Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers China’s Tsinghua Unigroup is in trouble. The group is the parent company of China’s YMTC, a 3D NAND supplier, and other chip ventures. It is close to moving into bankruptcy proceedings. Now, a consortium led by Alibaba has emerged as the frontrunner to take over Tsinghua Unigroup, according to a report from Bloomberg. That deal would keep the company afloat, the report said. ... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


3D-ICs Samsung Foundry released 3D-IC EDA flows approvals. 3D-ICs, which are the multi-dies stacked together and integrated into a package, are finding use in automotive, high-performance computing, and artificial intelligence systems. Samsung Foundry qualified Cadence’s 2D-to-3D native 3D partitioning flow for 3D-IC design that automates creating a memory-on-logic 3D stacking configuration,... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers After years in the works, GlobalFoundries is finally a public company. But on its first day of trading on Thursday (Oct. 28), shares of the foundry vendor slipped a bit. GF finished its first day of trading at $46.40. This compares to the $47 per share it priced in the initial public offering (IPO), according a report to Reuters. The chipmaker has a market capitalization of about $2... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Government policy Hoping to resolve the ongoing worldwide chip shortage situation, the U.S. Department of Commerce late last month launched a “request for information (RFI)” initiative, which involved sending questionnaires to various semiconductor companies. The U.S. government is asking all parts of the supply chain – producers, consumers, and intermediaries – to voluntarily share in... » read more

Making Batteries Denser And Safer


Battery technology is improving swiftly, driven by the rapidly rising demand for electric vehicles and the vast body of knowledge developed by the semiconductor industry. The market for electric vehicles (EVs) is on a fast upward trajectory, with global sales predicted to grow more than 12 times to more than 31 million vehicles. In fact, EVs will account for almost a third of new vehicle sal... » read more

Competing Auto Sensor Fusion Approaches


As today’s internal-combustion engines are replaced by electric/electronic vehicles, mechanical-system sensors will be supplanted by numerous electronic sensors both for efficient operation and for achieving various levels of autonomy. Some of these new sensors will operate alone, but many prominent ones will need their outputs combined — or “fused” — with the outputs of other sensor... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive GM’s self-driving car Cruise and Alphabet’s Waymo have won permits to offer rides to passengers in California. Ford Motor Company announced it is expanding its electric pickup truck assembly lines. With SK Innovation, Ford will create a 3,600-acre mega campus in west Tennessee to produce electric trucks. The company estimates the campus will add 6,000 new jobs to the economy.... » read more

The Silicon Carbide Race Begins


The growing adoption of silicon carbide (SiC) for a variety of automotive chips has reached the tipping point where most chipmakers now consider it a relatively safe bet, setting off a scramble to stake a claim and push this wide-bandgap technology into the mainstream. SiC holds great promise for a number of automotive applications, particularly for battery electric vehicles. It can extend d... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


OEMs For some time, the automotive industry has suffered due to chip shortages in the market. And the chip shortages are spreading into other markets. In the latest news, GM plans to idle key truck plants amid chip shortages, according to a report from Bloomberg. “GM said eight of its 14 North American assembly plants will experience shutdowns this month because of chip shortages, includi... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers Taiwan’s Foxconn continues to expand its efforts in the semiconductor business. Foxconn has acquired a 6-inch wafer fab and the equipment from Taiwan’s Macronix for NT$2.52 billion (US$90.76 million). With the fab, Foxconn plans to enter the wideband gap semiconductor market, namely silicon carbide (SiC). SiC devices are used in electric vehicles, a market that Foxconn is making... » read more

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