Summary
An ambitious chip startup that has spent more than seven years quietly trying to redesign the architecture for computer memory has just come out of stealth mode and believes its new approach can help ease the global memory-chip shortage—provided it can produce its technology at scale. Kepler Computing, a San Jose, California–based startup founded in 2018 by a team of physicists and computer scientists, says it has developed a new architecture for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) that directly addresses some of the chip supply bottlenecks that are constraining the computing market. While chipmakers typically rely on expensive extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) to shrink the transistors on a chip, thereby packing more technology into the same amount of space, Kepler claims that its “3D stacking” approach and a proprietary new material allow it to increase density without relying on EUV at all—and it can work with existing semiconductor fabrication plants. Kepler says it has made similar gains for the high-speed cache memory typically used in CPUs, GPUs, and XPUs. This so-called SRAM sits within the core of a chip die in order to cut down on data transfer times. HBM, by contrast, uses stacks of DRAM, which is a separate memory component of chips. The company has raised 245 million to “develop in the US a new class of high-performance AI memory technology, enabled by innovative 3D and ferroelectric technologies.” For now, much of Kepler’s testing is happening in Singapore, which is where GlobalFoundries—a manufacturing partner and investor of 20 billion to $40 billion it costs to build new ones and outfit them with equipment worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Waiting to Scale Kepler Computing still has a long road ahead before it reaches full-scale production—assuming it gets there. To date, the company has run its technology on around 2,000 wafers. The startup says it’s planning to ship its first samples of HBM chips later this year, ramp up production out of Singapore next year, and start chip production in the US in 2028. Kaste, the GlobalFoundries executive, says he’s confident that the “fundamental breakthroughs have happened. What remains is getting good results on thousands of wafers and millions of devices.” He points out that one of the challenges with a material system like the one Kepler is using is that it includes iron in its composite. “Iron is a tough contaminant to introduce into a production facility. So Kepler’s solution has to run on dedicated equipment, or be fully encapsulated so that it can’t escape,” he says. “The art is in keeping that material really well isolated through our production flow,” Kaste says. Olaosebikan wouldn’t confirm the specific elements of the company’s composite material. “What I can say is, we’re using a small number of materials, and some of them aren’t what you’d typically find in mainstream ferroelectrics,” he says. Kepler Computing isn’t the only startup looking to upend the semiconductor industry. Late last year, a well-funded startup called Substrate also made waves for its new approach to lithography, which uses nanoparticles to etch details onto advanced chips. Some industry analysts were skeptical of the startup’s ambitions, noting that it would be extremely difficult for Substrate to produce a large number of chips “that meet incredibly stringent specifications, on time and on budget,” as reported in Bloomberg. Scale is a common challenge when attempting to innovate semiconductor manufacturing, whether with new processes, materials, or some combination of both. “The question is how to overcome all the limitations of contamination, different materials, and different tooling, in such a way that the resulting innovation can be used at scale and is worth the cost,” says Austin Lyons, a chip analyst for Creative Strategies, who was not briefed on Kepler’s innovation. Proving out a new method for memory is one thing; meeting the historic demand for it will be another altogether. Comments Back to top