Because the development costs a lot of money, the air taxi providers are pushing for guarantees from the state. The competition in other countries is supported with millions.
According to the company bosses, the air taxis from Lilium (above) and Volocopter (below) are about to be launched on the market. Lilium/Volocopter
The German air taxi companies Lilium and Volocopter, which want to offer their first passenger flights this year, are under financial pressure. Both companies have applied for government loan guarantees of 100 million euros each, but neither the federal government – despite initial expressions of intent – nor the federal states have so far confirmed support, Handelsblatt reports.
“The federal government and Bavaria are currently playing ping pong. “Everyone stays under cover,” Lilium CEO Klaus Roewe told the Handelsblatt. This runs the risk of putting an entire industry at risk. Volocopter CEO Dirk Hoke expressed similar concerns to the newspaper. Without a government guarantee, the promise of further investments from previous donors would be at risk. Since its founding, Lilium has raised around $1.4 billion in capital worldwide, with barely two percent of this capital coming from Germany.
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The lack of support hits the companies shortly before their planned market launch. Despite the challenges, Hoke is confident that it will be able to start operations in Europe this year. Both companies have had to repeatedly postpone their market launch in recent years. Lilium CEO Daniel Wiegand last said this in a media report two weeks ago The first manned flight is planned for the end of 2024.
Competitors in other countries are supported with hundreds of millions of dollars
Companies warn that without government support their international competitiveness is at risk. Because: American and Chinese competitors in particular would receive significant government funding. “According to our information, our American competitor Joby received over 600 million dollars, Archer almost 200 million dollars,” Roewe is quoted in the Handelsblatt.
The lack of support is also criticized by industry experts. Gerald Wissel, head of the German drone association UAV DACH, warns that Germany must not repeat the mistakes of the past when it comes to future technologies. Jobs, suppliers – large parts of the entire value chain would otherwise be left to China and the USA again.
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Despite warnings: Volker Wissing wants to support air taxi startup Volocopter with 150 million euros
The former Airbus boss, Tom Enders, who sits on the Lilium board of directors, is also critical and emphasizes in the paper the importance of government funding for the success of Airbus. He sees electrification as the best opportunity for aviation to make its contribution to the decarbonization of transport.
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Japan intends to take the necessary measures to stop the fall of the yen
– 2024-04-26 22:11:42
Japanese Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki said he was ready to intervene to stop the sharp fall of the yen, which stood at 155 yen per dollar for the first time in 34 years.
According to AZERTAC, citing foreign media, the Japanese currency has overcome the barrier of 155 yen per dollar, despite recent changes in the country’s monetary policy, which for years introduced negative interest rates to try to control inflation, Day.Az reports.
“We are concerned about the fall of the weak yen,” Suzuki said, adding that combating rising prices was a priority for the Japanese government.
The yen has depreciated sharply against the dollar, among other currencies, largely due to interest rate differences between the two countries. This trend has accelerated in recent weeks as the US central bank is not expected to start cutting rates anytime soon.
The Japanese government last intervened in this process in October 2022, when the Japanese currency approached 152 units against the dollar.
Japan intends to take the necessary measures to stop the fall of the yen – 2024-04-26 22:11:42
TSMC Introduces CoW-SoW Platform for Giant 3D Chips: Future of Wafer-Scale Integration
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26.04.2024 21:18,
Mykola Khizhnyak
TSMC introduced a new generation of the System-On-Wafer (CoW-SoW) platform, which uses 3D layout technology. The basis of CoW-SoW is the InFO_SoW platform, which the company introduced in 2020, which allows the creation of logical processes at the scale of a silicon wafer of 300 mm. So far, only Tesla has adapted this technology. It is used in her supercomputer Dojo.
In the new CoW-SoW platform, TSMC is going to combine two packaging methods – InFO_SoW and System on Integrated Chips (SoIC). Using Chip-on-Wafer (CoW) technology, this method allows memory and/or logic to be placed directly on top of the system-on-wafer. The new CoW-SoW technology is expected to be ready for mass production by 2027.
“In the future, wafer-scale integration will allow our customers to integrate even more logic and memory components. SoW technology is no longer fiction. This is something we are already working on with our customers for the prospect of using it in their existing products. We believe that advanced wafer-level integration technology will allow our customers to continue to expand the computing power of their AI systems or supercomputers.”said Kevin Zhang, vice president of business development at TSMC.
TSMC is now considering the possibility of combining logical processors with high-performance HBM4 memory within the CoW-SoW platform. The latter will have a 2048-bit interface and will be located directly on top of the logic chips. At the same time, the ability to put additional logic on a wafer would optimize production costs.
Wafer-scale processors (such as Cerebras’ WSE) and InFO_SoW processors provide significant performance and efficiency gains through high throughput, low inter-core latency, low power impedance, and high energy efficiency. As an added “bonus”, such processors offer accommodation capability large size computing cores.
However, the same InFO_SoW technology has some limitations. For example, the efficiency of wafer-scale processors may be limited by the efficiency of on-board memory. The CoW-SoW platform overcomes this limitation because it is intended to use high-performance HBM4 memory. In addition, InFO_SoW wafers are processed using only one process technology and does not support 3D format. This issue can be solved with the new CoW-SoW platform.
2024-04-26 18:18:00
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TSMC Introduces CoW-SoW Platform for Giant 3D Chips: Future of Wafer-Scale Integration