10nm Versus 7nm


The silicon foundry business is heating up, as vendors continue to ramp their 16nm/14nm finFET processes. At the same time, they are racing each other to ship the next technologies on the roadmap—10nm and 7nm. But the landscape is complicated, with each vendor taking a different strategy. [getentity id="22865" e_name="Samsung"], for one, plans to ship its 10nm [getkc id="185" kc_name="fi... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers As reported, Samsung is expanding its efforts in the foundry business, a move that will put the company on a collision course with TSMC and others. Samsung's foundry unit is expanding is logic portfolio and moving into the specialty foundry front. It will also make its advanced packaging technology available, such as 2.5D interposers, to customers. In a blog, Samsung said it plans t... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers TSMC remained the world’s largest foundry vendor with a 54.3% share in 2015, according to the rankings from Gartner. GlobalFoundries moved into the No. 2 position with 9.6% of the market. The No. 3 position went to UMC with $4.5 billion in revenue, representing 9.3% of the market, according to the firm, which said Samsung remains No. 4. SMIC, which is No. 5, is gaining ground. ... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Fab tool vendors In terms of sales for 2015, Applied Materials retained the No. 1 position in the wafer fab equipment (WFE) market with 1.3% growth last year, according to Garnter. Lam Research experienced the strongest growth of the top 10 vendors in 2015, moving into the No. 2 position. In the rankings, Lam jumped ahead of ASML and TEL. ASML was in third place, followed in order by TEL, KLA-... » read more

Apple Vs. FBI, Take Two


Well, it is now old news that the FBI has found a way to retrieve data from the iPhone of deceased terrorist Syed Farook without the cooperation of Apple. It's not surprising that the FBI succeeded here. All security can be breached. It's just a question of how much effort people are willing to expend for a given result, and what the repercussions are if you get caught. In this case, there w... » read more

Tech Talk: ADAS


Kurt Shuler, vice president of marketing at Arteris, explains what the Advanced Driver Assistance Systems standard is, where the problems are, and why this is becoming so important in automotive semiconductor design. » read more

The Week In Review: Design/IoT


Tools Aldec updated its emulation and simulation acceleration software package for high speed prototyping boards, adding a SCE-MI Pipes-based flow for streaming large amounts of data, and a 30% speed increase for all emulation modes. Plus, Aldec's mixed-language FPGA design and simulation platform now includes a complete coverage analysis package for FPGA and ASIC designers with the addition... » read more

Timing Is Everything


It's easy to look back on companies or products that missed the market because they were too early. Remember the Eo? The brick-like personal digital assistant that AT&T introduced in 1993 had an antenna that hinted at 4G connectivity. Unfortunately, there was no 4G available at the time, so it was just an extra wire. (Check out the video of the tablet version here.) The EO 440 Personal... » read more

After Smartphones…Less?


As the rate of growth for smartphone sales slow, questions arise regarding the impact that slower growth will have throughout the semiconductor supply chain. Over the past decade, the 1 billion-plus smartphone market has driven the need for more advanced manufacturing process technologies, new input materials and the need for more fab capacity. It has even legitimized new players into the suppl... » read more

When Cryptographers Disagree


Six of the world's leading cryptography experts sat down this week to explore the most pressing issues in security. They took up topics ranging from whether Apple should facilitate the FBI's access to a known terrorist's iPhone, to what will become the next important cryptography algorithm. Among them: Ronald Rivest, an Institute Professor at MIT; Adi Shamir, co-inventor of the RSA algorithm... » read more

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