Industry Road Map Under Construction


While most engineers think in terms of PPA—the classic power, performance and area tradeoffs—their bosses tend to see the world in terms of risk vs. opportunity. Until 22nm, these two objectives moved forward at roughly the same pace, despite the growing technical challenges of fitting more functionality into an SoC. Much has changed since then, and even more will change over the next f... » read more

Advanced Packaging Is Real. Now What?


For the past five years, it's been clear that 2.5D, fan-outs and other forms of system-in-package were on the horizon. Exactly when they would arrive no one knew. The most common prediction was that the timing would depend on when one of the big chipmakers decided to go down that route. The theory was that the remainder of the industry would follow, ecosystem issues would be sorted out—partic... » read more

Thinking Outside The Chip


Intel will begin adding 2.5D and 3D packaging into its processors, following the lead set by IBM and AMD in recognizing that new packaging approaches are essential for improving performance and lowering power. This shift won't derail the semiconductor industry's efforts to the reach future process nodes or continually shrink features, but it does add context for other factors that in... » read more

Predictions For 2016: Markets


Seventeen companies sent in their predictions for this year with some of them sending predictions from several people. This is in addition to the CEO predictions that were recently published. That is a fine crop of views for the coming year, especially since they know that they will be held accountable for their views and this year, just like the last, they will have to answer for them. We beli... » read more

Reflections On 2015


It is easy to make predictions, but few people can make them with any degree of accuracy. Most of the time, those predictions are forgotten by the end of the year and there is no one to do a tally of who holds more credibility for next year. Not so with Semiconductor Engineering. We like to hold people's feet to the fire, but while the "Pants-On-Fire" meter may be applicable to politicians, we ... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


At one time, China’s Xiaomi was a high-flying smartphone vendor. The privately-held company had a market capitalization of $45 billion. But the bottom has fallen out of the company amid share losses. “By early 2015, it was clear that problems were emerging as growth ground to a halt and nothing that Xiaomi has done since has been able to re-start it. Xiaomi has ground to halt because there ... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


China is investing billions of dollars in the IC industry and equipment sectors. The nation is also in the midst of an acquisition and an investment spree, especially in IC packaging. For example, Jiangsu Changjiang Electronics Technology (JCET), a Chinese OSAT, shook up the landscape by recently announcing a deal to acquire STATS ChipPAC for $780 million. The deal was completed in August of 20... » read more

How Will China Spend $120B?


It's daunting to consider how much Chinese VC and government money is ready for investment around the globe. With the total now estimated somewhere in the neighborhood of $120 billion, that's a huge stockpile of cash. Just to put that in perspective, roughly $48.3 billion was invested by U.S. investors in 2014, according to a report issued by the National Venture Capital Association and Pricewa... » 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

New Metrics For The Cloud


Data centers are beginning to adjust their definition of what makes one server better than another. Rather than comparing benchmarked performance of general-purpose servers, they are adding a new level of granularity based upon what kind of chips work best for certain operations or applications. Those decisions increasingly include everything from the level of redundancy in compute operations, ... » read more

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