The Silicon Foundry Market Is Alive And Well


I attended the ARM TechCon conference in Santa Clara last week and met with the GlobalFoundries team to discuss their new 14nm finFET technology. GlobalFoundries’ 14LPP technology offering was qualified in the third quarter of 2015 and is on track for volume production in 2016. FX-14 design kits are available to customers now.  This announcement was the culmination of an extensive body of... » read more

Placing Bets On Future Technology


Marie Semeria, CEO of Leti, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about where the French research and technology organization is placing its future technology bets and what's behind those decisions. What follows are excerpts of that discussion. SE: It's becoming more difficult and expensive to shrink features, so where do we go next? Semeria: We see several areas that we believe... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


IC Insights released its preliminary top IC rankings in terms of sales for 2015. In the rankings, Intel remains in first place in terms of chip sales in 2015, followed by Samsung and TSMC. GlobalFoundries and UMC also moved up in the rankings. Beyond that, the market is in flux. “The pending mergers of Avago and Broadcom and NXP and Freescale will have a significant impact on future top-20 ra... » read more

Upcoming Hurdles For The Semiconductor Industry


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss upcoming challenges and hurdles to overcome for the semiconductor industry with Vic Kulkarni, senior vice president and general manager, RTL Power Business at Ansys; Chris Rowen, Fellow and CTO, IP Group at Cadence; Subramani Kengeri, vice president, Global Design Solutions at GLOBALFOUNDRIES; Simon Davidmann, CEO of Imperas Software; Michael Buehle... » read more

Tech Talk: 14nm And Stacked Die


Aashish Malhotra, marketing director for the ASIC Business Unit at GlobalFoundries, talks about 14nm process technology, the IP ecosystem, and why that technology node will be used as a platform for 2.5D and 3D stacked die across a wide range of markets including the Internet of Everything. [youtube vid=ukTRuedB7ZU] » read more

The Great IoE Race Begins


Nobody knows how many tens of billions of semiconductors will be used in the IoE, but it's a sure bet it won't be a few chips replicated billions of times. Most IoE devices will need to be customized for specific applications. Many will need to be highly reliable for many years. And all of them will need to be secure and power-efficient. Yet they also will need to connect to heterogeneous ne... » read more

More Choices, Less Certainty


The increasing cost of feature scaling is splintering the chip market, injecting uncertainty into a global supply chain that has been continually fine-tuned for decades. Those with deep enough resources and a clear need for density will likely follow Moore's Law, at least until 7nm. What comes after that will depend on a variety of factors ranging from available lithography—EUV, multi-bea... » read more

Increasing Challenges At Advanced Nodes


Gary Patton, chief technology officer at GlobalFoundries, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about new materials, stacked die, how far FD-SOI can be extended, and new directions for interconnects and transistors. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: Where do you see problems at future nodes? Patton: At the device level, we have to be able to pattern these thing... » read more

What China Is Planning


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

Manufacturing Bits: Oct. 20


Singapore opens R&D center The Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) has officially opened its new R&D center in Singapore. The center, dubbed Fusionopolis Two, is a $450 million facility, according to Singapore’s A*STAR. It will provide the industry with co-location opportunities for R&D. Anchored at Fusionopolis Two are the following A*STAR research institutes: th... » read more

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