The Week In Review: Manufacturing


KKR, an investment firm, announced that it is leading a $42 million growth equity investment in Optimal+, a provider of manufacturing intelligence software solutions for adaptive IC test applications. In case you missed it, Apple rolled out its latest iPhones and other products. The latest iPhone 6 is using chips based on finFETs, according to AnandTech, a hi-tech site. Samsung is the main... » read more

Blog Review: Sept. 2


When it comes to cars, manufacturers may be adding too many features too fast, says Mentor's John Day. Up to half of the features may never get used either because they aren't useful or they are too complex. Cadence's Christine Young sat down with Neeti Bhatnagar, a software engineering group director to discuss the challenges and rewards of working in a distributed, cross-functional team, t... » read more

Advanced IC Packaging Biz Heats Up


After a number of false starts and lackluster adoption, the advanced IC packaging market is finally heating up. On one front, for example, a new wave of chips based on advanced [getkc id="82" kc_name="2.5D"]/[getkc id="42" kc_name="3D"] stacked-die is entering the market. And on another front, the momentum is building for new and advanced 2D packages, such as embedded package-on-package (PoP... » read more

Interconnect Challenges Grow


It’s becoming apparent that traditional chip scaling is slowing down. The 16nm/14nm logic node took longer than expected to unfold. And the 10nm node and beyond could suffer the same fate. So what’s the main cause? It’s hard to pinpoint the problem, although many blame the issues on lithography. But what could eventually hold up the scaling train, and undo Moore’s Law, is arguably t... » read more

Patterning Interconnects At 10nm And Below


By Connie Duncan Chip manufacturers today build billions of transistors on a chip, delivering incredible computing power to consumers. What often gets overlooked is how hard it’s getting to create the many miles of ultra-thin copper wiring used to connect each of the transistors. Patterning these electrical pathways is becoming increasingly challenging as they grow denser and finer, and any ... » read more

IIoT Comes To Chip Manufacturing


Nicholas Ward, director of marketing for the services group at Applied Materials, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about how data needs to be shared in semiconductor manufacturing and why it's so slow to happen in this industry. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: Where are we with the [getkc id="76" kc_name="IoT"] and the [getkc id="78" kc_name="IIoT"]? War... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Sunit Rikhi, vice president of the Technology and Manufacturing Group at Intel and general manager of Intel’s Custom Foundry unit, has retired. “I left Intel on a sabbatical in late March and ended my career with Intel on June 1,” Rikhi said in an e-mail. Now, Rikhi has started a new company. The company, called Reach for Infinity LLC, “is a management development company devoted to... » read more

Blog Review: Aug. 5


Fresh from the July 2015 Type-C InterOp Event, where USB engineers wheel a prototype on a cart from hotel room to hotel room, testing interoperability, Synopsys' Morten Christiansen says Type-C has arrived. Mentor's Colin Walls discusses the reasons to tackle embedded software development with a bottom-up approach. In their latest video, Cadence's Kishore Kasamsetty discusses why choose L... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


According to Strategy Analytics, global mobile phone shipments grew a lackluster 2% annually to reach 435 million units in the second quarter of 2015. China’s Huawei was the star performer, as it captured a 7% share and overtook Microsoft to become the world’s third largest mobile phone vendor for the first time ever. Samsung remains in first place, while Apple is second. Remember when t... » read more

Bigger, Brighter TVs


The flat panel display (FPD) industry is undergoing a renaissance, with suppliers rolling out a dizzying array of new, high-resolution technologies for mobile devices, computers and TVs. But despite being in the eye of the innovation storm, FPD equipment makers remain cautious—and for good reason. There are a slew of new LCD fabs being built today, mostly in China. This, in turn, is promp... » read more

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