Top ten articles on eeNews Europe in May
Printed Circuit Board production is a ticking timebomb for Europe, says Dirk Stans of Eurocircuits.
In our first Leaders Talk, one of the top ten articles in May on eeNews Europe, he highlights the risk of cheap PCBs from China, not just for sovereign production but also for vital IP protection. He also points to ways to address the issues and make sure European companies protect themselves and their customers from the risks.
At the end of April, Spain saw a massive power outage across the country, hitting neighbouring Portugal and France. People were stuck on trains that stopped, ATMs stopped working and the standby power started to run out on mobile phone basestations. While power was restored quickly, the reasons for the outage are still unclear and the investigations continue. This highlights the vital importance of the aging power gird in a digital world, and we will look at the technical details when they are available.
Power is another factor for the digital economy, limiting the adoption of datacentres. As Nvidia rises up the ranking of the top chip makers and launches a desktop AI machine using the GB10 superchip, it is also moving up the hardware stack to the power distribution architecture.
It has proposed an 800V power architecture for datacentres, working with six of the main semiconductor power chip suppliers.
Nvidia consortium pushes 800V power distribution for AI datacentres
The cash crisis at silicon carbide wafer and chip maker Wolfspeed continues, as the company is negotiating with its largest debtors. This may well lead to protection from creditors in a Chapter 11 restructuring of its debt if the negotiations under the new CEO are unsuccessful, although this does not mean bankruptcy as some have indicated. It does however highlight the huge costs of building the latest fabs (in this case 200mm) that we have tracked over the last year even with support from the US CHIPS Act.
That financial support may not be forthcoming, which is one of the reasons for the case crisis, as the current Trump administration is favouring tariffs as a lever to encourage local manufacturing.
So far semiconductors have been exempt from the tariffs, but there are increasing warnings from the world’s largest foundry, TSMC, as well large chip makers including Intel, Micron, Texas Instruments and Qualcomm to the US government. TSMC is readying its 2nm production at Arizona with mainstream media now realising the importance of semiconductor technology, and it is opening its first design centre in Europe later this year in Munich.
Intel, Micron, Qualcomm, TI join call for chip tariff exemptions
One of the most popular of the top ten articles this month was an interesting technology for thermoelectric cooling, The thin film process uses the same techniques as the semiconductor for cooling, reducing the need for noxious chemicals in consumer equipment and opening up opportunities in cooling chips.
Thin film thermoelectric cooling built with semiconductor process technology
While the US is closing down its CHIPS Act activities, the auditors have been looking at how effective the European version has been. They point out that the growth targets will be not met, and the race to dispense funds has left it difficult to track the success, as highlighted in this analysis by Peter Clarke. This will be key to the current discussions on the EU CHIPS Act 2.0, with an opportunity to attract more chip companies and boost the activities in the region.
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