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

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Jesse Allen, Karen Heyman, and Liz Allan Japan's Rapidus and the University of Tokyo are teaming up with France's Leti to meet its previously announced mass production goal of 2nm chips by 2027, and chips in the 1nm range in the 2030s. Rapidus was formed in 2022 with the support of eight Japanese companies — Sony, Kioxia, Denso, NEC, NTT, SoftBank, Toyota, and Mitsubishi's banking arm, ... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Liz Allan, Jesse Allen, and Karen Heyman. Canon uncorked a nanoimprint lithography system, which the company said will be useful down to about the 5nm node. Unlike traditional lithography equipment, which projects a pattern onto a resist, nanoimprint directly transfers images onto substrates using a master stamp patterned by an e-beam system. The technology has a number of limitations and... » read more

Startup Funding: July 2023


Investors pumped more than $2.8 billion into 123 companies July. It was a particularly strong month for photonics companies, with a photonic integrated circuit foundry raising more than $100 million. Startups this month also are using photonic technology in innovative ways. This includes an all-optical RISC processor, biomarker identification, faster fully homomorphic encryption, and more AI... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Renesas Electronics completed its acquisition of Panthronics, a fabless company specializing in near-field communication (NFC) wireless products. Renesas has already incorporated Panthronics NFC technology into several solution reference designs for applications such as payment, IoT, asset tracking, and smart meters. The European Commission announced new funding for the semiconductor and mic... » read more

Week In Review: Semiconductor Manufacturing, Test


Samsung announced plans to invest $230 billion (300 trillion won) over the next two decades to construct the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturing complex in South Korea’s Gyeonggi Province, reports AP. The complex will consist of five new semiconductor plants producing memory and logic chips. Chips will be the enabling engines, requiring massive investments in new technology, m... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive, mobility The BMW Group will invest $1.7 billion in its U.S. operations to build electric vehicles and batteries, mostly in South Carolina. BMW will drop $1 billion in its South Carolina plant for EV production and $700 million for a new battery-assembly facility in the state. BMW also agreed to purchase battery cells from Japan-based Envision AESC, which plans to construct a new ba... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Feb. 6


GaN trusted foundry HRL Laboratories--an R&D venture between Boeing and General Motors--has launched a new foundry service for use in advanced millimeter-wave (mmWave) gallium-nitride (GaN) technology applications. HRL’s process, called T3-GaN, is a high-electron-mobility transistor technology. It will enable the fabrication of GaN-based monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs... » read more

The Week In Review: IoT


Finance Dublin-based Cubic Telecom has taken in €40 million (about $47.6 million) in Series C funding, bringing its total funding to €75 million (around $89.25 million). Audi Electronics Venture and Qualcomm are existing investors participating in the new round of funding, joined by new investors Ireland Strategic Investment Fund and Valid Soluciones Tecnologicas SAU. Cubic will use the mo... » read more

Japan: Latest Investment Activities


By Dan Tracy and Yoichiro Ando Restructuring and consolidation has led to a new focus for the semiconductor manufacturers in Japan. As a result, the semiconductor equipment market in Japan will experience double-digit growth in both 2013 and 2014, driven by higher spending for memory production and in spending increases planned for the manufacturing of power semiconductors and “More than Moo... » read more