Research Bits: April 16


Tunable thermal conductivity in memristors Researchers from the Center for Research in Biological Chemistry and Molecular Materials (CiQUS) and Forschungszentrum Juelich discovered that oxide-based memristive devices can demonstrate tunable thermal conductivity. Alongside the memristor's electrical resistive switching, a thermal resistive switching effect also occurs at the metal-oxide inte... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Applied Materials may scale back or cancel its $4 billion new Silicon Valley R&D facility in light of the U.S. government's recent announcement to reduce funding for construction, modernization, or expansion of semiconductor research and development (R&D) facilities in the United States, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. TSMC could receive up to $6.6 billion in direct funding... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Adam Kovac, Gregory Haley, and Liz Allan. The U.S. government released a 61-page report, titled "National Strategy on Microelectronics Research,” by the Subcommittee On Microelectronics Leadership. It provides a framework for government, industry, academia, and international allies to address four major goals. Synopsys  acquired Intrinsic ID, which develops physical unclonable func... » read more

Research Bits: Mar. 19


Superconducting loops Researchers from University of California San Diego and University of California Riverside propose using superconducting loops to store and transmit information in a method similar to the human brain. “Our brains have this remarkable gift of associative memory, which we don't really understand,” said Robert C. Dynes, professor of physics at UC San Diego and preside... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Susan Rambo, Karen Heyman, and Liz Allan. Renesas plans to acquire Altium, maker of PCB design software, for $5.9 billion. In a conference call, Renesas CEO Hidetoshi Shibata cited Altium's PCB design software and digital twin virtual modeling as key components of its future strategy. "I believe it will generate transformational value for our combined customers and our stakeholders," Shib... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Jesse Allen, Linda Christensen, and Liz Allan.  The Biden administration plans to invest more than $5B  for semiconductor R&D and workforce support, including in the National Semiconductor Technology Center (NSTC), as part of the rollout of the CHIPS Act. Today's announcement included at least hundreds of millions for the NSTC workforce efforts, including creating a Workforce Cente... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Jesse Allen, Karen Heyman, and Liz Allan Renesas will acquire Transphorm, which designs and manufactures gallium nitride power devices, for about $339 million. GaN, which is a wide-bandgap technology, is used for high-voltage applications in a slew of markets, including EVs and EV fast chargers, as well as data centers and industrial applications. Cadence acquired Invecas, a provider o... » read more

Chip Industry’s Technical Paper Roundup: Jan. 8


New technical papers added to Semiconductor Engineering’s library this week. [table id=183 /] More ReadingTechnical Paper Library home » read more

Superconducting Material With Exceptional Tunability


A technical paper titled “Strain-switchable field-induced superconductivity” was published by researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), University of Washington, Argonne National Laboratory, Cornell University, Zhejiang University of Science and Technology, and George Mason University. Abstract: "Field-induced superconductivity is a rare phenomenon where an applied magne... » read more

Research Bits: Jan. 2


Synaptic transistor Researchers from Northwestern University, Boston College, and MIT developed a synaptic transistor that simultaneously processes and stores information similar to the human brain. The team said the transistor goes beyond simple machine learning tasks to categorize data and is capable of performing associative learning. The new device is stable at room temperatures. It als... » read more

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