and Science Act), $45 billion in the European Union (EU Chips Act), $10 billion in India. Adding to this, the Japanese government will subsidize the newly established Rapidus chipmaker company. On the other side of the barricade, China is reportedly working on a $143 billion support package for its semiconductor industry. As for the U.S., 2022 saw the birth of two initiatives related to geopolitical tensions (America’s Frontier Fund) and to subsidies (American Semiconductor Innovation Coalition).

The year of export restrictions

The global trade map was also heavily modified in 2022. Countless U.S. and European IT companies cut their ties with Russia, shutting down operations and/or stopping sales, in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And the U.S. stepped up export restrictions to China, prohibiting the sale of top tech items such as advanced GPUs, EDA software for GAA transistors, etc. Pressure is being applied to U.S. allies to follow suit: for example, Netherland-based ASML is asked not to sell EUV litho equipment to China. All this sparked a debate on the effectiveness of sanctions – and attracted attention on Chinese foundry SMIC, which managed to build 7-nanometer chips without EUV lithography.

New fab announcements

In 2022 the passing of the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act convinced some key semiconductor companies to announce the construction of new fabs in the United States. Among them, Intel (with an initial investment of more than $20 billion for two new chip factories in Licking County, near Columbus, Ohio), Micron Technology (planning to invest $100 billion over the next twenty years to build a fab in Clay, New York), and TSMC (with an overall investment of approximately US$40 billion for two fabs in Arizona). Other new fabs have been planned in Europe and Asia, of course.

Chiplets and 3D packages gaining momentum

Moving to technological themes, chiplets and 3D packages kept gaining momentum in 2022. Some significant events include the formation of the UCIe consortium; the launch of Apple’s M1 Ultra, which uses the UltraFusion packaging architecture to interconnect the die of two M1 Max chips through a silicon interposer; the introduction of Graphcore’s Bow IPU, which uses TSMC’s Wafer-on-Wafer 3D technology; and TSMC’s initiatives concerning the 3D ecosystem, a 3D data exchange standard etc.

Moore’s law is not dead

While chiplet-based architectures and 3D packaging technologies are undoubtedly set to provide a viable path to further performance increase, 2022 saw R&D advances in equipment and in process technologies that will likely fuel a further geometrical scaling. Among other things, ASML is getting closer to the realization of high-NA EUV litho equipment, while Belgian research institute Imec has reported advances in backside power delivery using buried power rails (BPRs), and in using ruthenium instead of copper for lower metal line resistance.

Risc-V growth

The growth of Risc-V continued in 2022, in terms of adoption and ecosystem. Some notable events include increased support from Intel – which launched Pathfinder, its integrated development environment for Risc-V – and processor maker MIPS switching to the Risc-V ISA.

Nvidia still playing a key role in the AI market

With the release of DALL-E 2 and ChatGPT, 2022 saw disruptive artificial intelligence applications. No disruption took place in the AI chips scenario: deep learning acceleration startups kept emerging during the year, but the leadership of Nvidia remained undisputed in many AI market segments. In April, analyst Linley Gwennap noted that “Well-funded startups, including several unicorns, have been unable to demonstrate any advantage over Nvidia’s Ampere products, much less the upcoming Hopper generation”. In October he added that in the datacenter market AI startups are currently serving niche markets or enterprises, so it’s difficult for them to justify multi-billion-dollar valuations without a breakthrough in market share.

Evolution of automotive architectures

Several announcements in 2022 pointed towards an evolution of automotive architectures, and a key theme here seems to be hardware centralization. Renesas’ ECU Virtualization Platform enables designers to integrate multiple applications into a single ECU (Electronic Control Unit), keeping them separated from each other to avoid interference. Nvidia’s Drive Thor SoC unifies intelligent functions into a single architecture, simultaneously running Linux, QNX and Android. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Ride Flex SoC combines cockpit, driver assistance, automated driving and networking functions, in a unified architecture for “mixed criticality” workloads. Ambarella’s centralized radar processing architecture promises a dramatic bandwidth reduction for radar data transport and low power consumption.

Acquisitions in 2022

No shortage of acquisitions in 2022: EDACafe reported about some fifty deals. Among notable deals, SK Hynix acquired Intel’s NAND and solid-state drive business, establishing a new U.S. subsidiary called Solidigm; Intel acquired specialty foundry Tower Semiconductor; AMD completed its acquisition of Xilinx; and Broadcom acquired VMware – but this deal is being investigated by European Union authorities. Foxconn was also very active, stepping up its effort in the chip business through a joint venture in India, acquisitions in Taiwan and Belgium (with the creation of iCana), and the appointment of an experienced Semiconductor Strategy Officer. On the other hand, in 2022 regulation authorities around the world eventually forced Nvidia to scrap its plan for the acquisition of Arm. Right after the vanishing of this deal, Arm announced its intention to go public and changed its CEO.

Let’s finish with this Boston Dynamics video – still fun, even after Christmas.

Source: Boston Dynamics’ YouTube video

Category: EDACafe Editorial

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 22nd, 2023 at 6:51 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.