Foundries See Mixed Future


Amid a tumultuous business environment, the silicon foundry industry is projected to see steady growth in a number of process segments in 2017. As in past years, the foundry market is expected to grow faster than the overall IC industry in 2017. But at the same time, the IC industry—the foundry customer base—continues to witness a frenetic wave of merger and acquisition activity. Basical... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Dec. 20


3D printed wind instruments Autodesk Research and Dartmouth have developed a 3D printing technology that enables novel musical wind instruments in the form of animals, doughnuts and other shapes. With a 3D printer, researchers devised 16 free-form wind instruments in various shapes, such as a star, bunny, snowman, dragon, horse, pig, cat and sheep. There is even a way to make a doughnut in... » read more

Watch Out: Reality Is Set To Explode


Walk into any store right now (December 2016), and you can probably find a VR headset for $20. These will be a popular gift item this holiday season, but ultimately it may hurt the market if consumers have bad experiences with these bargain-basement VR headsets. There exists a considerable amount of confusion regarding the virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality industries. Sem... » read more

U.S. Tax Reform


By Jamie Gerard Although SEMI has been working on behalf of its members on reforming the U.S. business tax code for many years, the opportunity to see that change is becoming more likely than any time in the 21st century. President-elect Donald Trump and the Republican majorities in both houses of Congress have signaled that tax reform will be at the top of their agenda as the 115th congres... » read more

Uncertainty Grows For 5nm, 3nm


As several chipmakers ramp up their 10nm finFET processes, with 7nm just around the corner, R&D has begun for 5nm and beyond. In fact, some are already moving full speed ahead in the arena. [getentity id="22586" comment="TSMC"] recently announced plans to build a new fab in Taiwan at a cost of $15.7 billion. The proposed fab is targeted to manufacture TSMC’s 5nm and 3nm processes, whic... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers Samsung is mulling over a plan to reorganize its System LSI division, according to a report from BusinessKorea. As part of the move, Samsung is mulling over the idea to spin off its foundry unit, according to the report. A spokeswoman for Samsung’s foundry unit said: “We don't have any comments on this story.” GlobalFoundries has added eight new partners to its FDXcelera... » read more

5 Takeaways from IEDM


As usual, the recent IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) was a busy week. The event, which took place in San Francisco, featured a plethora of subjects, such as next-generation transistors and memories. The event also included tracks on non-traditional approaches like quantum and neuromorphic computing. And then, there were sessions on power semis and others. In no partic... » read more

Etching Technology Advances


Let’s get really, really small. That directive from leading semiconductor companies and their customers is forcing the whole semiconductor supply chain to come up with new ways to design and manufacture ever-shrinking dimensions for chips. The current push is to 10nm and 7nm, but R&D into 5nm and 3nm is already underway. To put this in perspective, there are roughly two silicon atom... » read more

Inside Advanced Patterning


Prabu Raja, group vice president and general manager for the Patterning and Packaging Group at [getentity id="22817" e_name="Applied Materials"], sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to discuss the trends in patterning, selective processes and other topics. Raja is also a fellow at Applied Materials. What follows are excerpts of that conversion. SE: From your standpoint, what are the big... » read more

Using Automated Pattern Matching For SRAM Physical Verification


How often have you struggled to verify static random-access memory (SRAM) blocks in your design? And how often, no matter how much time you spend on them, do they end up causing manufacturing issues? Memory is a critical component in today’s SoC designs, often consuming 50% or more of the die area. SRAM blocks are typically assembled in a layout using a set of specific intellectual propert... » read more

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