The Week in Review: IoT


Products/Services No matter the size of your button! You can now order up a flight on a private jet with the push of, yes, a button! GrandView Jets, an affiliate of GrandView Aviation, is bringing out a Web-enabled “Press for Jet” button, an Amazon Web Services Internet of Things button enabled by ButtonJoy Software. GrandView Jets says it has a fleet of Embraer Phenom 300 private jets to ... » read more

Can Autonomous Cars Get Around The Corner?


With all the buzz about autonomous vehicles, one big problem still remains. People and autonomous vehicles don't get along well together. Cars are predictable. People are not. Cars behave according to a predetermined set of rules. People look for opportunities and take them, even if they're sometimes not the wisest choice, such as passing around a blind curve or driving too fast on slippery ... » read more

Foundry Challenges in 2018


The silicon foundry business is expected to see steady growth in 2018, but that growth will come with several challenges. On the leading edge, GlobalFoundries, Intel, Samsung and TSMC are migrating from the 16nm/14nm to the 10nm/7nm logic nodes. Intel already has encountered some difficulties, as the chip giant recently pushed out the volume ramp of its new 10nm process from the second half ... » read more

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

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