Ion Implanter Market Heats Up


The ion implanter market has been a stable, if not a sleepy, business. The last big event took place in 2011, when Applied Materials re-entered the ion implanter market by acquiring Varian, the world’s leading supplier of these tools. The acquisition gave Applied Materials a commanding 80% share of the implanter business, with the other players fighting for the crumbs. But after year... » read more

Changes In NAND Flash Market


Things are changing quickly in the NAND flash market. Newcomers are challenging long-time market leaders and shifting the lineup in this market. A survey of NAND flash vendors, conducted by DRAMeXchange, a Singapore market research firm, shows that in Q1 of this year Samsung was firmly in first place with $2.175 billion in revenues, followed by Toshiba with $1.548 billion and SanDisk with $1... » read more

Has 3D NAND Fallen Flat?


Today’s planar NAND technology will hit the wall at 10nm, prompting the need for the next big thing in flash memory—3D NAND. In fact, 3D NAND may extend NAND flash memory for the next several years and enable new applications. And it will also drive a new wave of fabs and tool orders. But the transition won’t be as smooth as previous rollouts. 3D NAND is harder to manufacture than pr... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


According to one analyst, the capital spending picture looks gloomy. “We expect finFET and 3D NAND to ramp over the next two years. However, foundry and memory customers are showing great restraint with respect to spending plans, limiting the rate of new node transitions and overall capex upside. In the near term, we see no evidence of meaningful equipment orders to support high-volume finFET... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


About 150 to 200 employees from IBM’s chip unit will be dispatched to work at GlobalFoundries, according to the Poughkeepsie Journal. GlobalFoundries said the arrangement is temporary, according to the report. GlobalFoundries is the leading candidate to buy IBM’s chip unit, which is apparently on the block. To date, however, GlobalFoundries and IBM have yet to make any announcements on the... » read more

Big Memory Shift Ahead


System architecture has been driven by the performance of [getkc id="22" kc_name="memory"]. Processor designers would have liked all of the memory be fast [getkc id="92" kc_name="SRAM"], placed on-chip for maximum performance, but that was not an option. Memory had to be fabricated as separate chips and connected via a Printed Circuit Board (PCB). That limited the number of available I/O ports ... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Worldwide semiconductor capital equipment spending is projected to total $37.5 billion in 2014, an increase of 12.2% from 2013 spending of $33.5 billion, according to Gartner. Capital spending will increase 5.5% in 2014 as the industry begins to recover from the recent economic downturn. The 3D NAND market will take longer to develop. Samsung has shipped a 3D NAND device. Micron and SK Hynix... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


There is more evidence of a fab tool slowdown. In fact, ASML itself sounded the alarm during its earnings conference call this week. “ASML noted uncertainty regarding the timing of both the 16/14 nm finFET ramp at foundries (the company is seeing a delay from customers as the technology is still in development, in our view) and 3D NAND,” said Weston Twigg, an analyst from Pacific Crest Secu... » read more

Gaps In Metrology Could Impact Yield


For some time, chipmakers have been developing new and complex chip architectures, such as 3D NAND, finFETs and stacked die. But manufacturing these types of chips is no simple task. It requires a robust fab flow to enable new IC designs with good yields. In fact, yield is becoming a more critical part of the flow. Yield is a broad term that means different things to different parts of the ... » read more

Time To Revisit 2.5D And 3D


Chipmakers are reaching various and challenging inflection points. In logic, many IC makers face a daunting transition from planar transistors at 20nm to finFETs at 14nm. And on another front, the industry is nearing the memory bandwidth wall. So perhaps it’s time to look at new alternatives. In fact, chipmakers are taking a hard look, or re-examining, one alternative—stacked 2.5D/3D chi... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →