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SiC laser cut boules

Laser-Cutting the Cost of Silicon Carbide Wafers

By Adele Hars

What’s at stake:
Investors are hot on the silicon carbide market, but the high cost of the wafers is an impediment to high volumes. Halo Industries, a startup just coming out of stealth mode, claims it has a solution that saves on the time, cost, and energy required to slice the SiC boules (ingots) into wafers. It’s got a big client and strong funding, but it has an unusual business strategy and is up against some much bigger players. Will Halo be able to scale to high volume fast enough to beat the competition?

Silicon carbide wafers are extremely expensive — anywhere from 20 to 50 times pricier than silicon. The drivers of the cost differential begin at the very beginning, with the weeks that the starting SiC boules spend in furnaces that are almost half as hot as the sun. The inefficiencies mount as the boules are cut with diamond wire saws, wherein up to 40% of the boule ends up as waste (or the more technical term, kerf), in the form of SiC dust lost in the sawing process. Yields are terrible, and the sawing process takes hours per wafer. Andrei Iancu, CEO and founder of Halo Industries, told the Ojo-Yoshida Report that his company’s laser systems are intended to replace saws, virtually eliminating waste and improving yield quality.

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Valeo Lidar's production

Valeo Sits Atop Lidar Market – So Far

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake?
Sorting out hype from reality is critical when it comes to automotive lidars. At stake for auto OEMs is selecting the appropriate sensors for ADAS and AV applications, and determining which vendors they can count on to deliver.

In an automotive lidar market crowded with startups touting new technologies and claimed design wins, it may come as a surprise that the most dominant lidar supplier in the world is Valeo, a stodgy French Tier One behemoth with a history that spans nearly a century.

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China Eastern crash 737-800 Boeing

China Crash Shrouded in Mystery

By George Leopold

What’s at stake?
Scarce flight data and Beijing’s clampdown on crash information are likely to hamper the investigation into why a China Eastern Airlines flight suddenly nosedived into the ground.

The mystery deepens over precisely what transpired in the cockpit of China Eastern Airlines Flight MU5735 in the moments before the Boeing 737-800 plunged more than 20,000 feet in just over a minute on Monday, before crashing in China’s mountainous Guangxi region.

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AMD Xilinx FPGA

AMD/Xilinx: Chipmakers Bulk Up as AIoT Cycle Heats Up 

Editor’s note: This is the final installment in our series examining AMD’s acquisition of Xilinx and what it means for the evolving FPGA market.

By Bolaji Ojo

What’s at stake?
New computing architectures are being imagined and explored by the biggest players in the semiconductor industry, marking the acceleration of an emerging technology cycle that could put as much as two-thirds of the $600 billion market within their reach. AMD’s acquisition of FPGA powerhouse Xilinx makes it a more viable competitor in this new world.

Advanced Micro Devices Inc.’s acquisition of Xilinx Inc. closed in February, bringing the era of the large independent FPGA vendor to a close. It also heralds a new dawn of technology integration, the possible emergence of a new CPU-GPU architecture, and the stiffening of competition among the industry’s largest chip vendors.

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Xinlix automotive semiconductors

AMD/Xilinx Automotive Chips Must Go Beyond FPGAs

Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of stories examining AMD’s acquisition of Xilinx and what it means for the evolving FPGA market.

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake?
AMD is looking to cement its future in automotive, one of the hottest markets for semiconductor companies armed with high-performance computing platforms today. Xilinx’s extensive contacts with Tier Ones and OEMs can help, but AMD needs a lot more – including a long-term commitment and a product road map that melds its embedded experience with Xilinx’s FPGAs.     

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FPGA primer

Just What is an FPGA, Anyway?

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of stories examining AMD’s acquisition of Xilinx and what it means for the evolving FPGA market.

By Ron Wilson

What’s at stake?

Both Intel and AMD have invested heavily to own a leading FPGA company. Setting aside relatively small embedded-computing and communications/networking markets, these are essentially bets on the future of the FPGA as a key partner for the CPU chip in data center servers. But unless major challenges in accessibility to software programmers and in device management are overcome, the partnership may not happen.

To appreciate why AMD would be so interested in FPGA vendor Xilinx — or for that matter, what Intel saw years ago in Altera — it helps to have some idea of just what an FPGA is, and what role the devices play in today’s semiconductor industry. The answer rests in one simple idea, unfortunately obscured by a poor choice of acronym and a lot of technical complexity. Perhaps we can untangle things a bit.

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China sanctions Russia

Wary China Clings to Neutrality Over Ukraine Invasion

By George Leopold

What’s at stake?
Convinced that Western democracies are in decline, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping seek to reshape the geopolitical map. With Russia bogged down in Ukraine, Beijing must weigh support for an international pariah against continued access to Western markets. Stiff Ukrainian resistance may also delay any Chinese moves on Taiwan.

China continues to walk a fine line of seeming neutrality in response to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as the U.S. ratchets up pressure on Beijing to comply with Western financial sanctions and technology controls.

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