Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers Earlier this year, the semiconductor industry saw little merger and acquisition activity. More recently, though, there has been a flurry of deals. In July, ADI moved to acquire Maxim. Then, Nvidia announced plans to acquire Arm for $40 billion, followed by AMD’s proposed move to buy Xilinx for $35 billion. Not to be outdone, Marvell has announced plans to buy Inphi. Companies a... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Trade and government The U.S. continues to tighten its export controls for hi-tech, including a move to restrict fab technologies that enable 5nm chip production. The U.S. Department of Commerce has imposed controls on six more technologies, bringing the total to 37. They include: hybrid additive manufacturing/computer controlled tools; computational lithography software designed for EUV masks... » read more

What Worked, What Didn’t In 2019


2019 has been a tough year for semiconductor companies from a revenue standpoint, especially for memory companies. On the other hand, the EDA industry has seen another robust growth year. A significant portion of this disparity can be attributed to the number of emerging technology areas for semiconductors, none of which has reached volume production yet. Some markets continue to struggle, a... » read more

Falling Chip Forecasts


It’s time to take a pulse of the semiconductor market amid the memory downturn and trade frictions with China. For some time, the DRAM and NAND markets have been hit hard with falling prices and oversupply. Then, the Trump administration last year slapped tariffs on Chinese goods. China retaliated. And the trade war rages on between the U.S. and China. More recently, the U.S. Department... » read more

Get Ready For Integrated Silicon Photonics


Long-haul communications and data centers are huge buyers of photonics components, and that is leading to rapid advances in the technology and opening new markets and opportunities. The industry has to adapt to meet the demands being placed on it and solve the bottlenecks in the design, development and fabrication of integrated silicon photonics. "Look at the networking bandwidth used across... » read more

Data Buffering’s Role Grows


Data buffering is gaining ground as a way to speed up the processing of increasingly large quantities of data. In simple terms, a data buffer is an area of physical [getkc id="22" kc_name="memory"] storage that temporarily stores data while it is being moved from one place to another. This becomes increasingly necessary in data centers, autonomous vehicles, and for [getkc id="305" kc_name=... » read more

The Week in Review: IoT


Deals Rambus finalized its acquisition of the memory interconnect business at Inphi. The closing price was $90 million in cash. The former Inphi business became part of the Memory and Interfaces Division at Rambus. CyberX raised $9 million of private funding in a financing round led by Flint Capital. Glilot Capital Partners, Swarth Group, and GlenRock, all existing investors, were joined by... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


Tools ProPlus Design Solutions unveiled its 9812DX wafer-level 1/f noise characterization system, an enhanced version of its de facto standard 9812D. It includes a more than 10X increase in system resolution, as well as a speedup boost three-to-five times faster than previous systems, higher voltage support up to 200V, and lower current support down to 0.1nA. It also adds a wider range of me... » read more

The Week In Review: IoT


Deals Rambus agreed to acquire the assets of Inphi’s Memory Interconnect Business for $90 million in cash. Under the usual closing conditions, the transaction is scheduled to conclude during the third quarter. The business assets take in customer contracts, intellectual property, product inventory, and supply-chain agreements. “By combining our buffer chip team with the Memory Interconnect... » read more

Fundamental Shifts In Chip Business


Shifting business models, acquisitions, minority investments and increasing uncertainty are creating fundamental shifts in the semiconductor industry that could redefine who is successful in which markets for years to come. The announcement today that [getentity id="22671" e_name="Rambus"] is developing memory controller chips, expanding its business beyond just creating IP for the memory an... » read more

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