Is The IP Industry Healthy?


The semiconductor industry has been through many changes, each designed to reduce the total cost associated with the design and manufacture of chips. Twenty years ago, most companies had their own fabs and designed all of the circuitry on each chip. Today, only a handful of companies still own a fab and outsourcing design, in the form of intellectual property ([getkc id="43" kc_name="IP"]), has... » read more

5G Test Equipment Race Begins


Test and measurement vendors stand ready to help with the development and deployment of 5G wireless communications, as the technology is fine-tuned and tested in trials around the world. Juniper Research forecasts 5G operator-billed service revenues will rise to $269 billion by 2025, compared with $851 million in 2019, for a compound annual growth rate of 161% during the first seven years of... » read more

Advanced Packaging Picks Up Steam


The semiconductor industry’s push toward continued miniaturization and increasing complexity is driving wider adoption of system-in-package (SiP) technology. One of the big benefits of [getkc id="199" kc_name="SiP"] is that it allows more features to be squeezed into ever-smaller form factors, such as wearable gadgets and medical implants. So while the individual chips in this package may ... » read more

Tracking Down Errors With Data


Michael Schuldenfrei, CTO at [getentity id="22929" comment="Optimal+"], sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to discuss how data will be used and secured in the future, the accuracy of that data, and what impact it can have on manufacturing. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: Can data be shared across the supply chain? Schuldenfrei: We believe it has to happen. If it d... » read more

Challenges For Future Fan-Outs


The fan-out wafer-level packaging market is heating up. At the high end, for example, several packaging houses are developing new fan-out packages that could reach a new milestone and hit or break the magic 1µm line/space barrier. But the technology presents some challenges, as it may require more expensive process flows and equipment like lithography. Fig. 1: Redistribution layers. Source: L... » read more

IoT Startups Rake In Cash


Corporate and venture investors are still eagerly backing Internet of Things startups, with more than $850 million committed during the first six months of 2017. This year’s total may not reach the heights of 2014, when investors put more than $5 billion into IoT startups, or 2016, which saw IoT firms receiving about $4.75 billion, the Venture Scanner website estimates. Still, a once white... » read more

Rethinking Car Design


The automotive industry is undergoing sweeping changes in both technology and business, and functional safety increasingly cuts across both of them. Every safety-critical industry has one or more functional safety standards, whether that is manufacturing, avionics or automotive. In automotive, it's a combination of [gettech id="31076" comment="ISO 26262"] and various ASIL levels, which are a... » read more

When Digital, Physical Worlds Merge


Semiconductor Engineering sat down with Simon Segars, [getentity id="22186" e_name="ARM's"] CEO, and [getperson id="11764" comment="Lucio Lanza"], managing partner of Lanza techVentures, to talk about changes in the IoT, self-driving vehicles, cloud-based health monitoring, and the impact of machine learning. What follows are excerpts of this conversation. SE: Several years ago the [getkc i... » read more

The Darker Side Of Machine Learning


Machine learning can be used for many purposes, but not all of them are good—or intentional. While much of the work underway is focused on the development of machine learning algorithms, how to train these systems and how to make them run faster and do more, there is a darker side to this technology. Some of that involves groups looking at what else machine learning can be used for. So... » read more

Verification Unification


Semiconductor Engineering brought together industry luminaries to initiate the discussion about the role that formal technologies will play with the recently released early adopter's draft of Portable Stimulus and how it may help to bring the two execution technologies closer together. Participating in this roundtable are Joe Hupcey, verification product technologist for [getentity id="22017" e... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →