EUV: Cost Killer Or Savior?


Moore’s Law, the economic foundation of the semiconductor industry, states that transistor density doubles in each technology generation, at constant cost. As IMEC’s Arindam Mallik explained, however, the transition to a new technology node is not a single event, but a process. Typically, when the new technology is first introduced, it brings a 20% to 25% wafer cost increase. Process opt... » read more

Moving From Engineering To Management Or Staying On The Technical Track


In the “Mad Men” days, companies adhered to a strict organizational hierarchy. Employees were either line or staff. Generally, line meant that an employee was on the management track and headed for a corporate executive position, sometimes called C-level or C-suite. Staff meant a place on the technical track with little opportunity for advancement. Today’s corporate environment no long... » read more

Challenges At Advanced Nodes


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss finFETs, 22nm FD-SOI and how the how the market will segment over the next few years with Marie Semeria, CEO of [getentity id="22192" e_name="Leti"]; Patrick Soheili, vice president of product management and corporate development at [getentity id="22242" e_name="eSilicon"]; Paul Boudre, CEO of Soitec; and Subramani Kengeri, vice president of global ... » read more

The Week In Review: Design/IoT


IP Synopsys rolled out logic library and embedded memory IP for the Mie Fujitsu 40nm low-power process. The process has 50% lower power consumption compared with previous process technologies. Deals Rambus' Cryptography Research Division won a deal to run the Secure Content Storage Association's cryptographic key management center. The keys are used in SCSA-enabled devices for securing vid... » read more

The Growing Price Of A Click


I have been staring at computer screens for a long time. I remember when AOL was the biggest thing to come along since 16-bit computing. I have always been an anti-spam/junk advocate. With snail mail, I could just pitch it. With radio and TV ads, I could turn down the volume or switch channels. But it got impractical to walk away from my computer every time an ad popped up on a new page. So ... » read more

Getting Paid More


Consolidation is a regular news item in the semiconductor industry, and has been for years, but most of those deals have been relatively small. What's changing is the amount of consolidation involving big companies, fueled partly by a massive M&A fund in China, partly by an arms race in preparation for the IoE, and partly by the kind of thinking that if other companies are doing it, it's dan... » read more

Who’s Calling The Shots


As discussed in part one of this report, OEMs are making more of the decisions about what goes into a system design. A large part of this shift involves software, which falls on many plates throughout the ecosystem. Making sure all of the layers of software interoperate and integrate well together is no small feat, and it is growing in complexity at every turn as systems becomes more sophist... » read more

Shrinking R&D Pool


The rule of thumb in business is that consolidation in a maturing industry improves the health of the surviving companies. In most market sectors that's true. In the semiconductor industry, that formula doesn't work. The reason is due to what might well be called foundational economics. While it's possible to reduce costs in making chips for years to come, at some point the basic building bl... » read more

IIoT Comes To Chip Manufacturing


Nicholas Ward, director of marketing for the services group at Applied Materials, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about how data needs to be shared in semiconductor manufacturing and why it's so slow to happen in this industry. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: Where are we with the [getkc id="76" kc_name="IoT"] and the [getkc id="78" kc_name="IIoT"]? War... » read more

Fundamental Shifts In Chip Business


Shifting business models, acquisitions, minority investments and increasing uncertainty are creating fundamental shifts in the semiconductor industry that could redefine who is successful in which markets for years to come. The announcement today that [getentity id="22671" e_name="Rambus"] is developing memory controller chips, expanding its business beyond just creating IP for the memory an... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →