The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers Next month, GlobalFoundries will host a job fair in Portland, Ore., according to reports. The company hopes to hire former Intel workers. These are workers who lost their jobs as part of Intel's recent layoff. Anokiwave, a developer of chips for the mmWave market, has announced a foundry alliance with GlobalFoundries. GlobalFoundries will make so-called Silicon Core chips on a f... » read more

Advanced Packaging Requires Better Yield


Whether Moore's Laws truly ends, or whether the semiconductor industry reaches into the Angstrom world after 3nm—the semiconductor industry dislikes fractions—advanced packaging increasingly will dominate semiconductor designs. Apple already is on board with its iPhone 7, using TSMC's fan-out approach. And all of the major foundries and OSATs are lining up with a long list of capabilitie... » read more

More EUV Mask Gaps


Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography is at a critical juncture. After several delays and glitches, [gettech id="31045" comment="EUV"] is now targeted for 7nm and/or 5nm. But there are still a number of technologies that must come together before EUV is inserted into mass production. And if the pieces don’t fall into place, EUV could slip again. First, the EUV source must generate more ... » read more

Making 2.5D, Fan-Outs Cheaper


Now that it has been shown to work, the race is on to make advanced [getkc id="27" kc_name="packaging"] more affordable. While device scaling could continue for another decade or more, the number of companies that can afford to develop SoCs at the leading edge will continue to decline. The question now being addressed is what can supplant it, supplement it, or redefine it. At the center o... » read more

Why EUV Is So Difficult


For years, extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography has been a promising technology that was supposed to help enable advanced chip scaling. But after years of R&D, EUV is still not in production despite major backing from the industry, vast resources and billions of dollars in funding. More recently, though, [gettech id="31045" comment="EUV"] lithography appears to be inching closer to pos... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Fab tools Is Nikon’s semiconductor lithography equipment business on the ropes? Amid losses and dwindling market share, the company has announced a major restructuring plan for this unit. It will reduce fixed costs related to its 193nm immersion scanner business “by headcount rationalization and re-assignments of 1,000 employees,” according to Nikon. In addition, Nikon is reassessing its... » read more

Silicon Photonics Comes Into Focus


Silicon photonics is attracting growing attention and investment as a companion technology to copper wiring inside of data centers, raising new questions about what comes next and when. Light has always been the ultimate standard for speed. It requires less energy to move large quantities of data, generates less heat than electricity, and it can work equally well over long or short distances... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers As expected, Qualcomm has signed a definitive agreement to acquire NXP. The value of the deal is approximately $47 billion. With the deal, Qualcomm is diversifying from a maturing handset market into the growing automotive, IoT and security sectors, according to Genuity semiconductor analyst Matthew Ramsay, in a recent research note. “Automotive infotainment, ADAS, IoT and ot... » read more

Tech Talk: Embedded Memories


Dave Eggleston, vice president of embedded memory at GlobalFoundries, talks about the pros and cons of new types of embedded memory, including which work best for certain applications and with various advanced packaging options. [youtube vid=7D9zoA9FFIw] » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers At upcoming the 2016 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) in San Francisco, TSMC will square off against the alliance of IBM, GlobalFoundries and Samsung at 7nm. IEDM will take place Dec. 3-7, 2016. TSMC will present a paper on 7nm finFET technology. Using 193nm immersion and multi-patterning, the 7nm technology features more than three times the gate density and ei... » read more

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