Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Global semiconductor sales decreased 5.2% month-to-month in January, according to a new report by the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). For the year, worldwide chip sales are down 18.5%, with the largest drop in sales by China at 31.6%, followed by the Asia Pacific region at 19.5%, and the Americas at 12.4%. Despite the contraction, companies are increasing investments in manufacturi... » read more

Materials and Device Simulations for Silicon Qubit Design and Optimization


Abstract: "Silicon-based microelectronics technology is extremely mature, yet this profoundly important material is now also poised to become a foundation for quantum information processing technologies. In this article, we review the properties of silicon that have made it the material of choice for semiconductor-based qubits with an emphasis on the role that modeling and simulation have play... » read more

3D Printing For More Circuits


After several years of experimentation, and growing success in volume manufacturing for some use cases, technologies for 3D printing of electronic circuits are becoming more common. Some innovations in processes and materials are moving these technologies closer to mainstream electronics manufacturing. Christopher Tuck, professor of material science at the University of Nottingham, observed ... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: June 22


5G metasurface antennas At the recent 2021 IEEE 71st Electronic Components and Technology Conference (ECTC), the Institute of Microelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) presented a paper on a low-profile broadband metasurface antenna for 5G antenna-in-package applications. The National Center for Advanced Packaging and the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences also contri... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Sept. 22


Hairy nanoparticles The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory is developing a new type of material called preceramic polymer-grafted nanoparticles or “hairy nanoparticles” (HNP). HNPs can be used to manufacture a new class of aircraft parts made of ceramic composite materials. An HNP is a hybrid material. It is based on a polymer shell, which is bound to a nanoparticle core, according to t... » read more

Zeroing In On Biological Computing


Artificial spiking neural networks need to replicate both excitatory and inhibitory biological neurons in order to emulate the neural activation patterns seen in biological brains. Doing this with CMOS-based designs is challenging because of the large circuit footprint required. However, researchers at HP Labs observed that one biologically plausible model, the Hodgkins-Huxley model, is math... » read more

Spiking Neural Networks Place Data In Time


Artificial neural networks have found a variety of commercial applications, from facial recognition to recommendation engines. Compute-in-memory accelerators seek to improve the computational efficiency of these networks by helping to overcome the von Neumann bottleneck. But the success of artificial neural networks also highlights their inadequacies. They replicate only a small subset of th... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Feb. 25


Diamond finFETs HRL Laboratories has made new and significant progress to develop diamond finFETs. HRL, a joint R&D venture between Boeing and General Motors, has developed a new ohmic regrowth technique for diamond FETs. This in turn could pave the way towards commercial diamond FETs. Applications include spacecraft, satellites and systems with extreme temperatures. Still in R&D, diamo... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Nov. 19


World’s lightest foam Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has developed what researchers say is the world’s lightest gold foam. LLNL has devised gold aerogel foam. The foam is light enough where it could be carried on the back of tiny insects. Applications for the technology include electronics, catalysis, sensors and energy conversion and storage. An aerogel is based on a ... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Nov. 13


Quantum memories The University of Alberta has developed a new method for making quantum memories, paving the way for a next-generation quantum Internet. Quantum memory is targeted for quantum networks and computers. In classical computing, the information is stored in bits, which can be either a “0” or “1”. In quantum computing, information is stored in quantum bits, or qubits, whi... » read more

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