What China Is Planning

By Mark LaPedus - 21 Oct, 2015 - Comments: 1

Over the years, China has unveiled several initiatives to advance its domestic semiconductor industry. China has made some progress at each turn, although every plan has fallen short of expectations. But now, the nation is embarking on several new and bold initiatives that could alter the IC landscape. China’s new initiatives address at least three key challenges for its IC industry: 1. C... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing

By Mark LaPedus - 09 Oct, 2015 - Comments: 0

Is the sky falling in the IC equipment market? Not yet, but watch out below. Semi capital spending is expected to reach $60.37 billion in 2015, down 1% from 2014, according to Pacific Crest Securities. “Although we trimmed 2016 capex three weeks ago, we are trimming some more. We now see semiconductor capex down 4% in 2016. However, we do not see capex falling off a cliff in 2016 (i.e., down ... » read more

ALD Market Heats Up

By Mark LaPedus - 17 Sep, 2015 - Comments: 1

Amid the shift to 3D NAND, finFETs and other device architectures, the atomic layer deposition (ALD) market is heating up on several fronts. Applied Materials, for example, recently moved to shakeup the landscape by rolling out a new, high-throughput ALD tool. Generally, [getkc id="250" kc_name="ALD"] is a process that deposits materials layer-by-layer at the atomic level, enabling thin and ... » read more

Much Ado About Weakening Currency, China, And IoT

By Lara Chamness - 31 Aug, 2015 - Comments: 0

At the 10th annual SEMI/Gartner Market Symposium, keynoted by ARM’s Ian Ferguson, market analysts gathered to present their views on the current state of the industry. Several key themes emerged including weakening currency impact on the industry’s forecasts, China’s $20 billion Industry Fund, and the Internet of Things (IoT). Industry overview and trends were presented by Bob Johnson,... » read more

IIoT Comes To Chip Manufacturing

By Ed Sperling - 18 Aug, 2015 - Comments: 0

Nicholas Ward, director of marketing for the services group at Applied Materials, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about how data needs to be shared in semiconductor manufacturing and why it's so slow to happen in this industry. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: Where are we with the [getkc id="76" kc_name="IoT"] and the [getkc id="78" kc_name="IIoT"]? War... » read more

Long Road Ahead To Securing IoT

By Dylan McGrath - 07 Aug, 2015 - Comments: 0

Security is a hot topic within the vast swath of the electronics industry that is working to bring the [getkc id="76" comment="Internet of Things"]/[getkc id="260" comment="Internet of Everything"] from concept to reality. A slew of standards and protocols are currently being developed to help secure the IoT from the edge nodes through the networks that carry the accumulated data. Chip vendors ... » read more

5 Things To Know About The IoT

By Ed Sperling - 06 Aug, 2015 - Comments: 0

The IoT means many things to many people. While the numbers and projections are all very large, the views of what it actually means are vastly different because it can include anything from a sensor in a car or an ingestible medical device to a data center full of servers and the connectivity in between. But there are some interesting shifts under way, both driving the [getkc id="76" comment... » read more

Foundries Expand Planar Efforts

By Mark LaPedus - 18 Jun, 2015 - Comments: 0

Competition is heating up in the leading-edge foundry business, as vendors begin to ramp up their new 16nm/14nm finFET processes. But that’s not the only action in the foundry arena. They are also expanding their efforts in the leading-edge planar market by rolling out new 28nm and 22nm processes. On one front, TSMC is offering new 28nm variants, based on bulk CMOS technology. And on an... » read more

Speeding Up E-beam Inspection

By Mark LaPedus - 18 Jun, 2015 - Comments: 0

Wafer inspection, the science of finding killer defects in chips, is reaching a critical juncture. Optical inspection, the workhorse technology in the fab, is being stretched to the limit at advanced nodes. And e-beam inspection can find tiny defects, but it remains slow in terms of throughput. So to fill the gap, the industry has been working on a new class of multiple beam e-beam inspectio... » read more

Semiconductor R&D Crisis?

By Mark LaPedus - 11 Jun, 2015 - Comments: 3

Research and development is a sometimes forgotten but critical element in the semiconductor industry. The delicate R&D ecosystem enables many of the key breakthroughs in the business. But there could be a troubling trend, if not a crisis, brewing on two fronts in the R&D arena. On one front, R&D costs for semiconductor technologies are escalating at each node. Higher R&D costs are not only ... » read more

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