The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Intel announced two new technologies for foundry customers. One technology, dubbed Embedded Multi-die Interconnect Bridge (EMIB), is available to 14nm foundry customers. Instead of an expensive silicon interposer with TSVs, a small silicon bridge chip is embedded in the package, enabling high density die-to-die connections only where needed. EMIB eliminates the need for TSVs and specialized int... » read more

More Problems Ahead


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss future scaling problems with Lars Liebmann, a fellow at IBM; Adam Brand, managing director of transistor technology at Applied Materials; Karim Arabi, vice president of engineering at Qualcomm; and Srinivas Banna, a fellow for advanced technology architecture at GlobalFoundries. SE: There seems to be some debate in this group about whether we’r... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Gartner has released a chart, which tracks the “Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies in 2014.” According to the chart, here’s some of the technologies that are still a number of years away from reaching the marketplace: virtual personal assistants; human augmentation; brain-computer interface; quantum computing; smart robots; biochips; smart advisors; autonomous vehicles; and natural-lang... » read more

The Week In Review


Applied Materials announced its fiscal Q3 results. Net sales for the quarter were $2.27 billion compared with $1.98 billion in the same period in 2013, a 15% increase. Net income was $301 million for the period, compared with $168 million in 2013. On a non-GAAP basis, net income was $349 million, compared with $222 million in Q3 2013. The company expects fiscal Q4 net sales to be flat, plus or ... » read more

Ion Implanter Market Heats Up


The ion implanter market has been a stable, if not a sleepy, business. The last big event took place in 2011, when Applied Materials re-entered the ion implanter market by acquiring Varian, the world’s leading supplier of these tools. The acquisition gave Applied Materials a commanding 80% share of the implanter business, with the other players fighting for the crumbs. But after year... » read more

More Problems Ahead


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss future scaling problems with Lars Liebmann, a fellow at IBM; Adam Brand, managing director of transistor technology at Applied Materials; Karim Arabi, vice president of engineering at Qualcomm; and Srinivas Banna, a fellow for advanced technology architecture at GlobalFoundries. SE: We’re starting to hear talk about octuple patterning. We’ve ... » read more

What’s Next For Memory?


Apple, Samsung and others are developing the next wave of smartphones and tablets. OEMs want to integrate new memory schemes that provide more bandwidth at lower power. But there are some challenges in the arena that are prompting memory makers to rethink their mobile DRAM roadmaps. The conventional wisdom was that memory makers would ship mobile DRAMs based on the new LPDDR4 interface stand... » read more

Blog Review: Aug. 6


Mentor’s Colin Walls takes a look at bad behavior—the undefined kind that you get from doing C programming wrong and adding too much complexity up front. Cadence’s Brian Fuller interviews his colleague about what engineers need to know in regards to finFETs, advanced nodes and parasitic extraction. Short answer: Plenty. Synopsys’ Mick Posner is building FPGA prototype boards and... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Fujitsu Semiconductor and Panasonic’s chip unit announced that the parties have signed a definitive agreement to merge and establish a new fabless IC company. Panasonic isn’t exactly fabless--yet. Recently, Panasonic took its fabs and formed a fab venture with TowerJazz. Meanwhile, as part of the move, Fujitsu and Fujitsu Semiconductor have decided to expand the scope of its foundry op... » read more

Next-Generation Sustainability Gets More Challenging


The semiconductor industry has made major progress on reducing energy usage and water consumption, and effectively abating its emissions, as companies made sustainability a core requirement in their design of new processes and tools. But it’s about to get considerably harder. That means more opportunities to add value with innovative technologies, and also more need for collaboration. Next... » read more

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