Regaining The Edge In U.S. Chip Manufacturing


The United States is developing new strategies to prevent it from falling further behind Korea, Taiwan, and perhaps even China in semiconductor manufacturing, as trade tensions and national security concerns continue to grow. For years, the U.S. has been a leader in the development of new chip products like GPUs and microprocessors. But from a chip manufacturing standpoint, the U.S. is losin... » read more

Mask/Lithography Issues For Mature Nodes


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss lithography and photomask issues with Bryan Kasprowicz, director of technology and strategy and a distinguished member of the technical staff at Photronics; Harry Levinson, principal at HJL Lithography; Noriaki Nakayamada, senior technologist at NuFlare; and Aki Fujimura, chief executive of D2S. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. ... » read more

Reliability Over Time And Space


The demand for known good die is well understood as multi-chip packages are used in safety-critical and mission-critical applications, but that alone isn't sufficient. As chips are swapped in and out of packages to customize them for specific applications, it will be the entire module that needs to be verified, simulated and tested, and analyzed. This is more complicated than it sounds for s... » read more

Startup Best Practices


Adopting best practices and methodology early will lay the foundation to create a design team that is built to last. While taking the time to develop and implement best practices seems like a luxury a startup cannot afford, nothing is farther from the truth. Best practices are best implemented right from the beginning so it seeps into the DNA of the design team and will pay rich dividends as th... » read more

Good Vs. Bad Acquisitions


M&A activity is beginning to heat up across the semiconductor industry, fueled by high market caps, low interest rates, and a slew of startups with innovative technology and limited market reach. Some of these deals are gigantic, such as the pending acquisition of Arm by Nvidia, and the proposed purchase of Maxim Integrated by Analog Devices. Others are more modest, such as Arteris IP's ... » read more

EDA, IP Show Surprising Strength


EDA and IP revenue surged 12.6% in Q2 to $2.78 billion, up from $2.47 billion in the same period in 2019, according to a just-released report. That growth occurred in all regions, as well. What's surprising about the report is just how strong sales were in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. "Revenue was up strongly from Q1, and there was enormous growth," said Wally Rhines, executive spo... » read more

Deals That Change The Chip Industry


Nvidia's pending $40 billion acquisition of Arm is expected to have a big impact on the chip world, but it will take years before the effects of this deal are fully understood. More such deals are expected over the next couple of years due to several factors — there is a fresh supply of startups with innovative technology, interest rates are low, and market caps and stock prices of buyers ... » read more

RISC-V: What’s Missing And Who’s Competing


Part 2: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the business and technology landscape for RISC-V with Zdenek Prikryl, CTO of Codasip; Helena Handschuh, a Rambus Security Technologies fellow; Louie De Luna, director of marketing at Aldec; Shubhodeep Roy Choudhury, CEO of Valtrix Systems; and Bipul Talukdar, North America director of applications engineering at SmartDV. What follows are exc... » read more

DRAM, 3D NAND Face New Challenges


It’s been a topsy-turvy period for the memory market, and it's not over. So far in 2020, demand has been slightly better than expected for the two main memory types — 3D NAND and DRAM. But now there is some uncertainty in the market amid a slowdown, inventory issues and an ongoing trade war. In addition, the 3D NAND market is moving toward a new technology generation, but some are enc... » read more

The Battery Problem


The fires sweeping the West Coast of the United States point to the need for a whole different way of managing power on both a macro and a micro level. Since the millennium, the power demand from data centers and from mobile devices has been climbing steadily. There are roughly 7.8 billion people on the planet, up from 6.115 billion people in 2000, according to the World Bank. Many of them o... » read more

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