Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Test There is more consolidation in the ATE business. In October, Cohu completed the acquisition of Xcerra, a supplier of ATE and other products. Then, Astronics this week entered into an agreement for the sale of the intellectual-property and certain assets associated with its semiconductor test business to Advantest for $185 million in cash. The sale additionally includes a $30 million earn-... » read more

From Physics To Applications


Jack Harding, president and CEO of eSilicon, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about the shift toward AI and advanced packaging, and the growing opportunities at 7nm at a time when Moore's Law has begun slowing down. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: Over the past year, the industry has changed its focus from shrinking features and consolidation to all sorts o... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers Fujitsu, once a major manufacturer of ICs, continues to move away from chip production. On Semiconductor has completed the incremental 20% share purchase of Aizu Fujitsu Semiconductor Manufacturing, Fujitsu’s 200mm wafer fab in Aizu-Wakamatsu. On Semi will now hold a 60% majority ownership in the fab joint venture. Consequently, the name of the venture will transition to On Semico... » read more

What Will Intel Do Next?


The writing is on the wall for big processor makers. Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google are developing their own processors. In addition, there are more than 30 startups developing various types of AI accelerators, as well as a field of embedded FPGA vendors, a couple of discrete FPGA makers, and a slew of soft processor cores. This certainly hasn't been lost on Intel. As the world's largest... » read more

The Security Penalty


It's not clear if Meltdown, Spectre and Foreshadow caused actual security breaches, but they did prompt big processor vendors like Intel, Arm, AMD and IBM to fix these vulnerabilities before they were made public by Google's Project Zero. While all of this may make data center managers and consumers feel better in one respect, it has created a level of panic of a different sort. For decades,... » read more

Cracking The Auto IC Market


The market for automotive electronics is booming, and it has set off a global scramble among established chipmakers and startups. What's becoming clear, though, is that not everyone understands just how different automotive is from the mobile market. Mobile is still the highest-volume market for semiconductors, but the growth has flattened. In contrast, the value of the automotive electronic... » read more

Processing In Memory


Adding processing directly into memory is getting a serious look, particularly for applications where the volume of data is so large that moving it back and forth between various memories and processors requires too much energy and time. The idea of inserting processors into memory has cropped up intermittently over the past decade as a possible future direction, but it was dismissed as an e... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers GlobalFoundries said that it is putting its 7nm finFET program on hold indefinitely and has dropped plans to pursue technology nodes beyond 7nm. To be sure, it was a tough decision by GF to put 7nm on hold. But generally, analysts believe that GF made the right decision. “There’s only a handful of semiconductor companies that will require high-volume 7nm technology right when... » read more

GF Puts 7nm On Hold


GlobalFoundries is putting its 7nm finFET program on hold indefinitely and has dropped plans to pursue technology nodes beyond 7nm. The moves, which mark a major shift in direction for the foundry, involve a headcount reduction of about 5% of its worldwide workforce. At the same time, the company is also moving its ASIC business into a new subsidiary. As a result of GlobalFoundries’ ann... » read more

Gaps In Verification Metrics


As design complexity has exploded, the verification effort has likewise grown exponentially, with many different types of verification being applied to different classes of design. A recent panel discussion with leading chipmakers examined this topic in an effort to shed light on design health and quality, measuring the success of verification, knowing when verification is complete, being on... » read more

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