The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Lam Research’s proposed move to acquire KLA-Tencor is still generating a buzz in the industry. One executive from Lam has explained the reason for the deal. Meanwhile, analysts are also weighing in. “We believe the deal itself is a positive one for Lam as it supplements its leading etch position with the market share leader in process control with significant accretion and earnings leverage... » read more

Counting By The Billions


The semiconductor industry has been on cruise control since the advent of the personal computer. By 2002, a total of 1 billion PCs had been shipped, according to Gartner, and by 2008 that number had doubled. But that was nothing compared with the smartphone. In 2014 alone, Gartner reported sales of 1.2 billion smartphones. Both of those markets will remain healthy for years to come. Despite... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Looking to propel the next wave of OLED displays, Applied Materials has rolled out two new systems. The tools enable the volume production of OLED displays for both mobile products and TVs. In addition, Applied Materials has shipped an Applied TopMet roll-to-roll metal deposition system to Jindal Poly Films, a leader in PET and BOPP films for flexible packaging and labeling applications. In... » read more

Gaps In Performance, Power Coverage


The semiconductor industry always has used metrics to define progress, and in areas such as functional verification significant advances have been made. But so far, no effective metrics have been developed for power, performance, or other system-level concerns, which basically means that design teams have to run blind. On the plus side, the industry has migrated from the use of code coverage... » read more

Is it Hot? Ask Joules


Over the last decade it has become clear that power reduction techniques involving different parts of the chips would become more important than they had historically. In 2G cell phones everything except the real-time clock could be turned off when the phone was not in use. Pre-smartphones, a phone was either making a call (or texting, gaming, etc.) or it was off. In fact, a cell phone can’t ... » read more

Blog Review: Oct. 14


Rambus' Aharon Etengoff explores how new optical interfaces are aiding the burgeoning field of optogenetics, which combines genetic targeting of specific neurons or proteins with optical technology to study living neural circuits. Anand Shirahatti, Divyang Mali, and Naveen G of Synopsys team up to explain three features that make the MIPI UniPro mobile interconnect stand out, along with the ... » read more

Making Flexible OLED Displays


Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) are supposedly the next big thing in display technology. In fact, over the years, several display makers have spent billions of dollars to build new and large OLED fabs. To be sure, OLEDs enable brighter displays, as compared to traditional LCD technology. OLEDs use a series of thin, light-emitting films, which enables the display to produce brighter li... » read more

The Next Killer Apps


The search is on for the next killer applications that will turn connected devices into the next smart phone or PC. Billions of dollars are being poured into startups and established companies, creating a spectrum of new ideas they're trying to bring to market. Whether those investments pay off with a single application, or whether they lead to new ideas that fuse together multiple markets, ... » read more

The Danger Of Denial


For years now, my diehard Mac-lover friends and this diehard PC fan have bantered back and forth about the superiority of one processor over the other. When Apple switched to the Intel platform in the late 2000s the argument went moot. I was right, they were wrong. PC’s were the best computers. Since then, the arguments about which platform is better have died off. They both do the job, a... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Upgraded components in the new iPhone 6S Plus from Apple cost $16 more than the components in the earlier iPhone 6 Plus, according to IHS, which also provided a breakdown of the phone. Both Samsung and TSMC are making Apple’s A9 applications processor on a foundry basis, according to ExtremeTech, which cites Chipworks as its source. There are reports that the Chinese government is interes... » read more

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