The Week In Review: Manufacturing


SPIE news At this week’s SPIE Advanced Lithography conference, the industry paid close attention to the progress of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. Here’s the general report card: EUV is making noticeable progress, but there are still some challenges ahead, such as the power source, resists and pellicles. Several issues need to be resolved before chipmakers can put EUV into mass... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers Recently, Intel announced plans to invest more than $7 billion to complete its previously-announced fab in Chandler, Ariz. Targeted for 7nm processes, Fab 42 will be completed in 3 to 4 years. As reported, the fab announcement was made by U.S. President Donald Trump and Intel CEO Brian Krzanich at the White House. There is more to the story. Typically, Intel has two fabs for a gi... » read more

What’s Next For NOR Flash?


The flash memory market is the tale two of cities. Today, NAND and NOR are the two main flash memory types. Over the years, the NAND flash market has exploded. Targeted for data storage, NAND flash has moved into flash cards, solid-state storage drives (SSDs) and other products. The excitement for NAND continues to mount, as the technology is moving from planar to a 3D structure. In fact, 3D... » read more

New Embedded Memories Ahead


The embedded memory market is beginning to heat up, fueled by a new wave of microcontrollers (MCUs) and related chips that will likely require new and more capable nonvolatile memory types. The industry is moving on several different fronts in the embedded memory landscape. On one front, traditional solutions are advancing. On another front, several vendors are positioning the next-generatio... » read more

China Unveils Memory Plans


Backed by billions of dollars in government funding, China in 2014 launched a major initiative to advance its domestic semiconductor, IC-packaging and other electronic sectors. So far, though, the results are mixed. China is making progress in IC-packaging, but the nation’s efforts to advance its domestic logic and memory sectors are still a work in progress. In fact, China has yet to achi... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers TDK has agreed to acquire MEMS supplier InvenSense for cash at an acquisition price of $13.00 per share, for a total acquisition price of $1.3 billion. Cypress has begun volume shipments of microcontrollers (MCUs) based on its 40nm Embedded Charge-Trap (eCT) flash technology. The MCUs are made on a foundry basis at UMC. UMC’s technology is a 40nm low power (40LP) logic process.... » read more

Car Becomes A Living Platform


Future generations of vehicles will age like any other electronic or mechanical devices, but they also will need to adapt, grow, and change in unexpected ways over time to avoid being hacked, rendered obsolete, or otherwise compromised. This adds a whole new set of challenges never seen before in automotive development, and OEMs are working feverishly to bring system architectures up to ... » read more

The Week In Review: Design/IoT


Standards Si2 is launching a new project to develop a new power modeling standard, focusing on estimation of power consumption more easily and more accurately throughout the design process, especially during the earliest stages. The approved specification will be contributed to the IEEE P2416 Standards Working Group for industry-wide distribution. IP Synopsys extended automotive safety... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers IC Insights released its foundry rankings in terms of sales in 2015. TSMC was the leader with $26.4 billion in sales last year. Second ranked GlobalFoundries, which took over IBM’s IC business in 2015, made some gains. With IBM’s chip unit, GlobalFoundries’ quarterly sales in 4Q ‘15 were about $1.4 billion, an annual run-rate of $5.6 billion, about 12% greater than the compa... » read more

Consolidation’s Aftermath


The recent spate of industry consolidation continues to have repercussions across the semiconductor industry. Some of those effects will subside once the deals are either approved or nixed by regulatory agencies. Others will raise questions for months or years to come. Consolidation is not a new trend in the semiconductor industry, but the pace and size of the acquisitions in the past year a... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →