CONNECT WITH US
Wednesday 30 March 2022
TWNIC and DotAsia establish fast track mechanism to fight DNS abuse
The Taiwan Network Information Center (TWNIC) and the DotAsia Organisation (DotAsia) signed a MoU of bilateral collaboration on March 24 under the witness of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The two registries for ccTLD and gTLD have established a Fast Track mechanism via Trusted Notifiers to initiate a collaborative model with timely reporting and fast response to effectively combat cross-border cybercrime in relations to DNS (Domain Name System) abuse.Jia-Rong Low, Vice President, Stakeholder Engagement and Managing Director, APAC, ICANN said that DNS abuse is an emerging issue within global Internet community because of the increasing threats for cyber security. Low was honored to be a witness at this MoU signing ceremony, and he was also very heartened that TWNIC and DotAsia were moving ahead to establish a Trusted Notifier mechanism to reduce DNS abuse and to make the Internet safer and more secure as well as strengthen the entire cyber ecosystem.TWNIC is the registry for .tw, country code top-level-domain (ccTLD) representing Taiwan, and DotAsia is the registry for the .asia, general top-level-domain (gTLD). Through the collaboration of ccTLD and gTLD, TWNIC and DotAsia are committed to a consistent adherence to a high level of substantive and procedural due diligence with respect to accuracy of reporting under the to-be-developed anti-phishing Fast Track mechanism.By means of this collaboration MoU, TWNIC and DotAsia demonstrates its commitment to the fight against illegal and/or fraudulent activities in the context of phishing and cements its reputation as a benchmark organisation in this field.With the past experiences, for instance, when illegal activities related to DNS abuse occurred, a registry would collaborate with the judiciary in the hope of getting the website to take down through law enforcement. However, it could take a very longer time for judicial authorities to determine whether it was an illegal activity, and it could be even more difficult to conduct legal actions if the domain name registrants were outside Taiwan. Therefore, TWNIC and DotAsia decided to collaborate with each other through information exchange and mutual recognition as the trusted notifier. By doing so, when either TWNIC or DotAsia receives the notification via Fast Track mechanism, it is able to immediately take appropriate actions under the domain name registration agreement to reduce the cybercrime impact.Kenny Huang, CEO of TWNIC pointed out that according to statistics, more than 920,000 cyber incidents related to DNS abuse were being reported every year in Taiwan, and these incidents would need to go through the current judicial procedures, showing that the traditional collaboration with law enforcement agencies may require much longer time to achieve the purpose of safeguarding cyber security. Therefore, TWNIC hoped to collaborate with different registries, like the MoU signed with DotAsia, to jointly curb cybercrime and build a safer Internet environment for Taiwan. This collaboration between different top-level domain name registries was the first time in the world, hoping that more registries would join efforts in the future to build a safer and better Internet for everyone.According to the TWNIC's Domain Name Registration Agreement, the registration and use of the domain name, if third parties' rights and interests could be influenced or if the safety or operation of the Internet could be harmed due to reasons that could be attributed to the registrant, TWNIC may, on its own or upon receiving the competent authority's notification, suspend or otherwise take action against a registered domain name, depending on the situation. Said causing harm to the safety or operation of the Internet refers to the actions or activities including, but not limited to, registering a domain name to conduct botnets, malware, pharming, phishing, and spam. The registrant shall ensure the completeness and safety of the information security systems in its application and use of the domain name.Edmon Chung, CEO of DotAsia Organisation said that as the Internet became an indispensable part of modern life, cyber security threats also became a top priority to be safeguarded with a safer and more resilient protection mechanism. As DotAsia had had a long and fruitful relationship with TWNIC for many years, he hoped that this announcement with TWNIC represented a concrete step towards establishing an effective mechanism to enhance mitigation against DNS abuse and phishing. Meanwhile, based on this collaboration, he also hoped that other top-level domain registries in the region and beyond would take part in this work to make a real difference for safer Internet for the people in Asia and around the world.Kenny Huang (from left to right), Managing Director and CEO, TWNIC; Edmon Chung, CEO, DotAsia Organisation; and Jia-Rong Low, Vice President, Stakeholder Engagement and Managing Director, APAC, ICANN.Kenny Huang, Managing Director and CEO, TWNICEdmon Chung, CEO, DotAsia OrganisationJia-Rong Low, Vice President, Stakeholder Engagement and Managing Director, APAC, ICANNPhotos: TWNIC
Monday 28 March 2022
Digi-Key Electronics earns 2021 Distributor of the Year recognition from Global Connector Technology (GCT)
Digi-Key Electronics, which offers the world's largest selection of electronic components in stock for immediate shipment, has been honored by Global Connector Technology (GCT) as the winner of its Distributor of the Year Award for 2021.GCT is a leading supplier of standard and custom interconnect products, with a proven record in providing high quality connector solutions for more than 30 years. Digi-Key was recognized with the award for its commitment to supporting its partnership with GCT and outstanding sales."We would like to thank GCT for recognizing Digi-Key Electronics as their Distributor of the Year for 2021," said David Stein, vice president of global supplier management for Digi-Key. "This award would not have been possible without the consistent support of the people of GCT and their quality products, our customers who appreciate their products, and all of the people at Digi-Key that make it happen each and every day. We look forward to the year ahead and our mutual continued growth.""Digi-Key Electronics is a worthy winner of this award for 2021, a year in which our companies strengthened our partnership and generated outstanding sales revenue growth, more than doubling 2020 levels," said Laurence Hill, managing director at GCT. "Working together, we made significant strides in expanding end customer count, SKUs stocked and many other important transactional metrics. We deeply value the extensive portfolio access that Digi-Key provides for our current and future customers."Visit the Digi-Key website to view the full list of GCT products available through Digi-Key.Digi-Key's Levy Olson, Jerome Bakke, Paul Hejlik and Brandon Tougas were presented with the Distributor of the Year award from GCT during a virtual presentation.
Thursday 24 March 2022
STAr Technologies completes order for all-in-one dynamic high current & voltage reliability test system
STAr Technologies, a leading supplier of semiconductor reliability test systems, announced the shipment of the all-in-one SMU-per-pin test system, the STAr Pluto-hiVIP, to benchmark the semiconductor test reliability system industry. The system is configured for low/high current dynamic AC electromigration and burn-in testing for high pin count devices such as TSV, copper-pillar, micro-bump, etc. and also high voltage, high power HCI & NBTI HCI/NBTI & high voltage GOI reliability tests.The STAr Pluto Series system is the next generation reliability test solutions for both package-level and wafer-level qualification and supports a wide range of configurations to meet industry testing requirements for EM, HCI, NBTI, TDDB, etc. The new STAr Pluto-hiVIP model of the Pluto Series is an advanced high-current & high-voltage test system with flexible architecture that can be easily upgraded to a high-capacity system to support multiple applications within one system.The maximum configuration comprises 48 Source-Measurement Unit (SMU) modules, each with dual independent sources. A total of 96 sources allows high DUT count to achieve greater qualification test performance and significantly increases the capacity for high-current and high-voltage reliability tests.STAr Pluto hiVIP is a complete, integrated package-level and high temperature reliability test solution designed to support high-current EM, high-power HCI/BTI and high-voltage TDDB qualification. The system is designed for parallel stressing and testing, supporting up to a max of 4.0A DC, and high breakdown voltage of up to 100V. With thermal chambers ranging from 18C to 400C, with DUT board equipped with zero-insertion-force sockets ensures complete set of environments suitable for the full suite of reliability tests from room temperature HCI to high temperature EM tests within a single system. Pluto hiVIP system is ensured to main high precision test result and qualification performance."This shipment validates the STAr Pluto family extraordinary capabilities, efficiency and test accuracy recognized by industry customers. The Pluto Series system is based on new hardware and software architecture to address today and future's semiconductor qualification test requirements and reduces engineering efforts to support customers achieve the best test performance and higher capacity," said ChoonLeong Lou, CEO & CTO of STAr Technologies.
Thursday 24 March 2022
AMICCOM releases low current sub-1GHz wireless transceiver SOCs
AMICCOM released a new generation of low current sub1-GHz wireless SOCs in March 2022, named A9129F6, A9139F6, and A9159F6. AMICCOM continues to integrate the existing RFICs with MCU and roll-out highly integrated SOC products. The new A91x9F6 SOCs, like their previous generation products, come from integrating MCU with A7129/A7139/A7159 RFICs, which have excellent RF performance and extremely low receiving current.The package and pin definition of these new SOCs are fully compatible with the previous generation products. Besides, the maximum data rate is increased to 500Kbps, the internal memory configuration is expanded to 64KBytes for Flash and 8KBytes for SRAM to meet the needs of various system applications.The A91x9F6 series are the wireless SOC with low receiving current, the RX current is only 7.3mA when MCU is sleeping. The RF modulation supports FSK and GFSK, the data rate can be 2kbps to 500kbps, RX sensitivity for 2kbps at 433.92MHz is -119dBm, and the RF transmit power is programmable (the range of A9129F6 is -25dBm to +12dBm and the range of A9139F6/A9159F6 is -17dBm to +19.5dBm), the maximum link budget can reach 138dB, which is suitable for long-distance transmission applications. The A91x9F6 chip supports FIFO mode with built-in TXFIFO packet format (including FEC, CRC and Manchester encoding function etc.), and the Auto Calibration mechanism inside the chip is used to overcome the variation of the semiconductor process so that the chip can work stably in various environments.The MCU of A91x9F6 is 1T 8051 core, the speed of the MCU can be adjust by applications. It equip a variety of digital interfaces such as UART, I2C, I2S, SPI, four PWM outputs, three 16-bit timers and two 8-bit timers, these interfaces share pins with 32 GPIOs. A91x9F6 is equipped with two ADCs: 12bit and 8bit ADC respectively. The 12bit ADC provides 8 channels to measure external signals; the 8bit ADC provides RSSI measurement value, which can be used to detect RF channel is clean or not.Overall, the A91x9F6, with a fast 8051 MCU core, is a low current Sub-1GHz wireless SOC. All functions are integrated in the QFN6x6 package to provide customers a high-integration wireless solution.Supply and PackagingA9129F6/A9139F6/A9159F6 are available in a 6mm x 6mm QFN-48 package, and is now available from AMICCOM and its authorized distributors. Welcome to request IC samples and evaluation modules, and start development work. Please contact AMICCOM Electronics for more detail.
Wednesday 23 March 2022
AMICCOM intros 2.4GHz low power wireless RF SOC for IoT application
AMICCOM Electronics Corporation (AMICCOM) has announced a new 2.4GHz wireless transceiver SOC named A8131M0. The A8131M0 supports data rate 250kbps to 2Mbps with FSK modulation. This chip integrates high performance Arm Cortex-M0, built-in 128Kbyte/256Kbyte flash memory, 32Kbytes SRAM, 23 GPIOs and various digital interfaces, and 2-wire ICE can be developed with Keil C.The maximum TX Power of A8131M0 is +5dBm, the receiving sensitivity is -90dBm (@2 Mbps FSK), the maximum Link budget is 95dB so that the transmission distance can reach 100 meters. The A8131M0 also integrates a DC-DC converter to provide efficient power applications. With input voltage 3.3V for DC-DC converter, A8131M0 RX mode current is 8.3mA, TX mode current is 10.3mA (+5dBm). It also supports programmable RF output power (-30dBm to +5dBm) and programmable data rate (250kbps to 2Mbps).The MCU core of A8131M0 is Arm Cortex-M0, which can provide fast computing, user can adjust the MCU speed according to the overall power consumption requirements. A8131M0 has a flexible power management system, the current consumption in deep sleep mode is 300nA and the current consumption in sleep mode with internal timer (32KHz) turned-on is 1.2uA.Moreover, the accuracy of internal timer (32KHz) after calibration can reach +/- 0.2 %. The A8131M0 has a built-in AES128 co-processor which provides data protection and security. All above features make A8131M0 suitable for various low-power IOT applications. A8131M0 is equipped with a variety of digital interfaces such as UART, I2C, SPI. It has 7 PWM outputs, two 32-bit timers and one 32-bit dual mode timer. These interfaces share pins with 23 GPIOs, which can be used according to user's application requirements.A8131M0 is also equipped with 12bit ADC, which provides up to 7 channels for external signal measurement. Overall, the A8131M0 is a wireless transceiver SOC with high performance and low power consumption. It has excellent RF performance with 5dBm output power amplifier, and supports a variety of digital interfaces and I/O. All functions are integrated in the QFN5x5 package.Supply and packagingA8131M0 package is 5 mm x 5 mm QFN-40 and is now available from AMICCOM and its authorized distributors. Welcome to request IC samples and evaluation modules, and start development work. Please contact AMICCOM Electronics for more detail.
Tuesday 22 March 2022
Relimetrics offers quality assurance automation solution backed by Munich Re
Relimetrics, a leader in AI-based quality inspection for manufacturing processes, has announced that the detection accuracy and availability of its software systems will be guaranteed and that this guarantee is backed by the Munich Re Group, one of the world's leading providers of reinsurance, primary insurance and insurance-related risk solutions.With the high degree of customization required in manufacturing today, quality inspections are becoming increasingly more complex. Current quality assurance (QA) solutions are not able to keep up with the high level of production variability on the shop floor, according to Relimetrics. Consequently, defects are often missed, resulting in costly rework and recall costs, as well as liability and reputation issues.Relimetrics said its shop-floor ready software stack remedies these issues, enabling manufacturers to digitize visual inspections and create full traceability of quality in all stages of production. Users of Relimetrics' technology benefit from enhanced product quality, increased productivity and higher throughput. ReliVision, Relimetrics' product suite, is self-implementable and can be quickly integrated with any image acquisition hardware.Prior to granting coverage through its aiSure program, Munich Re conducted an extensive due diligence on Relimetrics' ReliVision technology. As a result, the policy issued via the Munich Re Group agrees to indemnify Relimetrics for its liability to its customers under the warranty for Relimetrics' customer expenses related to the costs of hiring a manual operator, should the technology not work as expected."Munich Re's insurance reimburses Relimetrics for its warranty liabilities to its customers in case the AI-based ReliVision does not perform as guaranteed. This signals trust to Relimetrics' customers and at the same time takes the risk of unintended performance off the Relimetrics balance sheet," said Roman Beilhack, global head of Green Technologies, Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence at Munich Re.Both of the following scenarios are covered under the guarantee: Mistakes in filtering out intact elements leading to unnecessary interruptions in operation; and failure to detect actual defects leading to loss of quality, damage to reputation and penalties."Munich Re's insuring of Relimetrics' product is a first of its kind in the quality assurance automation industry," said Kemal Levi, founder and CEO at Relimetrics. "This insurance and due diligence by Munich Re should give manufacturers the confidence to move forward with replacing ineffective and outdated quality assurance solutions with Relimetrics' AI-based product suite."Relimetrics empowers manufacturers with AI-based automation systems that guarantee defect detection accuracy and shop-floor availability. With hubs in Silicon Valley and Berlin, Relimetrics is working with leading Fortune 500 companies, helping them digitize their quality assurance and assembly processes.Relimetrics demonstrating how their systems workPhoto: Relimetrics
Tuesday 22 March 2022
Dun & Bradstreet releases ESG rankings where Taiwan has opportunities for growth
As global brands have adopted ESG into their corporate strategy, related policies have also been extended to the global supply chain. ESG rankings have become a trending topic. To help Taiwan businesses meet the standards of international markets, Dun & Bradstreet, a leading global provider of business decisioning data and analytics, today released the inaugural edition of "ESG Competitiveness Analysis for Taiwan Supply Chain," the only global ESG analysis that is built from all five leading sustainability frameworks and provides fair and objective recommendations. According to the analysis, Taiwan is ranked 7th out of 11 countries and regions surveyed in sustainability, with opportunities for improvement.The "ESG Competitiveness Analysis for Taiwan Supply Chain" surveyed the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Sweden, Canada, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia, Ireland, the United States, and New Zealand. With the largest business intelligence database in the world, Dun & Bradstreet aims to expand the global coverage of its ESG rankings to over a hundred countries and regions this year and offer the global supply chain a single measurable standard.Among the 11 countries and regions evaluated, the United Kingdom ranks the highest in ESG performance, followed by Germany; Taiwan ranks at the 50th percentile, slightly ahead of Australia, Ireland, the United States, and New Zealand. Smaller score indicates better performance.Taiwan businesses excel in social and governance categories with opportunities for improvement in environmental areasUsing its long-term accumulated industry knowledge of Taiwan, Dun & Bradstreet ranked 691 Taiwan suppliers serving the six leading manufacturers that made the Fortune Global 500 list: Hon Hai Precision Industry, Pegatron, TSMC, Quanta Computer, Compal Electronics, and Wistron. The survey categorized the suppliers into six tiers according to their positions in the supply chain and conducted analysis on environmental, social, and governance factors.In general, 691 Taiwan suppliers performed relatively well in social and governance categories, thanks to Taiwan government's long-term interest in these areas. On the other hand, there still exist challenges to be resolved in the environmental category. Based on observations, emission reduction and management driven by the government is necessary, as Taiwan aims to achieve net zero by 2050.If analyzed by tiers, the performance of businesses in tier 1 to 3 outshined other tiers, as suppliers and leading manufacturers in these categories share a direct relationship and face more scrutiny. On the contrary, businesses in tiers 4 to 6 are less correlated, hence explaining their greater opportunities for improvement in scores.Taiwan businesses excel in social and governance categories with opportunities for improvement in environmental factors.Implementing ESG is critical for Taiwan businesses to unlock the value of the global supply chainDun & Bradstreet also conducted an analysis of 716 Taiwanese suppliers of Fortune Global 100 companies. These companies span across industries including energy conversion and management, ICT, and more, with total revenue accounting for 59% of Taiwan's annual GDP in 2020. They are pillars of Taiwan's economy. Dun & Bradstreet research found that their excellent revenue performance is also reflected in their ESG practices. These 716 suppliers earned an average ESG score of 1.73, which is significantly higher than Taiwan's overall average of 2.56, and better than the performance of other countries and regions. This indicates that Taiwan companies not only excel in R&D, but outperform their international counterparts in sustainability as well. As ESG becomes more mainstream, it becomes critical for businesses to unlock the value of the global supply chain."ESG has obviously become the entry ticket for small and medium-sized enterprises to the global supply chain, but the evaluations are not standardized on the market," said Michelle Sun, General Manager of Dun & Bradstreet Taiwan. "Through our ESG intelligence, built from deep coverage of public and private companies in Taiwan, coupled with the top five standards, Dun & Bradstreet hopes to reveal data-driven insights that are comprehensive and objective, enabling Taiwan businesses to review and put their ESG goals into practice, while strengthening their competitiveness on the global market."Dun & Bradstreet provides business data and public ESG-related information of 27+ million public and private companies worldwide. Dun & Bradstreet's ESG services are created from objective data modeling and third-party processes. Its ESG rankings, structured around leading sustainability frameworks, SASB, GRI, UN SDGs, TCFD, UN PRI, provide a single benchmark to enable companies balance short-term profitability and long-term competitiveness.Among the 11 countries and regions evaluated, the United Kingdom ranks the highest in ESG performance, followed by Germany; Taiwan ranks at the 50th percentile, slightly ahead of Australia, Ireland, the United States, and New Zealand. Smaller score indicates better performance.
Monday 21 March 2022
Nearshoring has emerged as strategic answer to lack of diversified resources caused by offshoring
Introduced in the 1960s, offshoring became a primary cost-savings business strategy for industries to outsource manufacturing operations to Asia. However, as supply chain constraints intensified within the past couple of years, many businesses have considered transferring operations back to nearby countries. This practice, known as nearshoring, has emerged to create a buffer against supply chain disruptions.As a result of offshoring, the US now only domestically manufactures 12% of the chips it designs. Comparatively, Taiwan manufactures over 60% of the world's chips. The lack of varied resources within the electronic component industry has caused bottlenecks within the global supply chain. Diversifying resources would add necessary support and reduce the impact of shocks and shortages.According to an April 2020 Thomas survey, 64% of North American manufacturers reported they are likely to bring manufacturing production and sourcing back to the Americas. Latin America, specifically Mexico, is poised to profit the most from this developing trend. More recently, Latin America saw a 156% increase in hiring from foreign companies, particularly for software engineers.European, Middle Eastern and African companies have been looking to neighboring countries in Central and Eastern Europe and North Africa as nearshoring options. In response to COVID-19, Ernst & Young conducted flash research and found that in Europe, 88% of respondents were contemplating nearshoring over low-cost areas outside of EMEA. Sixty-one percent were seeking to reduce reliance on dominant source countries like China.Despite its attractiveness, nearshoring is costly, and it will take years to move operations. The total cost for US and European companies to move manufacturing out of China would come to $1 trillion over the next five years. Relocating to a new country also adds pressure to the local economy. If a company were to withdraw just one percent from China and nearshore to a country like Poland, Poland would have to increase its production by 25%. The cost, compounded by how long these changes could take, is enough to make some companies wary.Even with the concerns associated with nearshoring, many companies have already begun transitioning their operations closer to home. A prime example is Samsung Electronics, which has set the goal of becoming the world's biggest semiconductor firm by 2030. To assist the growth of its business, Samsung has prioritized local partnerships with domestic parts manufacturers and local material suppliers. With moves like this, Samsung and others that opt for a nearshoring business model will bolster their local economies and offer essential flexibility in the supply chain.Nearshoring has emerged as a strategic answer to lack of diversified resources caused by offshoringPhoto: Fusion Worldwide
Monday 21 March 2022
NeoGene 0.2mm big area vapor chamber breakthrough technology pushing smartphone thermal management to next level
NeoGene Tech, a Guangzhou-based technology platform provider of designing and fabricating ultra-thin vapor chamber devices for 5G smartphone application, has announced its Level 3 PWS (Print Wick Structuring) COMBO technology has overcome the bottleneck and limitation of traditional copper mesh wick technology in two-phase working fluid transportation and circulation efficiency inside a big-area and super-narrow-space vapor chamber device.Up to date in the industry, the thickness of vapor chamber in production for smartphone applications is still at over 0.3mm, NeoGene said. Most smartphone brands keep seeking advanced technology among their supply chain to pursue vapor chamber devices as thinner as possible. The thickness of vapor chamber at 0.2mm as well as device area at over 5,000mm2 is always the dream to the industry since thermal management issue will become more critical as never before.NeoGene cited industry experts as noting that the space of liquid channel and vapor channel inside the vapor chamber will be tremendously limited totally at only 100um if the device thickness is just at around 200um. Once the distance between the evaporator and the condenser is too far and device area is too wide, it is almost mission impossible to accommodate an appropriate thinner copper mesh wick structure and to have enough vapor space as well to ensure that the two-phase working fluids can be efficiently transported and circulated inside the device to enable the device keeping acceptable thermal performance."Based on our MagicWick-Inside Technology Platform, the Level 3 PWS COMBO technology adopts selective screen printing technics and co-sintering processes to make three different MagicWick structures with different thicknesses and patterns in order to perform different functions in different flow channels and regions simultaneously," said Jeffrey Chen, CEO of NeoGene Tech."Three different kinds of MagicWick paste materials (MW-A, MW-B, MW-C) were screen printed in different area on etched copper alloy substrate and were baked to form the SWOES (Semi-Wick-On-Etched-Substrate), and then proceed to become the MWOES (Magic-Wick-On-Etched-Substrate) before device packaging process. Different from PWS Level 1 and Level 2 technology, PWS COMBO technology is a way of solving different limitation issues simultaneously inside an ultra-thin and ultra-big vapor chamber by having a novel flow channel design and combo wick structuring. It is very easy to conduct the multiple wick structuring processes in mass production by adopting automatic screen printing and baking technique and continuous decomposition and sintering furnace," said Chen."The Level 3 PWS COMBO technology is actually an ultra-thin vapor chamber design and fabrication approach for laterally balancing the efficiency of liquid channels and vapor channels in ultra narrow space. By having novel flow channel design and different magic paste recipes, the MagicWick-Inside VC devices made by Level 3 PWS COMBO technology with thickness at only 0.2mm (with +0.02 tolerance) and the size at 5000mm2, can be working very efficiently at 5W, and the surface temperature difference (delta T) between evaporator and condenser with distance at 70mm is measured at around 2 degrees C. Thanks to the collaboration of MagicWick A (wick thickness ~35um) in liquid channels and MagicWick C (wick thickness <10um) in vapor channels, the anti-gravity transportation speed of liquid working fluid from condenser to evaporator is measured at over 20mm/sec," added Chen.NeoGene Tech's authorized thermal module maker, Jieqiao Electronics, will be the first player to adopt PWS COMBO technology in 0.23max big-area vapor chamber mass production, and this technology will be also opened for all thermal module makers once the MagicWick-Inside Technology Platform license program is reached and conducted accordingly, according to Chen.Photo: NeoGene Tech
Thursday 10 March 2022
GUC announces 2.5D and 3D multi-die APT platform for AI, HPC, networking ASICs
Global Unichip Corp. (GUC), the Advanced ASIC Leader, announces the availability of a platform to shorten design cycles for low-risk, high-yield production of ASICs with TSMC 2.5D and 3D Advanced Packaging Technology (APT). The platform supports TSMC's CoWoS-S, CoWoS-R, and InFO technologies. GUC provides a total solution: silicon-proven interface IPs, CoWoS® and InFO silicon-correlated design, signal and power integrity, thermal simulation flows, and high volume product proven DFT and production tests.GUC has many years of high-volume production experience of CoWoS-S (silicon interposer) products with HBM using in-house and 3rd party PHY and Controller IPs. InFO design and simulation flows were silicon-correlated using many GLink testchips in N7 and N5 (GLink is GUC die-to-die interface IP family). Recently GUC validated the CoWoS-R (organic interposer) testchip using GUC's 4Gbps HBM2E PHY and Controller IPs, implemented in TSMC N5. Interposer design, layout, signal and power integrity (SI/PI) simulation flows using an organic interposer were correlated with silicon testing results. Now GUC owns a full set of silicon-proven interface IPs, a silicon-correlated design, and simulation flows for all types of TSMC 2.5D technologies. This allows our customers to choose the most optimal solution for any CPU, GPU, AI, HPC and Networking product.While 2.5D multi-die integration is mature and already widely used by GUC, emerging 3D multi-die integration allows the next level of connection density, power efficiency, and very low latency. GUC leads ASIC industry with GLink die-on-die interface IP using TSMC's N5 and N6 processes. The IP design and simulation flows will soon be silicon-validated for different 3D IC packaging."In 2021, GUC made a breakthrough by developing next-generation HBM3, GLink-2.5D, GLink-3D IPs as well as validating CoWoS-S/R and InFO design platforms. GUC keeps collaborating with TSMC to reduce the barrier for the most advanced 2.5D and 3D technologies, enabling our customers to develop high performance, cost efficient products and to bring them quickly to high volume manufacturing", said Sean Tai, president of GUC. "GUC successfully enabled many AI, HPC, and Networking customer products adopting TSMC CoWoS-S and InFO technologies. With availability of CoWoS-R and 3DIC platforms we provide the most comprehensive design and manufacturing service to our customers.""We are first in the market with HBM3 PHY and the highest performance HBM3 Controller. We also lead the industry with GLink-2.5D IP for die-to-die interconnect, providing unmatching 2.5 Tbps/mm beachfront efficiency (full duplex) and 0.30 pJ/bit power. These IPs can be used in all types of TSMC's 2.5D platforms. Soon, we will validate GLink-3D at 9 Tbps/mm2 (full duplex) and it will open an era of 3D ASICs", said Igor Elkanovich, CTO of GUC. "The unique combination of in-house IPs, silicon-correlated design flows for all types of TSMC technologies, and high volume production experience allow fast development and production ramp-up of huge scale AI/HPC/Networking products."To learn more about GUC's HBM3/2E, GLink IP portfolio and InFO_oS, and CoWoS® total solution, please contact your GUC sales representative directly or email guc_sales@guc-asic.com.GUC provides 2.5D and 3D multi-die APT platform solution for AI, HPC, Networking ASICs