Packaging Enters New Phase


The race is on to make advanced packaging less expensive than shrinking everything down onto the same die—much less expensive, in fact. Following several years of speculation and rather shaky market predictions at the beginning of this decade, packaging houses and foundries spent the last four years proving that packaging really does provide a viable alternative to shrinking die in terms o... » read more

Cheaper Fan-Outs Ahead


Packaging houses continue to ramp up fan-out wafer-level packages in the market, but customers want lower cost fan-out products for a broader range of applications, such as consumer, RF and smartphones. So in R&D, the industry for some time has been developing next-generation fan-out using a panel-level format, a technology that could potentially lower the cost of fan-out. But there are ... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers The situation between Toshiba and its fab partner, Western Digital (WD), has gone from bad to worse. As reported, troubled Toshiba recently selected a group to buy its memory business. The consortium includes the Innovation Network Corp. of Japan, the Development Bank of Japan and Bain Capital. Rival SK Hynix is also part of the group. WD attempted but failed to buy the unit, an... » read more

The Week In Review: IoT


Finance Particle, the provider of a full-stack Internet of Things device platform for enterprises, has raised $20 million in Series B funding, bringing its total venture funding to $30 million. Spark Capital led the new round, with participation by Qualcomm Ventures and existing investors in the IoT startup. Machina Research estimates cellular IoT connections will increase from 334 million in ... » read more

5 Takeaways From Semicon


At the recent Semicon West trade show in San Francisco, there were a multitude of presentations on a number of subjects. The event, sponsored by SEMI, had presentations on the outlook for ICs, equipment and packaging. Clearly, though, the show is much smaller with fewer attendees, as compared to past years. Most of the big companies no longer have booths. Hardly any have press events or med... » read more

Advanced Packaging Picks Up Steam


The semiconductor industry’s push toward continued miniaturization and increasing complexity is driving wider adoption of system-in-package (SiP) technology. One of the big benefits of [getkc id="199" kc_name="SiP"] is that it allows more features to be squeezed into ever-smaller form factors, such as wearable gadgets and medical implants. So while the individual chips in this package may ... » read more

Challenges For Future Fan-Outs


The fan-out wafer-level packaging market is heating up. At the high end, for example, several packaging houses are developing new fan-out packages that could reach a new milestone and hit or break the magic 1µm line/space barrier. But the technology presents some challenges, as it may require more expensive process flows and equipment like lithography. Fig. 1: Redistribution layers. Source: L... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers Inotera, known as Micron Technology Taiwan, suspended its operations after an accident occurred at its Fab 2 facility in Taoyuan City on July 1, according to TrendForce. Inotera is responsible for manufacturing Micron’s LPDDR4 products that go into Apple’s supply chain for the iPhone, according to the market research firm. The problem involved a malfunction in the fab. “Th... » read more

Propelling Autonomous Vehicles Safely And Securely


Last month, when asked about how important it was that Apple not miss out on the opportunities within automotive, Apple CEO Tim Cook told Bloomberg, “There is a major disruption looming there not only for self-driving cars but also the electrification piece. If you’ve driven an all-electric car, it’s actually a marvelous experience, and it’s a marvelous experience not to stop at the... » read more

EDA, IP Growth Hits Double Digits


The cloud, advanced packaging and AI/machine learning pushed up EDA and IP revenue to the highest Q1 growth level since 2011. Revenue was up 10.5% year over year to $2.168 billion, compared with $1.962 billion in Q1 2016, according to just-released numbers from the Electronic System Design (ESD) Alliance. The four-quarter moving average increased by 10.6%. The two largest regions, the Americ... » read more

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