Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Materials Wesfarmers, an Australian diversified firm, has made an unsolicited bid to acquire Lynas, one of the world’s largest suppliers of rare earths outside of China. Rare earths are chemical elements found in the Earth’s crust. They are used in cars, consumer electronics, computers, communications, clean energy and defense systems. The big market for rare earths is magnets. In semicond... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Auto


Internet of Things Second-tier cities in the U.S. that can’t attract projects like the Amazon HQ2 are welcoming the testing of autonomous vehicles, smart city technology, and advanced surveillance techniques, this analysis notes. What do they get in return? Much of the time, little or nothing. And bad things can happen. People have been throwing objects at Waymo vehicles in Chandler, Ariz., ... » read more

Slow And Cautious Start To 2019 For Memory Manufacturers


Both NAND and DRAM prices began dropping in the second half of 2018 after a couple years at record highs. Product oversupply and excess inventories are signaling a bleak outlook for the memory market in the first half of 2019. With these conditions in mind, SK Hynix and Samsung have slowed or put on hold their plans for capacity expansion in 2H18 and 2019. The chart below shows DRAM capacity... » read more

Blog Review: Mar. 20


Cadence's Paul McLellan argues that rapid improvements in the performance of general-purpose computing led to a lack of innovation in domain-specific architectures, but as scaling slows, they're entering a new golden age. In a video, Mentor's Colin Walls takes a look at the use of floating point in an embedded application and some of the pitfalls associated with it. Synopsys' Taylor Armer... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Auto


Internet of Things Apple purchased a portfolio of eight granted and pending patents that belonged to Lighthouse AI, a smart home security camera startup that ceased operations near the end of 2018. The portfolio was acquired at about the same time, according to the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office; financial terms weren’t revealed. Also not disclosed, as usual, is what Apple will do with t... » read more

Engineering Talent Shortage Now Top Risk Factor


Demand is increasing for engineers and related technical fields in the IC industry, but companies are struggling to find enough talent. The problem is even worse in hot new markets such as AI and 5G, where competition is fierce for experienced workers. The talent shortfall starts with college graduates and professionals in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)... » read more

Mixed Outlook For Silicon Wafer Biz


After a period of record growth, the silicon wafer industry is off to a slow start in 2019 and facing a mixed outlook. Generally, 200mm silicon wafer supply remains tight. But demand for 300mm silicon wafers is cooling off in some segments, causing supply to move toward equilibrium after a period of shortages. On average, though, silicon wafer prices continue to rise despite the slowdown. ... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Auto


Internet of Things Is Google developing a Pixel Watch wearable? Perhaps, if recent job listings are any indication. The company recently was looking to hire someone as vice president of hardware engineering, wearables. Last month, Fossil Group sold smartwatch technology intellectual property to Google for $40 million, while Google hired certain members of Fossil’s wearables R&D team. ... » read more

The Race To Multi-Domain SoCs


K. Charles Janac, president and CEO of Arteris IP, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to discuss the impact of automotive and AI on chip design. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: What do you see as the biggest changes over the next 12 to 24 months? Janac: There are segments of the semiconductor market that are shrinking, such as DTV and simple IoT. Others are going ... » read more

January ’19 Startup Funding: $100M+ Rounds Abound


Sixteen companies received private funding rounds of $100 million or more during the month of January, with two privately held companies, Infor and Verily Life Sciences, taking in rounds of $1.5 billion and $1 billion, respectively. The market segments represented in the January rounds were varied. Multiple companies using artificial intelligence technology in their offerings and cloud-based... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →