Better Chips, Better Cars


There are literally thousands of electronic components in a new car, and those numbers are only going to increase as cars become smarter, safer, greener, and increasingly connected. As automakers and Tier 1 and Tier 2 companies shift their focus from mechanical to a combination of mechanical and electrical, there is an ongoing race among fabless companies to come up with innovative technolog... » read more

Progress In Flexible Electronics


Flexible electronics have been proposed for a wide variety of applications, from pulse and activity monitoring to electrolyte balance measurements. That makes generalizations difficult, but most proposed devices involve some combination of [getkc id="187" kc_name="sensors"], a power source, onboard data storage and analysis electronics, and some form of communications for configuration and data... » read more

ECO Fill Can Rescue Your SoC Tapeout Schedule


By Vikas Gupta and Bhavani Prasad Integrated circuit (IC) design and manufacturing is one of the most challenging engineering industries. As soon as a design engineer gets into “the groove” and feels comfortable taping out in a particular technology node, the next technology node shrink is already there to pose a new and greater set of challenges. While it almost goes without saying that... » read more

What Are FeFETs?


The memory market is going in several different directions at once. On one front, the traditional memory types, such DRAM and flash, remain the workhorse technologies in systems despite undergoing some changes in the business. Then, several vendors are readying the next-generation memory types in the market. As part of an ongoing series, Semiconductor Engineering will explore where the new a... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Feb. 14


Making quark soup CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, recently presented its latest results on quark-gluon plasma, or quark soup, a state of matter that supposedly existed during the early formation of the universe. For this, CERN used the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. The LHC is situated in a tunnel 100 meters underground ... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers Intel has announced plans to invest more than $7 billion to complete its previously-announced fab in Chandler, Ariz. The fab was announced several years ago, but Intel delayed the plant in 2014. Now, the plant, dubbed Fab 42, is moving forward again. Targeted for 7nm technology, Fab 42 will be completed in 3 to 4 years and will create approximately 3,000 jobs. The announcement was m... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Feb. 7


The University of California at Santa Barbara claims to have developed the world’s smallest hammer. The technology, dubbed the μHammer or microHammer, is geared for biomedical research. With funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the tiny hammer will allow researchers to get a cellular-level understanding when force is applied to brain cells. The project is part of the U.S.-b... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Manufacturing Veeco Instruments has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Ultratech. With the deal, Veeco will enter into the lithography market for chip-packaging as well as the laser spike anneal business. Veeco is a supplier of MOCVD tools. The implied total transaction value is approximately $815 million and the implied enterprise value is approximately $550 million. FlexTech, a SE... » read more

Rethinking Stats In Manufacturing Equipment


Consolidation, slower market growth due to increasing complexity, and extended lead times have prompted SEMI to drop its book-to-bill reports. Long considered the best way to assess the health of the semiconductor manufacturing equipment business, the industry organization now views the book-to-bill report as far less valuable than in the past. "At the leading edge, there are only a handf... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Jan. 31


Fiber-imprint patterning The École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)--a research institute/university in Lausanne, Switzerland--has put a new twist in nano-imprint patterning technology. It has devised a way to imprint tiny or nano-metric patterns on hollow polymer fiber. Using a technique called thermal drawing, tiny patterns can be printed on both the inside and the outside of ... » read more

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