2023 Year in Review

Let’s finish the year with a quick recap of some of 2023 events and trends.

New fab announcements

Geopolitical tensions continued throughout the year, prompting governments around the world to pass new subsidies – after the ones approved in 2022 – to support their respective semiconductor industries. Among them, the European Commission launched an €8.1 billion “Important Project of Common European Interest” on microelectronics; Japan is expected to invest $13 billion on semiconductors; and South Korea passed a “K Chips Act” tax credit plan.

The subsidies launched in 2022 – such as the US Chips Act and its European counterpart – spurred several new fab announcements in 2023: a partial list includes a Wolfspeed wafer fab in Saarland, Germany; a Texas Instruments wafer fab in Lehi, Utah; the expansion of an existing Microchip facility in Colorado Springs; a new capital injection to TSMC Arizona; an Infineon plant for analog/mixed-signal technologies and power semiconductors in Dresden, Germany; the choice of Chitose, Japan, as the site for the first Rapidus fab; the expansion of Applied Materials’ campus in Silicon Valley to build the “Equipment and Process Innovation and Commercialization” Center; the  expansion of Analog Devices’ European headquarters in Limerick, Ireland, to build a new R&D and manufacturing facility; a joint STMicroelectronics-GlobalFoundries fab in Crolles, France; Intel factories in Kiryat Gat, Israel, and in Wrocław, Poland; Broadcom investments in Spain to build back-end semiconductors facilities; a CEA-Leti FD-SOI fab in Grenoble; the expansion of Analog Devices’ wafer fab in Beaverton, Oregon; a Silicon Box packaging facility in Singapore; the expansion of Infineon’s Kulim, Malaysia, SiC fab; a joint investment from TSMC, Bosch, Infineon and NXP on “European Semiconductor Manufacturing Company”, to be based in Dresden, Germany; an Amkor packaging and test facility in Peoria, Arizona. This is a list of announcements; real fabs will obviously take years to complete.

China

China, the main subject of geopolitical tensions, continued to be closely watched in 2023. Multiple US companies – Apple and Dell, for example – tried to replace their Chinese suppliers, sourcing components from other Asian countries or from the US. A consequence is the growth of India, Vietnam and Malaysia as alternative Asian hubs for the semiconductor industry. The US government tightened the export restrictions towards China – with Netherlands and Japan following suit, as for advanced manufacturing equipment – and some US lawmakers asked to extend the curbs to Risc-V. Meanwhile, reverse engineering continued to reveal that Chinese chipmakers are progressing despite export restrictions: most of the chips contained in Huawei’s new high-end smartphone are made in China, and China’s YMTC succeeded in fabricating the world’s most advanced 3D NAND memory chip. These achievements gave rise to suspicion that Chinese foundries and chipmakers managed to circumvent the export restrictions which are supposed to prevent them from buying the most advanced US, European or Japanese semiconductor equipment.

AI-powered EDA

As for EDA, 2023 confirmed the widespread use of artificial intelligence techniques in electronics design. A partial list of AI-powered or AI-enhanced EDA tools announced in 2023 includes Siemens’ Questa Verification IQ software; Cadence Allegro X for PCB placement and routing; AnsysGPT, an AI virtual assistant for customer support; Cadence’s Joules RTL Design Studio for RTL design exploration; Siemens’ Solido Design Environment for IC design and verification; the extension of Synopsys.ai full-stack EDA suite; Cadence’s OrCAD X Platform for PCB design; Zuken’s PCB design platform CR-8000; Ultra Librarian’s CAD modeling engine; Cadence’s Voltus InsightAI for the identification of the root cause of EM-IR drop violations; and Synopsys.ai Copilot.

AI in EDA was also the subject of several research papers in 2023 – as widely demonstrated by this year’s DAC submissions. Among notable examples, Google DeepMind developed an AI-based approach to designing more powerful and efficient circuits by treating a circuit like a neural network; Nvidia researchers developed ChipNeMo – an artificial intelligence Large Language Model (LLM) specifically adapted to chip design – and proposed AutoDMP, a methodology to place macros and standard cells concurrently.

Risc-V

Risc-V momentum continued to grow throughout 2023, with the introduction of many new Risc-V-based processors and ecosystem initiatives. Summarizing all of them would be impossible here; we will just mention a few, as examples. Google ported Android on Risc-V and announced other forms of support to the open-source ISA; Renesas introduced a Risc-V MCU designed for voice-controlled HMI systems; Esperanto Technologies ported a range of generative AI models on its low power Risc-V hardware; Spain-based startup Semidynamics emerged from stealth mode announcing “the world’s first” fully customizable 64-bit Risc-V family of cores; Bosch, Infineon, Nordic, NXP, and Qualcomm announced they will jointly invest in a company in Germany aimed at advancing the adoption of Risc-V, initially in automotive applications; Synopsys extended its ARC Processor IP portfolio to include new Risc-V Processor IP.

Intel

In 2023 Intel announced a number of measures aimed at focusing the company on Pat Gelsinger’s strategy, by improving efficiency and reducing the resources previously placed on some less important activities. The company adopted a new operating model where its internal product groups will move to a foundry-style relationship with Intel’s manufacturing group. It also announced its intent to separate its Programmable Solutions Group operations – the company’s FPGA unit, former Altera – into a standalone business. Additionally, Intel sold 10% of Austria-based IMS Nanofabrication (mask writing equipment) to Bain Capital and another 10% to TSMC. And it also abruptly cancelled its “Pathfinder for Risc-V” program. Other notable events in Intel’s 2023 activity include the signature of a “multigeneration” agreement between Intel Foundry Services and Arm to build low-power SoCs on the Intel 18A process; the termination of the merger agreement with Tower Semiconductor; and the launch of the “AI PC” concept.

Arm

The main event in Arm’s 2023 activity was of course its IPO on Nasdaq. Momentum for Arm-based processors continued to grow throughout the year; new adopters include – for example – Microsoft, for its Cobalt CPU. Other notable news include rumors about an upcoming wave of Arm-based PC processors that would run Microsoft Windows. Companies rumored to be planning such products – besides Qualcomm – include Nvidia and AMD.

AMD

As for AMD, the most significant 2023 event is probably the beginning of what could be considered the company’s counterattack in the area of artificial intelligence processors. AMD increased its competitiveness in this market with the launch of multiple new AI products, including the Instinct MI300 Series data center AI accelerators, ROCm 6 open software stack, and Ryzen 8040 Series processors with Ryzen AI.

Foxconn

Besides Intel and AMD, the 2023 activity of many other companies would obviously deserve attention. Here we will only mention Foxconn, which has been very active in semiconductor-related initiatives. Among them, the signature of a Memorandum of Understanding with Infineon focusing on silicon carbide development for automotive applications and on a joint automotive application center in Taiwan. Another Foxconn initiative was the creation of SiliconAuto, a Netherland-based 50/50 joint venture with automaker Stellantis, dedicated to designing and selling a family of automotive semiconductors. In 2023 Foxconn also formed a partnership with Nvidia covering several AI application areas.

Technologies

The chiplet and 3D-packaging momentum continued to grow throughout 2023; some of the relevant news in this area include the creation of a standardized chiplet part description format, from the integration of OCP CDXML into JEDEC JEP30. Backside power delivery got closer to practical adoption: as an example, Intel developed a “product-like” test chip implementing PowerVia, its version of the BPD architecture. Semiconductor materials and equipment manufacturers are preparing for the advent of high-NA EUV lithography – a key theme at this year’s Semicon West – studying new ways to cope with shorter depth of field and smaller reticle size. Researchers continued investigating new materials which could potentially be used to further reduce transistor size: for example, Belgian research center imec provided the first experimental evidence that in certain conditions NiAl (nickel aluminide) has a lower resistivity than copper; French research institute CEA-Leti demonstrated that electrons and other charge carriers can move faster in a germanium-tin alloy than in silicon or germanium; multiple R&D organizations studied transition metal dichalcogenides such as MoS₂ (molybdenum disulfide) or WSe₂ (tungsten diselenide) to replace silicon as the channel material in complementary FETs (CFETs), for n-type and p-type devices respectively. New ways were found by academia and the industry to dramatically reduce semiconductor development time by leveraging artificial intelligence and GPU processing power: MIT proposed to use AI for noninvasive X-ray imaging of integrated circuits, while Nvidia introduced its cuLitho software library for computational lithography in photomask production.

Neuromorphic advancements

While the spiking neural network approach continues to be pursued by a small number of companies, in 2023 academic research showed new ways in which the study of biological brains could unlock new system-level perspectives. MIT researchers envisioned a biologically plausible model of a “transformer” deep learning model combining neurons with another type of brain cells called astrocytes; and researchers from Cambridge University studied a network in which each neuron is characterized by its X, Y, and Z coordinates in space, obtaining a number of brain-like features.

Acquisitions and deals

EDACafe reported about more that forty acquisitions and deals in the semiconductor ecosystem in 2023. As for EDA, the list includes Keysight acquiring Cliosoft, Ansys buying Diakopto, Cadence purchasing Pulsic, and Siemens acquiring Insight EDA. Outside EDA, other notable deals include Microsoft acquiring Fungible, and Emerson buying NI.

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