Money Pours Into New Fabs And Facilities


Fabs, packaging, test and assembly, and R&D all drew major funding in 2023. Companies poured money into offshore locations, such as India and Malaysia, to access a larger workforce and lower costs, while also partnering with governments to secure domestic supply chains amid ongoing geopolitical turmoil. Looking ahead, artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, and data applications... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers TSMC has introduced another version of its 4nm process technology. The process, called N4X, is tailored for high-performance computing products. Recently, TSMC introduced another 4nm process, called N4P, which is an enhanced version of its 5nm technology. N4X is also an enhanced version of its 5nm technology. N4X, however, offers a performance boost of up to 15% over TSMC’s N5 pro... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive Intel’s Mobileye and Sixt SE said they are collaborating on an autonomous ride-hailing services in Munich in 2022. Mobileye will own the robotaxi fleet. Mobileye also recently unveiled its electric autonomous vehicle (AV), which it will use in ridehailing in Munich and Tel Aviv.. To increase the supply of automotive chips, Intel said it will build new chip manufacturing facilit... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Pervasive computing — IoT, edge, cloud, data center, and back Xilinx introduced its Versal AI Edge series of adaptive SoCs, or adaptive compute acceleration platforms (ACAPs), that can be manage AI-ML workloads in edge applications. The chip is designed for flexible, low latency, edge applications where algorithms may need updating. The software programmable chips have an AI Engine-ML featur... » read more

2020: A Turning Point In The Chip Industry


At the start of 2020, most of the industry was upbeat and sales forecasts for the year were good. Then the pandemic hit, and fear gripped most of the industry — but not for long. New markets emerged, demand increased, and the levels of innovation went far beyond what had been forecast. While hope is on the horizon that the virus will be contained during 2021, life will not return to the ol... » read more

Node Within A Node


Enough margin exists in manufacturing processes to carve out the equivalent of a full node of scaling, but shrinking that margin will require a collective push across the entire semiconductor manufacturing supply chain. Margin is built into manufacturing at various stages to ensure that chips are manufacturable and yield sufficiently. It can include everything from variation in how lines are... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Auto


Products/Services Arm rolled out its Flexible Access program, which offers system-on-a-chip design teams the capability to try out the company’s semiconductor intellectual property, along with IP from Arm partners, before they commit to licensing IP and to pay only for what they use in production. The new engagement model is expected to prove useful for Internet of Things design projects and... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Auto


Internet of Things Combining artificial intelligence with unmanned aerial vehicles could provide a quicker and safer alternative to inspecting roadways for cracks, potholes, and other damage, according to a paper posted on arvix.org. “[M]anual visual inspection [is] not only tedious, time-consuming, and costly, but also dangerous for the personnel. Furthermore, the detection results are alwa... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Fab tools/manufacturing Lam Research has accepted Martin Anstice’s resignation as chief executive and a member of the board. Lam has named Tim Archer as president and chief executive effective immediately. Archer, who served as Lam’s president and chief operating officer, has been named to the board. One analyst provided a comment on the situation at Lam. “In our view, Mr. Archer is very... » read more

Inside Panel-Level Fan-Out Technology


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss panel-level fan-out packaging technology with Tanja Braun, deputy group manager at the Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration IZM, and Michael Töpper, business development manager at Fraunhofer IZM. Braun is responsible for the Panel Level Packaging Consortium at Fraunhofer IZM, as well as the group manager for assembly and encap... » read more

← Older posts