The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers, LCD suppliers United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) has announced the availability of the company’s 40nm process platform that incorporates Silicon Storage Technology’s (SST) embedded SuperFlash non-volatile memory. The 40nm SST process features a >20% reduction in eFlash cell size and 20-30% macro area over UMC’s 55nm SST technology. Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage has s... » read more

The Week in Review: IoT


Finance Robert Bosch Venture Capital has purchased a significant number of IOTA tokens from the IOTA Foundation, making a cryptocurrency investment in blockchain technology and the Internet of Things. IOTA provides distributed ledger technology, enabling secure machine-to-machine transactions in data and money, with the foundation charging a micro fee for the service. Riot Blockchain report... » read more

Preparing For Bigger Changes Ahead


The semiconductor industry has undergone a fundamental shift over the past year, and it's one that will redefine chipmaking over the next decade or more. While the focus is still on building the fastest, lowest-power devices, whether that's by shrinking features or packaging them into blazing-fast 2.5D or fan-out configurations, these devices are being customized for specific use cases much ... » read more

System Bits: Dec. 19


Controlling qubits for quantum computing In a major step toward making a quantum computer using everyday materials, a team led by researchers at Princeton University has reported they’ve constructed a key piece of silicon hardware capable of controlling quantum behavior between two electrons with extremely high precision. The team said they have constructed a gate that controls interactio... » read more

Silicon’s Long Game


The era of all-silicon substrates and copper wires may be coming to an end. Progress in the future increasingly depends on more exotic combinations of materials that are developed for specific applications. But after years of predicting the death of silicon, it appears those predictions may be premature. That's not always obvious, given the growing number of chemical combinations being creat... » read more

What’s Next With Computing?


At the recent IEDM conference, Jeff Welser, vice president and lab director at IBM Research Almaden, sat down to discuss artificial intelligence, machine learning, quantum computing and supercomputing with Semiconductor Engineering. Here are excerpts of that conversation. SE: Where is high-end computing going? Welser: We are seeing lots of different systems start to come up. First of all,... » read more

Will Fab Tool Boom Cycle Last?


Fab equipment spending is on pace for a record year in 2017, and it now appears that momentum could continue into 2018. Fab tool vendors found themselves in the midst of an unexpected boom cycle in 2017, thanks to enormous demand for equipment in [getkc id="208" comment="3D NAND"] and, to a lesser degree, [getkc id="93" kc_name="DRAM"]. In the logic/foundry business, however, equipment deman... » read more

Huge Opportunities In Chinese Market


China’s massive semiconductor market and Europe’s prowess in smart car, IoT and other emerging technologies are complementary forces that underscore opportunities for deeper global semiconductor industry cooperation, SEMI China President Lung Chu said in November at the SIIP China Europe Forum during SEMICON Europa in Munich. In his speech “The Rise of China IC Industry – a Global Ec... » read more

Fan-Outs vs. TSVs


Two years ago, at the annual IMAPS conference on 2.5D and 3D chip packaging, the presentations were dominated by talk of fan-out wafer-level packaging. There was almost no talk of through-silicon vias, which previously had been heralded as vital to 2.5D and 3DIC packaging. Fast forward to this month's 3D Architectures for Heterogeneous Integration and Packaging conference in Burlingame, Cali... » read more

The Week in Review: IoT


Products/Services Vancouver, B.C.-based Riot Micro has brought out the RM1000 baseband modem chip for the cellular Internet of Things. The device is said to use Bluetooth Low Energy and Wi-Fi techniques to provide low-power and lower-cost connectivity, like short-range wireless systems. The chip is being marketed to module manufacturers and OEMs developing narrowband IoT and LTE-M products for... » read more

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