category: Special Reports

category: IoT, Security & Automotive

Consolidation’s Aftermath
By Ed Sperling - 02 Dec, 2015 - Comments: 4

The recent spate of industry consolidation continues to have repercussions across the semiconductor industry. Some of those effects will subside once the deals are either approved or nixed by regulatory agencies. Others will raise questions for months or years to come. Consolidation is not a new trend in the semiconductor industry, but the pace and size of the acquisitions in the past year a... » read more

Fan-Out Packaging Gains Steam
By Mark LaPedus - 23 Nov, 2015 - Comments: 1

Fan-outs are creating a buzz and gaining steam in the market at a pace far beyond what anyone would have expected even at the start of the year. The approach, which has been around for several years, is a wafer-level packaging process that enables ultra-thin, high-density packages. So why the buzz? Apple is apparently moving to [getkc id="202" kc_name="fan-out"] packaging, according to an... » read more

The Secret World Of Ciphers
By Ernest Worthman - 09 Nov, 2015 - Comments: 1

The arena of creating secure environments in the hardware and software industries is somewhat shrouded in mystery and misunderstanding. Certainly, some types of ciphers are relatively straightforward and uncomplicated. For example, there is one called the Caesar cipher, which is one of the most prolific, and simple encryption techniques. Basically, this is simply aligning two alphabets and s... » read more

More Choices, Less Certainty
By Ed Sperling - 04 Nov, 2015 - Comments: 3

The increasing cost of feature scaling is splintering the chip market, injecting uncertainty into a global supply chain that has been continually fine-tuned for decades. Those with deep enough resources and a clear need for density will likely follow Moore's Law, at least until 7nm. What comes after that will depend on a variety of factors ranging from available lithography—EUV, multi-bea... » read more

What China Is Planning
By Mark LaPedus - 21 Oct, 2015 - Comments: 1

Over the years, China has unveiled several initiatives to advance its domestic semiconductor industry. China has made some progress at each turn, although every plan has fallen short of expectations. But now, the nation is embarking on several new and bold initiatives that could alter the IC landscape. China’s new initiatives address at least three key challenges for its IC industry: 1. C... » read more

Abstraction: Necessary But Evil
By Brian Bailey - 14 Oct, 2015 - Comments: 1

Abstraction allows aspects of a design to be described in an executable form much earlier in the flow. But some abstractions are breaking down, and an increasing amount of lower-level information has to be brought upstream in order to provide estimates that are close enough to reality so informed decisions can be made. The value of abstractions in design cannot be overstated. High levels of ... » read more

The Price Of Consolidation
By Ed Sperling - 24 Sep, 2015 - Comments: 0

Consolidation is causing far-reaching changes across the global semiconductor ecosystem due to the size of companies being bought and the dearth of startups to replenish those being acquired. Coupled with the rising cost and difficulty of shrinking features down to advanced process nodes—many argue that is the largest driver of consolidation—the market dynamics for who's buying IP, EDA t... » read more

EUV: Cost Killer Or Savior?
By Katherine Derbyshire - 17 Sep, 2015 - Comments: 4

Moore’s Law, the economic foundation of the semiconductor industry, states that transistor density doubles in each technology generation, at constant cost. As IMEC’s Arindam Mallik explained, however, the transition to a new technology node is not a single event, but a process. Typically, when the new technology is first introduced, it brings a 20% to 25% wafer cost increase. Process opt... » read more

The Deep And Dark Webs
By Ernest Worthman - 03 Sep, 2015 - Comments: 0

From time to time we hear a snippet or two about the “other” Web – the dark side of the Internet and the Web. For the most part, until something happens that brings the activity within that arena to the surface (such as the recent Silk Road exposure where anything was available for a price), that segment quietly hums along. But that is about to change. Once the IoE evolution gets tract... » read more

Electronics Butterfly Effect
By Brian Bailey - 27 Aug, 2015 - Comments: 1

Everyone has heard of the butterfly effect where a small change in a non-linear system can result in large difference in an outcome. For the past 40 years, the electronics industry has approximated a linear system, fed primarily by Moore’s Law. The incremental changes available at each new process node have led us to make incremental changes and improvements in many aspects of the design, its... » read more

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