Welcome To Semiconductor Engineering

What is it? Semiconductor Engineering is a new publication and portal for the semiconductor design, integration and manufacturing industry…but you’ll probably recognize most of us, and may even have been involved in the nearly 3,100 copyrighted stories, videos and blogs we’ve developed over the past five years. This is not marketing or pay-for-play information. It’s the kind of stuff that good journalists, engineers and scientists are willing to stand behind and not cringe. We create independent content based upon solid reporting techniques—many sources, including multiple competitors, with lots of insight and perspective. And we do this for multiple slices of the semiconductor industry and across multiple geographies.

What’s different? There are no advertisements on this site—not the flashing banners or those annoying fold-over ads that seem to pop up everywhere. There are no scrolling tickers of product announcements. And we don’t measure clicks by counting how many times you go from page 1 to 2 to 3, and then back and back, or whether you click the overlaying ad button—or force you to close a video that opens automatically. Moreover, you won’t get any marketing literature from us—ever. That’s not what we do or what we’re about.

Why am I getting this? Because complexity is exploding, and convergence is making it even harder to keep track of all the things that can impact your job. When was the last time you had to worry about a light source or electromagnetic interference? How many models is the right number? Why do you spend so much time in verification, and how will that be affected by double, triple and quadruple patterning? When was the last time you worried about the rules for shipping IP overseas or the security of the hardware supply chain? We can help there. We ask the tough questions, and we’re not afraid to ask follow-up questions when we don’t get answers. And then we turn it into something that helps engineers do their jobs better.

Is there a catch? No. You’ll recognize the names of our writers. Ed Sperling, Ann Steffora Mutschler, Mark LaPedus, Brian Bailey, Jeff Chappell and Katherine Derbyshire stand behind this new publication, as do other writers, a long list of well-known vendors who support our efforts, standards groups, industry groups, and many thousands of engineers who have been reading our stories for years. We’re still doing this the old way—and from our standpoint, the only right way—asking lots of questions, and talking to a lot of people about where are the pain points are, identifying trends and telling it straight.

—Ed Sperling