Most Read – Newton Aycliffe, 12-layer HBM3E, UKRI projects

For those written in the last week, our most popular stories on the site cover the old Fujitsu fab at Newton Aycliffe, Hynix producing 36GB 12-layer HBM3E memory, PSMC chooses to build a fab in India, UKRI semiconductor manufacturing projects, and ST and Qualcomm working on Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Thread modules…

Let’s take them in reverse order…

5. MoD buys Newton Aycliffe fab
The MoD has bought the old Fujitsu fab at Newton Aycliffe to make GaAs ICs for the military paying a reported £20 million. It will be renamed Octric Semiconductors UK. The Queen opened the fab in 1991 and Fujitsu did very well out of it on the back of the 4Mbit DRAM and had fully depreciated its $580 million investment by 1998 when it was closed during a massive market oversupply of 64Mbit DRAM. In 1999 the fab was bought by Filtronic and then went through a succession of owners…

4. Hynix in mass production of 12-layer 36GB HBM
Hynix has begun mass production of a 36GB 12-layer HBM3E memory – the largest capacity HBM yet. The previous highest capacity HBM3E was 24GB using eight stacked 3GB die. “Hynix has increased the capacity by 50% by stacking 12 layers of 3GB DRAM chips at the same thickness as the previous eight-layer product,” says Hynix, “to achieve this, the company made each DRAM chip 40% thinner than before and stacked vertically using TSV4 technology,” said the company.

3. PSMC ditches Japan fab plan to build Indian fab
Powerchip Semiconductor (PSMC), the Taiwanese foundry, has ditched a plan to build a fab in Japan in favour of building one in India. Last year, Powerchip entered a partnership with Japanese finance company SBI Holdings to start construction this year on a 40k wpm fab in Sendai, Japan starting on 40nm technology and moving on to 28nm with volume production scheduled for 2027. Powerchip and SBI have now dissolved the partnership as Powerchip pursues a plan to provide the technology for a fab to be built in India by Tata.

2. UKRI announces full list of 16 semiconductor projects getting government funding
UKRI has announced the 16 semiconductor projects sharing £11.5 million to scale up semiconductor manufacturing, improve supply chain resilience, establish innovations and new manufacturing techniques, expand the capability or performance of existing manufacturing techniques, encourage relationships between product designers and manufacturers and encourage collaborations across industry and academia. They are:

1. ST, Qualcomm team for intelligent Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Thread modules
STMicroelectronics and Qualcomm have agreed to integrate Qualcomm’s Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Thread wireless IC, which it describes as ‘AI-powered’, into STM32 development tools. Beyond this, ST said that it plans to introduce self-contained Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Thread wireless modules that including Qualcomm ICs – with initial products expected to be available to OEMs in the first quarter of next year. “We are already considering next steps, complementing our existing Bluetooth Low Energy, Zigbee, Thread and sub-GHz products portfolio…”