The Week In Review: Manufacturing


According to one analyst, the capital spending picture looks gloomy. “We expect finFET and 3D NAND to ramp over the next two years. However, foundry and memory customers are showing great restraint with respect to spending plans, limiting the rate of new node transitions and overall capex upside. In the near term, we see no evidence of meaningful equipment orders to support high-volume finFET... » read more

The Increasing Challenge Of Reducing Latency


By Ed Sperling When the first mainframe computers were introduced the big challenge was to improve performance by decreasing the latency between spinning reels of tape and the processor—while also increasing the speed at which the processor could crunch ones and zeroes. Fast forward more than six decades and the two issues are now blurred and often confused. Latency is still a drag on per... » read more