
Top articles in February on eeNews Europe
The news in Europe has of course been overshadowed by the war in Ukraine this week, with sanctions set to hit chip makers and space projects.
But over the last month, it was the completion of AMD’s takeover of Xilinx that was the most read article, with the prospect of the Xilinx name disappearing after almost forty years in developing field programmable gate arrays.
Despite a boom year for most chip makers during the pandemic, Intel is predicting a fall in its turnover in 2022. While it has made a number of announcements on large scale capital expenditure, it has pulled back with more realistic financial management and what looks like its first a sale-and-leaseback setup. This was also a key part of the launch of the Intel Foundry Service (IFS), with Intel joining RISC-V International to offer the open instruction set architecture alongside ARM and x86 to customers, along with a billion dollar fund to boost developers. And the fourth most read article was the details of Intel’s move into accelerator chips and systems for bitcoin mining with its BonanzaMine chip.
Increasing capacity was also a key move for Infineon, investing E2bn in its plant in Malaysia and moving its older 150mm and 200mm lines in Germany to silicon carbide, while its 300mm lines focus on silicon power devices. This comes as Bosch is also expanding its fab in Germany.
Security of the supply chain is also a constant theme for the industry. The publication of the European Chips Act to boost sovereignty of supply came with a warning that investment may come with strings attached, while Micron pulling DRAM design out of China was another article of interest.
The rise of in-memory computing was a strong theme at last week’s ISSCC conference, but it was in-fibre computing, using optical fibres for AI processing, that raised significant interest earlier in the month. At the same time, a new centre of excellence for atomic layer deposition (ALD) highlights Europe’s strength in equipment for the coming 2nm and 1nm process technologies.
This week sees Mobile World Congress in Barcelona which, alongside Open RAN and the latest telecoms chip technologies, is also highlighting the quantum computing and automotive telematics advances in the region.
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