5 Takeaways from IEDM


As usual, the recent IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) was a busy week. The event, which took place in San Francisco, featured a plethora of subjects, such as next-generation transistors and memories. The event also included tracks on non-traditional approaches like quantum and neuromorphic computing. And then, there were sessions on power semis and others. In no partic... » read more

Harder Than It Looks


First Apple scales back plans to develop its own vehicle. Then Intel creates its own automotive chip unit. This kind of two-step movement in the automotive electronics industry is becoming more common. NXP buys Freescale, then Qualcomm buys NXP. Harman buys Symphony Teleca and Red Bend Software, then Samsung buys Harman. All of these moves are proof points that innovation and fleet-foo... » read more

Changes In China


By Jesse Zhang, SEMI China Industry leaders gathered in Beijing at BIMS 2016 — the Beijing International Microelectronics Symposium — to discuss growth opportunities for the semiconductor industry and the mobile communications market. The 17th session of BIMS was co-sponsored by SEMI and the Chinese-American Semiconductor Professionals Association (CASPA). For 17 years, BIMS has provi... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers Next month, GlobalFoundries will host a job fair in Portland, Ore., according to reports. The company hopes to hire former Intel workers. These are workers who lost their jobs as part of Intel's recent layoff. Anokiwave, a developer of chips for the mmWave market, has announced a foundry alliance with GlobalFoundries. GlobalFoundries will make so-called Silicon Core chips on a f... » read more

Can Low-Power Devices Be Secure?


Successfully designing a low-power, high-performance chip design is an accomplishment, but effectively implementing cybersecurity in such devices makes it much more difficult. Safety, particularly functional safety for automotive and military/aerospace applications, also can be a prime concern in creating low-power, high-performance integrated circuits and systems. When combined with securit... » read more

GMK: Rethinking The Audio Jack


The lowly audio jack, taken for granted since the days of the transistor radio, is getting a lot of attention these days. Apple thought so little of it, in fact, that it eliminated it altogether with its iPhone 7, choosing to run analog signals through the power cable rather than keeping a separate audio jack. Now GMK, a fabless semiconductor startup in Korea, is taking the reverse approach—r... » read more

OLEDs Shine In Phones, TVs, Lights


OLEDs are coming—everywhere. While the new iPhone 7 models do not have organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays, those handsets are likely to be the last Apple will offer before it makes the smartphone transition to OLED displays next year. The Apple Watch, however, does have a flexible OLED display with a sapphire crystal cover or an Ion-X glass cover, and the Apple Watch Series 2 ... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers Alain Kaloyeros, president of SUNY Polytechnic Institute, has resigned. This comes amid charges that Kaloyeros was involved in an alleged bid-rigging scheme, according to multiple reports. SUNY Poly, a high-tech educational ecosystem in New York, was recently formed from the merger of the SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) and the SUNY Institute of Technology. ... » read more

The Looming AI War


A recent spate of acquisitions and announcements in AI and machine learning is setting the stage for a colossal showdown across the tech industry. Among those vying for top spots are Samsung, Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon, each with a large enough revenue stream to support an M&A feeding frenzy and the sustained investments required to remain competitive. Consider the most recent a... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers In 2016, growth in the pure-play foundry business will be driven by leading-edge processes, according to IC Insights. In fact, the increase in pure-play foundry sales this year is forecast to be almost entirely due to processes at » read more

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