Chip Industry Week In Review


President Biden will raise the tariff rate on Chinese semiconductors from 25% to 50% by 2025, among other measures to protect U.S. businesses from China’s trade practices. Also, as part of President Biden’s AI Executive Order, the Administration released steps to protect workers from AI risks, including human oversight of systems and transparency about what systems are being used. Intel ... » read more

Week In Review: Semiconductor Manufacturing, Test


The CHIPS Act sparked $200 billion in private investments for U.S. semiconductor production, including 40 new semiconductor ecosystem projects, according to SIA. China is working toward self-sufficiency, with plans to invest more than 1 trillion yuan ($143 billion) to support domestic semiconductor production, according to Reuters. Arm said that Britain and the U.S. would not approve license... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Packaging ASE, AMD, Arm, Google, Intel, Meta, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Samsung, and TSMC have announced the formation of a consortium that will establish a die-to-die interconnect standard and foster an open chiplet ecosystem. The founding companies also ratified the UCIe specification, an open industry standard developed to establish a standard interconnect at the package level. The UCIe 1.0 s... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Packaging and test Advantest and PDF Solutions have launched their first jointly developed offering since forming a partnership in 2020. The new product is called the Advantest Cloud Solutions Dynamic Parametric Test (ACS DPT) solution. It integrates PDF Solutions’ Exensio portfolio of data analytics with Advantest’s V93000 Parametric Test System. The ACS DPT solution is designed to op... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Government policy President Biden has rolled out a proposal to boost the infrastructure in the U.S. As part of the plan, the president is calling on Congress to invest $50 billion in U.S. semiconductor manufacturing and research. The proposal must pass Congress, which isn’t going to be easy. “The President’s plan would invest ambitiously in U.S. semiconductor workers, manufacturing, and ... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


China's DRAM efforts Two memory vendors from China, Tsinghua Unigroup and ChangXin Memory Technology, have disclosed more details about their respective efforts to enter the DRAM arena. As reported, Tsinghua Unigroup wants to enter the DRAM business. Now, the China-based firm has secured land to build a new DRAM fab. The firm recently signed an agreement with the Chongqing government to e... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers GlobalFoundries said that it is putting its 7nm finFET program on hold indefinitely and has dropped plans to pursue technology nodes beyond 7nm. To be sure, it was a tough decision by GF to put 7nm on hold. But generally, analysts believe that GF made the right decision. “There’s only a handful of semiconductor companies that will require high-volume 7nm technology right when... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Market research SEMI has released its mid-year forecast at Semicon West. SEMI reported that worldwide sales of new semiconductor manufacturing equipment are projected to increase by 19.8% to a total of $49.4 billion in 2017, marking the first time that the semiconductor equipment market has exceeded the market high of $47.7 billion set in 2000. In 2018, 7.7% growth is expected, resulting in an... » read more

More Than Just Carbon Dioxide


As discussed in Part Two of this series, lifecycle analyses of greenhouse gas emissions consider both direct and indirect sources. Indirect CO2 emissions, attributed to electricity and other forms of energy purchased by the fab, are the semiconductor industry’s single largest environmental impact. Of those emissions, a large fraction are attributable to plasma-based etch and deposition steps,... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


STMicroelectronics announced mixed results for the quarter. The company also launched a plan to cut $100 million in costs. As part of the plan, it is reviewing the implications to its process technology efforts following the recent announcements by its research alliance partners, namely IBM. STMicro is one of the main drivers of FDSOI technology. The company’s FDSOI partner is IBM, which is s... » read more