150MM Alive and Kicking


Did you think chip making on 150mm wafers was a thing of the past? Think again. Many of the megatrends shaping our collective futures—mobility, autonomous driving and electric vehicles, 5G wireless communications, augmented- and virtual reality (AR/VR), and healthcare—depend on innovations created on the 150mm wafer size. While attention is often riveted on the race to the leading-edge n... » read more

Connected Cars: From Chip To City


As the automotive industry moves closer to autonomous vehicles, ecosystem players are focusing on the infrastructure pieces needed to make autonomous technology a reality for the first adopters, which are most likely commercial fleets. Vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I or v2i) is a communications model that allows vehicles to share information with the components that support a country's hi... » read more

Mixing 4G And 5G


5G networks will impact the number and types of ICs in end-user devices and the base stations used to transmit the signals (including the repeaters that rebroadcast those signals). And this is before we begin to consider the technology impact to the infrastructure required to support the data generated in a 5G ecosystem (servers, memory and so on). First, 5G is expected to transmit up to 10 ... » read more

RF Device And Process Biz Heats Up


The RF device and process technology markets are heating up, especially for two critical components used in smartphones—RF switch devices and antenna tuners. RF device makers and their foundry partners continue to ramp up traditional RF switch chips and tuners based on RF SOI process technologies for today’s 4G wireless networks. And recently, [getentity id="22819" comment="GlobalFoundri... » read more

RF GaN Gains Steam


The RF [getkc id="217" kc_name="gallium nitride"] (GaN) device market is heating up amid the need for more performance with better power densities in a range of systems, such as infrastructure equipment, missile defense and radar. On one front, for example, RF GaN is beginning to displace a silicon-based technology for the power amplifier sockets in today’s wireless base stations. GaN is m... » read more

How Will 5G Work?


Sumit Tomar, general manager of the Wireless Infrastructure Products Group at RF chip giant Qorvo, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to discuss the development of next-generation 5G wireless networks and other topics. In 2014, RF Micro Devices and TriQuint merged to form Qorvo. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: 5G, the follow-on to the current wireless standard known ... » read more

Anything As A Service


Everything as a service promises to simplify our lives, from cutting edge business to consumer applications. It is too early to tell, but the concept of everything moving to the cloud poses some interesting issues, from bandwidth to security. Who would have guessed that in 2015, launching a business would require virtually no physical assets? You simply turn on your computer and everything y... » read more

Inside The 5G Smartphone


Amid a slowdown in the cell phone business, the market is heating up for perhaps the next big thing in wireless—5th generation mobile networks or 5G. In fact, major carriers, chipmakers and telecom equipment vendors are all rushing to get a piece of the action in 5G, which is the follow-on to the current wireless standard known as 4G or long-term evolution (LTE). Intel, Samsung and Qualcom... » read more

The Week In Review: Sept. 6


By Ed Sperling ARM acquired Cadence’s high-resolution display processor cores, which it helped to co-develop. Coupled with ARM’s own graphics, the move sets up ARM to sell complete subsystems. Cadence also won a deal with SMIC, which is using Cadence’s low-power flow and signoff technology for its 40nm process. Mentor Graphics won a deal with Advanced Wireless Semiconductor Co., whic... » read more

New Foundry Gold Rush: RF SOI


By Mark LaPedus About every five years or so, a new and hot market emerges in the specialty foundry business that resembles a frenetic gold rush. The last big gold rush occurred around 2008, when more than a dozen foundries jumped into the bipolar-CMOS-DMOS (BCD) market to capitalize on the booming power-management sector. Now, the next gold rush is centering on an emerging technology—th... » read more

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