Still Searching For Rare Earths

By Mark LaPedus - 20 Aug, 2015 - Comments: 1

There is both good and bad news for buyers of rare earths. The good news: It’s a buyers’ market. Prices for rare earths remain depressed amid a glut in the marketplace. The bad news: The supplier base is shaky. China still accounts for 85% of the world’s total production of rare earths, but most Chinese suppliers are operating at a loss. And two of the main non-Chinese suppliers, M... » read more

Get Ready For More Biometrics

By Ernest Worthman - 07 May, 2015 - Comments: 0

Security involving scans of fingerprints, palms, faces, or some other variant has been common in movies for years, and many phones and computers now offer fingerprint scans instead of a password login. But as security risks rise with the rollout of the [getkc id="76" comment="Internet of Things"]/Internet of Everything, that technology will need to become much more pervasive and sophisticated. ... » read more

Obsolescence Isn’t Always Good

By Ed Sperling - 26 Feb, 2015 - Comments: 2

One of the main reasons smartphones are pervasive around the globe is that their cost is subsidized. They can be replaced every couple of years with minimal pain as designs get slicker, more energy-efficient, and new features are added such as better screens or better performance. That works particularly well when a consumer's out-of-pocket expenses after trading in an older model are basically... » read more

The Rise Of Screens In Your Home

By Trina Watt - 08 May, 2014 - Comments: 1

The 1950s introduced the first of the screens that would come into our homes and bring visual content to the consumer. It is estimated that more than 1 billion TVs have been sold since that date. TV opened up the outside world to people in the homes from locations that they may never have heard of. It advertised products they didn’t know they needed and informed them of issues they did no... » read more

MEMS Explosion

By Rakesh Kumar - 18 Apr, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Rakesh Kumar The MEMS market is set to explode. By 2017 the market is expected to be worth $12.2 billion, a 50% increase from 2011, according to IHS iSuppli. Driving this growth will be the continued usage of MEMs devices for consumer applications, such as smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles and cameras. Additionally, new products such as silicon timing devices, tunable capacitors for ant... » read more

Smarter Things

By Ed Sperling - 28 Feb, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Ed Sperling SoC design has largely been a race to the next process node in accordance with Moore’s Law, but it’s about to take a sharp turn away from that as the Internet of Things becomes more ubiquitous. There has been much made about the Internet of Things over the past couple of years—home networks that involve smart refrigerators sending reminders to consumers that the milk is... » read more

The CES Effect

By Frank Ferro - 31 Jan, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Frank Ferro CES draws a lot of attention. Everyone wants to be first to see the latest and greatest consumer products. If you don’t mind squeezing through the crowd, you can glimpse the startling picture quality of an OLED TV. Never mind viewing the quality of a 4K Ultra HDTV, at CES you can skip a generation and see what an 85” 8K UHDTV looks like. Talk about resolution! You also can e... » read more

Low Power Dominates CES

By Ed Sperling - 13 Jan, 2011 - Comments: 0

By Pallab Chatterjee The 2011 Consumer Electronics Show was dominated by tablets and other mobile devices, and the common theme was communication and data access anywhere anytime. From a design perspective, that translates into two main systems targets and one major constraint. The two targets are wireless connectivity and high performance graphics. The major constraint is power use. The power... » read more

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Knowledge Centers
Entities, people and technologies explored

Shift Left Is The Tip Of The Iceberg

A transformative change is underway for semiconductor design and EDA. New languages, models, and abstractions will need to be created.

by Brian Bailey

Partitioning In The Chiplet Era

Understanding how chiplets interact under different workloads is critical to ensuring signal integrity and optimal performance in heterogeneous designs.

by Ann Mutschler

3.5D: The Great Compromise

Pros and cons of a middle-ground chiplet assembly that combines 2.5D and 3D-IC.

by Ed Sperling

AI’s Role In Chip Design Widens, Drawing In New Startups

Focus is on letting engineers do much more with the same or fewer resources — and less drudgery.

by Karen Heyman

Key Technologies To Extend EUV To 14 Angstroms

Alongside high-NA EUV will be better-performing photoresists, reduced roughness using passivation and etch, and lateral etching to reduce tip-to-tip dimensions.

by Laura Peters

Memory Fundamentals For Engineers

eBook: Nearly everything you need to know about memory, including detailed explanations of the different types of memory; how and where these are used today; what's changing, which memories are successful and which ones might be in the future; and the limitations of each memory type.

by The SE Staff

What Comes After HBM For Chiplets

The standard for high-bandwidth memory limits design freedom at many levels, but that is required for interoperability. What freedoms can be taken from other functions to make chiplets possible?

by Brian Bailey

Why Small Fab And Assembly Houses Are Thriving

Megafabs churning out the most advanced processors are not the only game in town.

by Bryon Moyer

tag: consumer electronics