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Ed Sperling

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Ed Sperling is the editor in chief of Semiconductor Engineering.

Author's Latest Posts

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test
By Ed Sperling - 26 Jul, 2019 - Comments: 0

Deals Apple will pay $1 billion to buy Intel's smartphone modem unit. Under the terms of the agreement, Apple will hire 2,200 Intel employees and acquire Intel's IP and equipment. The deal, expected to close in Q4, puts an end to Intel's attempts to win a piece of the smartphone market. But the chipmaker retains the right to develop modems for non-smartphone applications, including PCs, IoT de... » read more

China Accelerates Its Timetable
By Ed Sperling - 25 Jul, 2019 - Comments: 0

China has been doing more than just creating a separate supply chain. It has begun an entirely separate stock market with backing from the government. Known as the Star Market, this offshoot of the Shanghai Stock Exchange includes some big-name companies such as Alibaba, Xiaomi and Tencent. But what's particularly noteworthy is that the government is supporting top startups like governments ... » read more

Node Within A Node
By Ed Sperling - 24 Jul, 2019 - Comments: 0

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

Material Choices In Printed Temperature Sensors
By Ed Sperling - 24 Jul, 2019 - Comments: 0

Vijaya Kayastha, lead device development engineer at Brewer Science, talks about what’s needed for printed temperature sensors, what happens when there are impurities in the materials, how these sensors respond to stress, and how costs compare to traditional sensors. » read more

Changes In Smart Manufacturing
By Ed Sperling - 23 Jul, 2019 - Comments: 0

Tom Salmon, vice president of collaborative technology platforms at SEMI, talks with Semiconductor Engineering about what’s changing in smart manufacturing, the impact of more data and AI, what the ROI looks like for these kinds of investments, and how that affects overall equipment efficiency. While the biggest bang will come from advanced nodes, it also is targeted at advanced packaging. » read more

Using Memory Differently To Boost Speed
By Ed Sperling - 22 Jul, 2019 - Comments: 2

Boosting memory performance to handle a rising flood of data is driving chipmakers to explore new memory types and different ways of using existing memory, but it also is creating some complex new challenges. For most of the semiconductor design industry, memory has been a non-issue for the past couple of decades. The main concerns were price and size, but memory makers have been more than a... » read more

In Memory And Near-Memory Compute
By Ed Sperling - 19 Jul, 2019 - Comments: 0

Steven Woo, Rambus fellow and distinguished inventor, talks about the amount of power required to store data and to move it out of memory to where processing is done. This can include changes to memory, but it also can include rethinking compute architectures from the ground up to achieve up to 1 million times better performance in highly specialized systems. Related Find more memor... » read more

The Danger Of Twin Supply Chains
By Ed Sperling - 18 Jul, 2019 - Comments: 0

No matter how the ongoing dispute between the United States and China turns out, damage already has been done. It's not the kind of damage that is immediately visible to the outside world. It's more of the long-term, policy-shift kind of problem, which over time will likely prove much worse. Many executives have termed recent sanctions on Huawei and other Chinese companies "China's Sputnik m... » read more

Memory In Microcontrollers
By Ed Sperling - 17 Jul, 2019 - Comments: 0

Gideon Intrater, CTO of Adesto, talks about how to use microcontrollers for applications where more memory is required, such as automotive, communication, and AI at the edge. Options include moving MCUs toward a more aggressive process node, adding external non-volatile memory, and execute-in-place types of architectures. » read more

Where 5G Works, And Where It Doesn’t
By Ed Sperling - 16 Jul, 2019 - Comments: 0

The rollout of 5G hype has begun. Companies are building 5G chipsets for mobile devices, and they are working on the infrastructure that will allow massive amounts of data to move freely between devices. There is little doubt that more bandwidth is required everywhere. Files are growing in size, particularly with streaming video and images and various flavors of AI and machine learning. This... » read more

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