July 2016 - Page 4 of 12 - Semiconductor Engineering

Manufacturing Bits: July 26
By Mark LaPedus - 26 Jul, 2016 - Comments: 0

Jumping films Riken and the University of Tokyo have developed a tiny autonomous actuator. The actuator, which is based on a special material, can automatically curl up or straighten out when exposed to ambient humidity. And in certain conditions, the film can even jump into the air by itself. A video can be seen here. Researchers placed a material called guanidinium carbonate into a hig... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: July 26
By Jesse Allen - 26 Jul, 2016 - Comments: 0

Flexible MRAM Researchers from the National University of Singapore, Yonsei University, Ghent University and Singapore's Institute of Materials Research and Engineering embedded a magnetic memory chip on a plastic material, flexible enough to be bent into a tube. The new device operates on magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM), which uses a magnesium oxide (MgO)-based magnetic tunn... » read more

RF GaN Gains Steam
By Mark LaPedus - 25 Jul, 2016 - Comments: 0

The RF [getkc id="217" kc_name="gallium nitride"] (GaN) device market is heating up amid the need for more performance with better power densities in a range of systems, such as infrastructure equipment, missile defense and radar. On one front, for example, RF GaN is beginning to displace a silicon-based technology for the power amplifier sockets in today’s wireless base stations. GaN is m... » read more

Introduction to the Compute Express Link Standard
By Synopsys - 24 Jul, 2016 - Comments: 0

By Gary Ruggles, Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Synopsys Compute Express Link (CXL), a new open interconnect standard, targets intensive workloads for CPUs and purpose-built accelerators where efficient, coherent memory access between a Host and Device is required. A consortium to enable this new standard was recently announced simultaneously with the release of the CXL 1.0 specification. Th... » read more

The Week in Review: IoT
By Jeff Dorsch - 22 Jul, 2016 - Comments: 0

Deals The big news of the week, of course, is SoftBank Group’s proposed acquisition of ARM Holdings for a breathtaking $32.2 billion in cash. In announcing the deal, the companies made it abundantly clear that the proposed acquisition is chiefly about Internet of Things technology. “When I think about the investment and the commitment that’s going to be required to develop the future te... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing
By Mark LaPedus - 22 Jul, 2016 - Comments: 2

Market research Worldwide semiconductor capital spending is projected to decline 0.7% in 2016, to $64.3 billion, according to Gartner. This is up from the estimated 2% decline in Gartner's previous quarterly forecast. "Economic instability, inventory excess, weak demand for PC’s, tablets, and mobile products in the past three years has caused slow growth for the semiconductor industry. This ... » read more

The Week In Review: Design
By Jesse Allen - 22 Jul, 2016 - Comments: 0

Tools Synopsys updated its static timing analysis tool to use smart engineering change order (ECO) technology, which the company says reduces memory requirements by 5X and speeds runtime by 2X. The release also allows more scenarios on a single server, or flexible distribution to take advantage of customers' private compute clouds. IP Synopsys released MIPI display and camera interface... » read more

Roots Of Distrust Spread
By Ed Sperling - 21 Jul, 2016 - Comments: 0

For most of the history of semiconductors there has been a persistent fear that someone would steal intellectual property from one company and sell it to another. There have been innumerable lawsuits involving corporate secrets that cross from one company to the next, and from one country to the next. The biggest concerns always were at the leading edges of technology, where those secrets w... » read more

5 Takeaways From Semicon
By Mark LaPedus - 21 Jul, 2016 - Comments: 0

As usual, the recent Semicon West trade show was a busy, if not an overwhelming, event. The event, which took place in San Francisco in early July, featured presentations on the usual subjects in the semiconductor and IC-equipment sectors. There were sessions on 200mm, next-generation processes, transistors, lithography, MEMS and many others. In no particular order, here are my five ta... » read more

Material And Process Challenges In A Changing Memory Landscape
By Er-Xuan Ping - 21 Jul, 2016 - Comments: 0

Moore’s Law has fueled the semiconductor industry’s growth for decades. But as the complexity of scaling increases, extending the economics of Moore’s Law is becoming a challenge. One example illustrating the challenges of maintaining the economic benefits of Moore’s Law is the difficulty of IC chip patterning. Today, this requires an expensive litho scanner, a complicated spacer and... » read more

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