Mark LaPedus

  (all posts)
Mark LaPedus is Executive Editor for manufacturing at Semiconductor Engineering.

Author's Latest Posts

Manufacturing Bits: Aug. 14
By Mark LaPedus - 14 Aug, 2018 - Comments: 0

Strange metals The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (National MagLab) has unraveled the behavior in a new class of high-temperature superconductor (HTS) materials called cuprates. Cuprates are sometimes referred as a "strange" or "bad" metal. They don't conduct electricity well despite being a superconducting material. Superconductors are devices that have zero electrical resistance,... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test
By Mark LaPedus - 10 Aug, 2018 - Comments: 0

Trade wars The Trump administration unveiled a plan to impose additional tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods on July 10. The announced product list included more than ten categories of LED package and lighting products, according to LEDinside, a division of TrendForce. The export value of the major lighting products in the list reached $5 billion in 2017. “So far, the impact of the U... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Aug. 7
By Mark LaPedus - 07 Aug, 2018 - Comments: 0

DNA ROMs The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Semiconductor Research Corp. (SRC) are investing $12 million to develop a new class of memories and other technologies, such as DNA-based read-only memory (ROM), nucleic acid memory (NAM) and neural networks based on yeast cells. The effort is called the Semiconductor Synthetic Biology for Information Processing and Storage Technologies... » read more

The Chiplet Race Begins
By Mark LaPedus - 06 Aug, 2018 - Comments: 1

Momentum is building for the development of advanced packages and systems using so-called chiplets, but the technology faces some challenges in the market. A group led by DARPA, as well as Marvell, zGlue and others are pursuing chiplet technology, which is a different way of integrating multiple dies in a package or system. In fact, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), part... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test
By Mark LaPedus - 03 Aug, 2018 - Comments: 0

Trade wars After opposing $34 billion in U.S. trade tariffs on behalf of the U.S. semiconductor manufacturing industry, Jonathan Davis, global vice president of industry advocacy at SEMI, recently spoke out against an additional $16 billion in duties on Chinese goods. The tariffs do little to address U.S. concerns over IP loss, according to SEMI. Over the past month, SEMI has also submitte... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: July 31
By Mark LaPedus - 31 Jul, 2018 - Comments: 0

Florida R&D fab A new microelectronics R&D initiative in Florida is expanding its operations and readying its new 200mm fab facility. The initiative, called BRIDG, describes itself as a non-profit, public-private partnership. BRIDG is basically an R&D microelectronics facility, which is focusing on the development of select technologies, such as photonics, sensors, imagers and 2.5D/3D pac... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test
By Mark LaPedus - 27 Jul, 2018 - Comments: 0

Trade issues China and the United States are embroiled in a trade war. What is the impact? In testimony submitted to the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) on the proposed tariffs on Chinese products, Consumer Technology Association (CTA) Vice President of International Trade Sage Chandler argues tariffs negatively impact businesses and consumers as well as fail to corr... » read more

Mixed Outlook For Semi Biz
By Mark LaPedus - 25 Jul, 2018 - Comments: 0

Both the IC and fab equipment industries have been enjoying a boom cycle for some time, but they could be facing speed bumps and possibly turbulence in the second half of this year and into 2019. In the first half of 2018, the industry was fueled by the momentum carried over from 2017. DRAM prices remained relatively high, which contributed to the revenue growth in the overall IC industry. M... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: July 24
By Mark LaPedus - 24 Jul, 2018 - Comments: 0

Fast rotors Purdue University and others have developed what researchers claim is the world’s fastest man-made rotor. Researchers devised a tiny dumbbell from silica. Then, the object was levitated in a vacuum using a laser, thereby creating a spinning effect. This, in turn, enabled more than 60 billion revolutions per minute or more than 100,000 times faster than a dental drill. The t... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test
By Mark LaPedus - 20 Jul, 2018 - Comments: 0

Chipmakers TSMC has reduced its outlook for 2018 revenue and capital spending, according to Bloomberg. The company blamed the outlook on sluggish “mobile and digital currency mining demand,” according to the report. Samsung has developed the industry’s first 10nm-class 8-gigabit LPDDR5 DRAM. The 8Gb LPDDR5 boasts a data rate of up to 6,400 megabits-per-second (Mb/s), which is 1.5 tim... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →

  • Sponsors

  • Standards/Organizations

About

Navigation

Connect With Us

Copyright ©2013-2026 SMG   |  Terms of Service  |  Privacy Policy