Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers GlobalFoundries has filed suits in the U.S. and Germany, alleging that semiconductor manufacturing technologies used by TSMC infringe upon 16 of GF's patents. The suits were filed in the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), the U.S. Federal District Courts in the Districts of Delaware and the Western District of Texas, and the Regional Courts of Dusseldorf and Mannheim in Germ... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Autos


Products/Services Rambus reports completing its acquisition of Northwest Logic, a supplier of memory, PCIe, and MIPI digital controllers. Meanwhile, the company named Sean Fan as chief operating officer. He previously served as vice president and general manager of the data center business unit at Renesas Electronics. Prior to its acquisition by Renesas earlier this year, Fan held senior execu... » read more

Speed Returns As The Key Metric


For the foreseeable future, it's all about performance. For the past decade or so, power and battery life have been the defining characteristics of chip design. Performance was second to those. This was particularly important in smart phones and wearable devices, where time between charges was a key selling point. In fact, power-hungry processors killed the first round of smart watches. But ... » read more

July’19 Startup Funding


During the month of July, 21 technology startups took in mega-rounds of $100 million or more. Those companies together received more than $7.5 billion. On the other end of the financing spectrum, dozens of startups got seed funding or a Series A round. The dollar amounts were much smaller. Still, they are the beating heart of entrepreneurship around the world. It also was a month when som... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Trade wars Talks between the United States and China continue to stall and the two nations are still embroiled in a trade war. So this week, U.S. President Donald Trump would like to impose a 10% tariff on the remaining $300 billion list of China-based imports starting Sept. 1, according to a report from Reuters. This in turn will impact the electronics and IC industries. In response to the... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Rambus will acquire Northwest Logic, a maker of digital controller IP for memory, PCIe and MIPI. "Northwest Logic’s category-leading digital controllers fit perfectly with Rambus’ leadership portfolio of high-speed PHY solutions," said Northwest Logic president and CEO Brian Daellenbach. "This deal creates a one-stop-shop for SoC designers working on state-of-the-art applications across a b... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Deals Apple will pay $1 billion to buy Intel's smartphone modem unit. Under the terms of the agreement, Apple will hire 2,200 Intel employees and acquire Intel's IP and equipment. The deal, expected to close in Q4, puts an end to Intel's attempts to win a piece of the smartphone market. But the chipmaker retains the right to develop modems for non-smartphone applications, including PCs, IoT de... » read more

Challenges Grow For 5G Packages And Modules


The shift to 5G wireless networks is driving a need for new IC packages and modules in smartphones and other systems, but this move is turning out to be harder than it looks. For one thing, the IC packages and RF modules for 5G phones are more complex and expensive than today's devices, and that gap will grow significantly in the second phase of 5G. In addition, 5G devices will require an as... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Auto


Products/Services Arteris IP reports that Bitmain licensed the Arteris Ncore Cache Coherent Interconnect intellectual property for use in its next-generation Sophon Tensor Processing Unit system-on-a-chip devices for the scalable hardware acceleration of artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms. “Our choice of interconnect IP became more important as we continued to increase t... » read more

Week in Review – IoT, Security, Auto


Products/Services Synopsys announced successful deployment of the Synopsys Yield Explorer yield learning platform for fast ramp-up of new products on Samsung's advanced finFET technology nodes. Using the secure data exchange mechanism in Yield Explorer, Samsung is able to share the data required for yield analysis, such as chip design, fab, and test, with its customers while maintaining the co... » read more

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