tag: Apple

The Week In Review: Manufacturing
By Mark LaPedus - 16 Sep, 2016 - Comments: 0

Chipmakers The finFET market is heating up. GlobalFoundries, Intel, Samsung and TSMC are ramping 16nm/14nm finFETs. And 10nm and 7nm finFETs are in the works. The market will shortly have a new competitor—Taiwan’s United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC). Some years ago, UMC licensed finFET technology from IBM. UMC has been a bit quiet about the 14nm finFET technology, but it has made si... » read more

The Real Value Of Digital Horsepower
By Ed Sperling - 08 Sep, 2016 - Comments: 0

Chipmakers and systems vendors are beginning to experiment with a slew of new ways to beef up performance and reduce power and area, now that shrinking features no longer guarantees those improvements. The number of new ideas introduced at industry conferences in the past few months is almost mind-boggling. Just on the CPU side there are new architectures that improve the amount of work that... » read more

Auto Security And Technology Questions Persist
By Ann Mutschler - 01 Sep, 2016 - Comments: 1

While carmakers continue to add increasingly sophisticated driver assist features to new models, semiconductor industry ecosystem players are ramping up their foundation knowledge of what is needed from a technology and security perspective. Fortunately, it appears many existing semiconductor design tools will fit the bill as part of new approaches for automotive design. Mike Stellfox... » read more

Stepping Back From Scaling
By Ed Sperling - 24 Aug, 2016 - Comments: 0

Architectures, packaging and software are becoming core areas for semiconductor research and development, setting the stage for a series of shifts that will impact a large swath of the semiconductor industry. While there is still demand from the largest chipmakers for increased density at the next process node, the underlying economics for foundries, equipment vendors and IP developers are f... » read more

More Consolidation Ahead
By Ed Sperling - 28 Jul, 2016 - Comments: 0

Consolidation fueled by low interest rates is nearing the end, at least for this round. The U.S. Federal Reserve is looking at another rate increase based upon healthy reports on the economy, possibly as early as September. If all goes well, there will be multiple interest rate hikes over the next few years, allowing investors to build more balanced portfolios that are not entirely reliant on t... » read more

Looking Beyond Technology
By Ed Sperling - 30 Jun, 2016 - Comments: 0

The semiconductor industry is beginning to make real progress in deep learning and artificial intelligence, opening up bigger opportunities across more markets than have ever existed in the history of technology. But before this revolution goes much further, the industry also needs to step back and establish a set of guidelines about how this technology will be used. This is an entirely dif... » read more

Interconnect Challenges Rising
By Mark LaPedus - 27 Jun, 2016 - Comments: 1

Chipmakers are ramping up their 14nm finFET processes, with 10nm and 7nm slated to ship possibly later this year or next. At 10nm and beyond, IC vendors are determined to scale the two main parts of the [getkc id="185" kc_name="finFET"] structure—the transistor and interconnects. Generally, transistor scaling will remain challenging at advanced nodes. And on top of that, the interconnects ... » read more

The Road To 5nm
By Ed Sperling - 23 Jun, 2016 - Comments: 1

There is strong likelihood that enough companies will move to 7nm to warrant the investment. How many will move forward to 5nm is far less certain. Part of the reason for this uncertainty is big-company consolidation. There are simply fewer customers left who can afford to build chips at the most advanced nodes. Intel bought Altera. Avago bought Broadcom. NXP bought Freescale. GlobalFoundrie... » read more

Next Challenge: Contact Resistance
By Mark LaPedus - 23 Jun, 2016 - Comments: 0

In chip scaling, there is no shortage of challenges. Scaling the finFET transistor and the interconnects are the biggest challenges for current and future devices. But now, there is another part of the device that’s becoming an issue—the contact. Typically, the contact doesn’t get that much attention, but the industry is beginning to worry about the resistance in the contacts, or conta... » read more

Plotting The Next Semiconductor Road Map
By Ed Sperling - 13 Jun, 2016 - Comments: 0

The semiconductor industry is retrenching around new technologies and markets as Moore's Law becomes harder to sustain and growth rates in smart phones continue to flatten. In the past, it was a sure bet that pushing to the next process node would provide improvements in power, performance and cost. But after 22nm, the economics change due to the need for multi-patterning and finFETs, and th... » read more

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