Chip Zero has big goals

proven in automotive applications, to protect the internal circuitry. The lid, made from high-grade surgical steel, is sealed with an o-ring and secured with epoxy adhesive. This unique package design ensures an ingress-protection rating of IP58 to withstand immersion in over one meter of water, certified according to IEC 60529 and ISO 20653. In addition, the sensor can sustain up to 10Bar over-pressure.

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GOODBYE, 32-BIT MOBILE APPS

Arm has announced Arm Total Compute Solutions 2023 (TCS23), which will be the platform for next generation mobile computing. TSC23 also ends the support for 32-bit applications. Total Compute Solutions is Arm's name for the platform on which different processors are implemented. The first processors are the power core X4, the Cortex-A720 aimed at the mid-price category and the Cortex-A520 for basic phones.

For example, the combination X4 + 5 x A720 + 2 x A520 is available for nextgeneration Android flagship phones. This combination promises 27 percent more performance, according to Arm. For developers, the end of 32-bit support is of course a significant issue. Last year, Mediatek's Dimensity 9200 was the first application processor to exclusively use 64-bit Armv9 cores. At the same time, Google's Pixel 7 was the first device where 32-bit applications could no longer be run. With the new processors, 32-bit applications will be a thing of the past. In the end, it is not a very big change, as 64-bit mobile apps have had to be added to the Google Play store since 2019.

Finland is not the first place that comes to mind when looking for significant developers in the semiconductor industry. However, the country has quite an honorable history in semiconductors and now the industry will is aiming to become a huge business by 2030.

In the Chip Zero locomotive project started by Business Finland and led by Picosun, which develops ALD manufacturing devices, the goal is to grow the semiconductor business to 10 billion euros during the current decade. The goal is high, because at the moment there are 5000 employees in the industry and it generates an annual turnover of around one and a half billion euros.

At first, the idea sounds crazy, but Finland isn´t planning a billion-euro factory where processors for the next generation of iPhones are made. Instead, Chip Zero aims to develop solutions and processes that can make microcircuits emission-free throughout their life cycle.

In the starting seminar of the Chip Zero program Picosun's technology director Jani Kivioja clarified that the goal requires new solutions for the entire life cycle of the circuits. We need to develop resource-efficient manufacturing technology and components. The passage of each silicon wafer must be achieved with clearly less energy consumption than at present. This requires a new approach.

- Currently, there is no focus on sustainability in seiconductor production. A lot of harmful chemicals are used in the processes, no recycling is done and the production chains are separate, Kivioja listed.

It is estimated that the total turnover of semiconductor industry will grow to a trillion dollars, or $1000 billion, by 2030. So could Finland someday have a billiondollar factory that produces 300millimeter wafers? According to Okmetic CEO Kai Seikku, the answer is no. But Picosun CEO Jussi Rautee sees it differently.

- The semiconductor industry needs a lot of new factories when the market doubles. Maybe sometime arond 2050, we too could have our own 300-millimeter factory, Rautee envisions.

According to Seikku, Finland has something to offer in certain niche areas, also in production. This requires new production lines, and in the Chip Zero project, a new Kvanttinova line is planned next to Micronova's test line. Its task would be to enable the manufacture of slightly larger volumes, but also to scale products towards larger production facilities.

Murata Electronics' CEO Tomy Runne sees Kvanttinova as an important tool together with Micronova and Tampere's SoC line.- If we could produce something here in three weeks, we would beat our competitors. In semiconductor manufacturing, speed means everything, Runne emphasized.

Picosun, an Applied Materials company, has received funding from Business Finland to form an R&D program in the country focused on reducing the environmental impact of semiconductor manufacturing.

The four-year program, called “Chip Zero,” seeks to bring together companies across the semiconductor ecosystem in Finland with a shared mission of developing chips with zero lifetime emissions by reducing the carbon footprint of chip manufacturing and increasing the efficiency of semiconductor decarbonization applications. Picosun will initiate and lead the program with a significant grant from Business Finland. The aim is to scale the program over time with contributions from ecosystem partners to reach more than 100M€ in R&D investments.