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The Week In Review: Manufacturing


What was the mood at this week’s SPIE Litho? “EUV sentiment is improving among chipmakers as ASML makes progress toward HVM metrics; however, there is still much hedging around timing and readiness. We view EUV adoption as likely to be slow and gradual through 2020,” said Weston Twigg, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities, in a report. “In order for ASML to hit the higher levels of ... » read more

What’s Next For DRAM?


The DRAM business has always been challenging. Over the years, DRAM suppliers have experienced a number of boom and bust cycles in a competitive landscape. But now, the industry faces a cloudy, if not an uncertain, future. On one front, for example, [getkc id="93" kc_name="DRAM"] vendors face a downturn amid a capacity glut and falling product prices in 2016. But despite the business chal... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Feb. 23


EUV resist venture JSR and Imec have signed a deal to form a joint venture to develop resists for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. The new company, dubbed EUV Resist Manufacturing & Qualification Center NV, is incorporated with a majority of the total shares held by JSR Micro NV. As EUV technology advances, the IC industry is putting pressure on materials suppliers and other vendo... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


The SPIE Advanced Lithography conference is next week. “The conference should provide an update on extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) sentiment from chipmakers such as Intel and TSMC, and we expect generally positive sentiment, which should be good for ASML. Still, high-volume adoption timing of EUV appears to be in the 2020 time frame, so it's very early in the process. We expect a lot of... » read more

1xnm DRAM Challenges


At a recent event, Samsung presented a paper that described how the company plans to extend today’s planar DRAMs down to 20nm and beyond. This is an amazing feat. Until very recently, most engineers believed DRAMs would stop scaling at 20nm or so. Instead, Samsung is ramping up the world’s most advanced DRAMs—a line of 20nm parts—with plans to go even further. Micron and SK Hynix soo... » read more

Consolidation Hits OSAT Biz


The outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) industry is undergoing a new wave of acquisition activity that will dramatically reshape the packaging and test services markets. [getkc id="83" kc_name="OSATs"] have seen a considerable amount of consolidation over the years, but the industry needs a scorecard to keep track of the recent deals and the resulting fallout. One OSAT deal inv... » read more

Inside Advanced Packaging


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss advanced IC-packaging, the OSAT industry, China and other topics with Ron Huemoeller, vice president of worldwide R&D at Amkor. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: Where are we in advanced IC-packaging today? Huemoeller: We’ve hit the inflection point. Now we are coming to the other side of it. Regarding this need to int... » read more

An Insider’s Guide To Planar And 3D DRAM


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to talk about planar DRAMs, 3D DRAMs, scaling and systems design with Charles Slayman, technical leader of engineering at network equipment giant Cisco Systems. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: What types of DRAM do network equipment OEMs look at or buy these days? Slayman: When we look at DRAM, we look at it for networking applicatio... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Feb. 16


Monoxide chips Two-dimensional (2D) materials are gaining steam in the R&D labs. The 2D materials could enable a new class of field-effect transistors (FETs), but the technology isn’t expected to appear until sometime in the next decade. The 2D materials include graphene, boron nitride and the transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs). One TMD, molybdenum diselenide (MoS2), is gaining inter... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


SUNY Polytechnic Institute (SUNY Poly) and GlobalFoundries announced the establishment of a new Advanced Patterning and Productivity Center (APPC). The $500 million, 5-year program will accelerate the introduction of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technologies into manufacturing. The center is located at the Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) in Albany, N.Y. -------... » read more

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