Global scrutiny of the Nvidia-Arm deal continues: adding to a list of other authorities, European Union regulators have reportedly opened an investigation over concerns of limited competition. The EU Commission said Nvidia had offered concessions to address preliminary concerns, but that they weren’t enough. A decision from European regulators is expected within March 15. As for the other news updates this week, several of them concern autonomous vehicles – including two acquisitions of radar specialist companies.
Autonomous driving tech market is consolidating
According to market intelligence firm CB Insights, a few key players are emerging in autonomous driving technology, and the market is consolidating around major companies like Waymo and Aurora. Every round backed by top venture capital firms in the AV market over the last two years has been Series C or later. This indicates that – as the AV market consolidates – the top VCs monitored by CB Insights “are focusing on the winners, seeing stronger potential for leading self-driving developers rather than early-stage companies.” Another sign of consolidation is the move from many deals to just a few big ones: total funding to autonomous driving companies spiked in 2018, but “since then, deal count has declined significantly as total funding continues to rise.” The majority of the funding by top VCs in AVs over the last two years “has come from just two mega-rounds ($2.25B in 2020 and $2.5B in 2021) to Waymo.” According to CB Insights, the top venture capital firms are now backing companies working on simulation and training, developing the full self-driving stack, enhancing mapping and localization, and more. “Total equity funding to the space has already eclipsed $12B in 2021, up more than 50% from all of 2020,” the analysts elaborated. The selected top VCs monitored by CB Insights “have participated in a record-breaking $3.85B of total funding to autonomous driving companies so far in 2021, with the total projected to be above $5.1B by year end if the trend continues.”
“Smart Money” refers to a group of top VCs as defined by CB Insights. Credit: CB Insights
Chips built using 2-nanometer processes will enter volume production in 2025; this, at least, is what we can expect based on the roadmap updates recently provided by both Samsung Foundry and TSMC. For the 2-nanometer node, the South Korean company will adopt its version of the gate-all-around transistor architecture; TSMC is also considering GAA, but has not committed to it yet. More news this week include a 60-billion transistor chip from Alibaba, and a multi-pronged Arm initiative meant to boost the IoT market. But first, a couple of EDA updates.
Ansys adds a charging/discharging simulation solution
Ansys has added EMA3D Charge to its simulation solution portfolio. Developed by Colorado-based Electro Magnetic Applications company, EMA3D Charge enhances predictive accuracy for charging and discharging events that can have an impact on safety for a wide range of electric/electronics products. Leveraging Ansys SpaceClaim, the solution combines CAD import, design and simplification, simulation setup and meshing, and result generalization and visualization into one solver technology. According to Ansys, EMA3D Charge fills a need in a marketplace in which no other simulation product exists, providing a unified end-to-end workflow.
Cadence to speed up ISO 26262 and IEC 61508 certification
Cadence has announced the Cadence Safety Solution, a new offering featuring integrated analog and digital safety flows and engines for faster ISO 26262 and IEC 61508 certification. Targeting safety-critical applications – such as automotive and aerospace – the solution includes a new failure modes, effects, and diagnostic analysis (FMEDA) offering called the Cadence Midas Safety Platform, allowing to perform FMEDA-driven analog and digital verification of safety-critical semiconductors.
Geopolitical tensions made headlines over the past few days, with Chinese President Xi Jinping in his recent speech reportedly vowing to pursue reunification with Taiwan. Needless to say, this news is also relevant to the semiconductor industry as Taiwan is homeland of the world’s largest foundry. Let’s now move to this week’s updates, which include a quick look at some companies based in mainland China attracting significant investments.
GlobalFoundries to go public
GlobalFoundries has publicly filed a registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC) relating to the proposed initial public offering of its ordinary shares. GF has applied to list on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol GFS.
Intel offers a Risc-V-based soft processor for its FPGAs
The new generation of Nios, the soft processor for Intel FPGAs, is based on the open-source Risc-V Instruction Set Architecture. Called Nios V, the family currently includes a micro controller – Nios V/m – based on Risc-V: RV32IA, with atomic extensions, 5-stage pipeline, and AXI4 interfaces. Future releases will include a general-purpose processor, an application-class processor, and a Linux-capable processor. Benefits cited by Intel include the open-source ecosystem – toolchains, debuggers, real-time operating system – and performance improvements over the Nios II/e processor. The new Nios V soft processor is available in the Intel Quartus Prime Pro Edition Software starting with version 21.3.
Catching up on some of the news from the last couple of weeks or so, let’s briefly recall that European Union politicians have started discussing about a plan to support the semiconductor industry in the Old Continent. The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has recently preannounced a European Chips Act. “We need to link together our world-class research, design and testing capacities,” she said in her recent State of the Union speech. “We need to coordinate EU and national investment along the value chain. The aim is to jointly create a state-of-the-art European chip ecosystem, including production. That ensures our security of supply and will develop new markets for ground-breaking European tech. (…) We are world leaders. So let’s be bold again, this time with semi-conductors.” Additional details on the upcoming European Chips Act have been provided by European Commissioner Thierry Breton in this blog post, quoting Imec, CEA-Leti and Fraunhofer as key European assets. “I believe that we should explore setting up a dedicated European Semiconductor Fund,” he wrote. “With the European Chips Act, our tech sovereignty is within reach.”
Copyright European Union, 2021. Photographer: Christophe Licoppe
The new CadenceHelium Virtual and Hybrid Studio is a platform that accelerates the creation of virtual and hybrid prototypes of complex systems. According to Cadence, Helium Studio makes verification with a virtual or hybrid model of the SoC orders of magnitude faster than verification with a pure RTL model, and it also enables early software bring-up before the RTL is available. Natively integrated with the Cadence verification engines – including Palladium Z2, Protium X2 and Xcelium – the new Helium Studio accelerates system development by verifying embedded software/firmware on pure virtual and hybrid configurations even when the RTL is not ready.
Artificial Intelligence updates – in terms of new IP and new startup funding – make up a significant part of this week’s news roundup, while other recurring themes include optics/photonics applications and IoT security.
AI updates: Cadence, Deep Vision, Axelera
Cadence has unveiled its Tensilica AI Platform for AI SoC development, including three product families for the low, mid and high end. Built upon the Tensilica DSPs, the Tensilica AI Platform adds a new companion AI neural network engine (NNE) and neural network accelerators (NNAs). The “AI Base” family includes the Tensilica HiFi DSPs and ConnX DSPs, combined with AI instruction-set architecture extensions. The “AI Boost” family adds a companion NNE, initially the Tensilica NNE 110 AI engine, which scales from 64 to 256 GOPS. The “AI Max” family encompasses the Tensilica NNA 1xx AI accelerator family—currently including the Tensilica NNA 110 accelerator and the NNA 120, NNA 140 and NNA 180 multi-core accelerator options—which integrates the AI Base and AI Boost technology. The multi-core NNA accelerators can scale up to 32 TOPS, while future NNA products are targeted to scale to 100s of TOPS. Targeting intelligent sensor, IoT, audio, mobile vision/voice AI and ADAS applications, the Tensilica AI Platform features a common software platform and – according to Cadence – delivers optimal power, performance and area.
Deep Vision has received $35 million in a Series B financing round led by Tiger Global. Deep Vision’s AI processor, named ARA-1, targets camera-based applications such as smart retail, driver-monitoring systems, smart city, drones, and factory automation. The company’s processor also provides natural language processing capabilities.
No shortage of interesting news this week – both from the industry and from academia – still it’s worth devoting some space to a Tesla event that took place last month, showing how system-level assembly technologies can make a difference for supercomputers.
Fab and foundry updates: Intel, SMIC, X-Fab, Samsung
Intel’s CEO Pat Gelsinger has reportedly said the company will invest up to €80 billion over the next decade to build new chip fabs in Europe.
According to the Wall Street Journal, SMIC is teaming up with the Shanghai government to build an $8.87 billion chip production line in the city.
Germany-headquartered X-Fab Silicon Foundries is now able to support volume heterogeneous integration via Micro-Transfer Printing (MTP), thanks to a licensing agreement with X-Celeprint. Technologies that may be combined include SOI, GaN, GaAs and InP, as well as MEMS. X-Celeprint’s pick-and-place MTP technology stacks and fans-out ultra-thin dies.
Samsung Electronics has reportedly chosen the city of Taylor, Texas, as the site for its planned $17 billion new chip plant – which will be four times larger than Samsung’s existing fab in Austin. To attract the investment, the city of Taylor has reportedly offered Samsung a $314 million worth of tax breaks for the next ten years.
News about Arm-based and Risc-V-based processors make up most of the updates this week. As for Risc-V, besides the two startups mentioned below, new adopters include Imagination, which this year is re-entering the CPU market with designs based around the open ISA. Speaking of Arm, according to British newspaper “The Telegraph”, Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk has expressed his opposition to the Nvidia-Arm deal. The Sunday Telegraph also understands that Amazon and Samsung have lodged opposition to the deal with US authorities. As far as EDA is concerned, a very recent update is the resignation of Babak Taheri as chief executive officer of Silvaco and member of the board after two years in the role. The official press release does not provide any explanations for this decision. Let’s now move to the other news.
Translating C++ algorithms to RTL for Microchip FPGA programming
Microchip has added an HLS design workflow. called SmartHLS, to its PolarFire FPGA families that allows C++ algorithms to be directly translated to FPGA-optimized RTL code. The solution is aimed at applications involving edge compute, computer vision and industrial control algorithms that are developed natively in C++ by developers with little or no knowledge of underlying FPGA hardware. The SmartHLS design suite is based on the open-source Eclipse integrated development environment. According to Microchip, the SmartHLS tool requires up to ten times fewer lines of code than an equivalent RTL design.
Google reportedly developing Arm-based CPUs for notebook and tablet PCs
According to Nikkei Asia, Google is developing its own Arm-based CPUs for its notebook and tablet computers which run on the company’s Chrome operating system. Roll out would be planned for 2023. Google is also reportedly ramping up its efforts to build Arm-based mobile processors for its Pixel smartphones and other devices. The company is hiring chip engineers in the US and around the world, including in Israel, India and Taiwan.
Catching up on some of the news from the last four weeks or so, Intel stands out with its late-July and mid-August announcements which we will briefly recall below – along with several more news from various areas. But first, a quick update on the Nvidia-Arm deal: according to the UK Government’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), this acquisition would “lead to a realistic prospect of a substantial lessening of competition”. Another quick update about GlobalFoundries, which – according to Reuters – has filed confidentially with U.S regulators for an initial public offering (IPO) in New York.
EDA updates: Cadence, Motivo, Avishtech
Anirudh Devgan to become Cadence CEO. Current Cadence CEO Lip-Bu Tan will transition to the role of executive chairman on December 15, 2021, with President Anirudh Devgan assuming the role of president and CEO at that time. Devgan has also joined the Cadence Board of Directors.
AI-enabled EDA tools developer Motivo raises $12 million financing. The Series A financing round is led by Intel Capital and follows earlier seed rounds of $8 million. Motivo’s technologies accelerate chip design utilizing a “learning-on-graph” methodology for automated data-driven feature extraction. According to the company, Motivo’s M-Graph and other explainable AI technologies can be applied across the entire design flow, from RTL code to layout geometries. With this approach, Motivo aims to compress the design-to-manufacturing process from years to months.
Quarterly result announcements – either from Q1 or Q2 – make up a significant part of this week’s news roundup. Manufacturing capacity expansion continues to be a hot topic, but there is no shortage of other updates. Quantum computing research is also in the news with two announcements.
Record EDA and IP revenues in Q1 2021
According to the latest report from the ESD Alliance, in Q1 2021 the Electronic System Design industry revenue increased 17% to $3,157.17 million, marking the strongest first-quarter growth ever. The four-quarter moving average, which compares the most recent four quarters to the prior four, rose 15%, the highest annual growth since 2011. All product categories significantly contributed, with double-digit growth in the CAE, IC physical design/verification, PCB/MCM, and semiconductor IP segments. Geographically, the Americas, EMEA and APAC regions also reported double-digit growth. Outstanding figures have been achieved by IC physical design and verification revenue, which surged 34.4% to $682.5 million compared to Q1 2020; and by the Asia Pacific revenue, which increased 26.9% to $1,166.3 million compared to Q1 2020. Quoted by Semiconductor Engineering, Wally Rhines – executive sponsor of SEMI‘s Electronic Design Market Data Report – underlined the Chinese figures: “Year on year, the revenue in China was up 73%. And if you look at EDA only, separate from IP, it was up 99%,” he reportedly said.
EDA updates: Ansys cloud support, Julia Computing funding
In collaboration with Arm, Ansys is enabling simulation solutions for AWS Graviton2 processors, a more affordable way to access Amazon Web Services cloud computing resources. The initiative marks the first availability of Ansys’ semiconductor simulation solutions on the Arm Neoverse architecture. Beginning with the APL (Ansys Power Library) characterization tool, Ansys will offer more of its semiconductor analysis software product suite, supporting the Arm Neoverse architecture that is used by AWS Graviton2-powered Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud instances.
Investments – both announced and rumored – make up a significant part of this week’s news roundup. More updates concern automotive applications and AI chips.
Intel reportedly in talks to buy GlobalFoundries
According to the Wall Street Journal, Intel is exploring a deal to buy GlobalFoundries, in a move that would represent its largest acquisition ever. A deal could value GlobalFoundries at around $30 billion, sources said. It isn’t guaranteed that the acquisition will take place; alternatively, GloFo could proceed with a planned initial public offering. GlobalFoundries is owned by Mubadala Investment Co., an investment arm of the Abu Dhabi government. As noted by WSJ, AMD remains a big customer for GlobalFoundries, and that could complicate a takeover by Intel.
Rohm to invest in semiconductor startups
Japanese chipmaker Rohm has reportedly launched a 5 billion yen ($45.3 million) venture capital fund to invest in next-generation semiconductor technology. Among first beneficiaries is US startup Locix, a developer of cloud-based spatial intelligence solutions for commercial buildings, consumer homes and connected devices. Locix solutions capture location, visual and sensor data and combine them with data analytics to provide spatial awareness. Based in San Bruno, CA, Locix is backed by several other Japanese investors, too.
