System Bits: Nov. 4


Turning loss to gain By reexamining longstanding beliefs about the physics of lasers, Princeton University engineers have shown that by carefully restricting the delivery of power to certain areas within a laser could boost its output by many orders of magnitude. The team believes this finding could enable more sensitive and energy-efficient lasers, as well as potentially more control over ... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Nov. 4


World’s fastest IC amplifier Northrop Grumman has set a record for the world’s fastest integrated circuit amplifier. The record has been recognized by officials from Guinness World Records. The amplifier uses 10 transistor stages to reach an operating speed of one terahertz, or one trillion cycles per second. This surpassed the company's own record of 850 billion cycles per second set i... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


Tools Mentor Graphics rolled out an extension to its PCB design platform that allows for synchronization of processes across multi-board systems. The new tool captures logic and system definitions for boards, cables, backplanes, cable assemblies, sensors and actuators. Cadence introduced a dynamic characterization solution for mixed signal blocks such as PLLs, data converters, high-speed tr... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


STMicroelectronics announced mixed results for the quarter. The company also launched a plan to cut $100 million in costs. As part of the plan, it is reviewing the implications to its process technology efforts following the recent announcements by its research alliance partners, namely IBM. STMicro is one of the main drivers of FDSOI technology. The company’s FDSOI partner is IBM, which is s... » read more

Applied-TEL Deal Faces Delays


Applied Materials’ proposed move to acquire rival Tokyo Electron Ltd. (TEL) faces a possible delay. The blockbuster deal could get pushed out until next year amid a host of complicated regulatory issues. As reported in September of 2013, Applied Materials announced a definitive agreement to acquire TEL in a stock deal valued at around $9.3 billion. Under the terms, Applied Materials would ... » read more

Blog Review: Oct. 29


Ansys' Bill Vandermark uncovers the top engineering articles for the week. Check out the tractor beam in Australia that can push and pull objects and Naim's soundbar that may act like a gateway drug to bankruptcy. It may sound counterintuitive, but ARM's Jakub Lamik draws a direct link between bandwidth consumption and power consumption and explains that's the case. Samsung's Farhad Tab... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Oct. 28


Making graphene from cooked sawdust The University of Birmingham has found a new and cheap way to make nanostructured carbon materials, such as carbon nanotubes and graphene. The magic formula? Common sawdust. Sawdust is made up of cellulose and lignin. Researchers can convert this biomass material into nanostructured graphitic carbon in a single step. [caption id="attachment_15639" alig... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Oct. 28


More powerful, sensitive wearables With their special electronic and optical properties, nanomaterials such as graphene and molybdenum sulfide have created excitement among UCLA scientists for their potential to revolutionize transistors and circuits. Research is underway there that has the potential to increase the efficiency and capabilities of the 2D layered semiconductors used in high-s... » read more

System Bits: Oct. 28


Sensing objects without looking at them In a technique known as “interaction-free measurement,” Yale engineers have created a chip-scale device that senses the presence of an object without interacting with it by using the wave-particle duality of single photons. This work could help propel the field of quantum information processing. The researchers explained that the device uses silic... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


After months of on-again, off-again negotiations, IBM agreed to hand over its Microelectronics unit to GlobalFoundries for $1.5 billion—meaning IBM will actually pay GlobalFoundries that amount to get rid of what has become an albatross for Big Blue. Analyst Jim McGregor said it is only a matter of time before GlobalFoundries shuts down IBM’s fabs, according to the Albany Business Review... » read more

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