tag: IBM

Semiconductor R&D Crisis?
By Mark LaPedus - 11 Jun, 2015 - Comments: 3

Research and development is a sometimes forgotten but critical element in the semiconductor industry. The delicate R&D ecosystem enables many of the key breakthroughs in the business. But there could be a troubling trend, if not a crisis, brewing on two fronts in the R&D arena. On one front, R&D costs for semiconductor technologies are escalating at each node. Higher R&D costs are not only ... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing
By Mark LaPedus - 22 May, 2015 - Comments: 0

At an event, Samsung rolled out its 10nm finFET technology. The company also showed a 300mm wafer with 10nm finFET transistors. "We have silicon-based PDKs out," said Kelvin Low, senior director of foundry marketing for Samsung. Samsung plans to move into production with its 10nm finFET technology by the end of 2016, he said. IC Insights released its chip rankings in terms of sales in the fi... » read more

Week 50: It’s Not Just A Technical Conference, It’s An Ecosystem
By Anne Cirkel - 22 May, 2015 - Comments: 0

While our free “I love DAC” registration comes to an end this week, there are still a few weeks left to register for the full conference, the designer and IP track, or one of the many co-located events at DAC (see below). Over the last year I’ve been reminded often about the unique niche occupied by DAC. Just last week a good friend was trying to find an industry event in the greater EDA ... » read more

The Bumpy Road To 10nm FinFETs
By Mark LaPedus - 21 May, 2015 - Comments: 0

Foundry vendors are currently ramping up their 16nm/14nm [getkc id="185" kc_name="finFET"] processes in the market. Vendors are battling each other for business in the arena, although the migration from planar to finFETs is expected to be a slow and expensive process. Still, despite the challenges at 16nm/14nm, vendors are gearing up for the next battle in the foundry business—the 10nm nod... » read more

One-On-One: Thomas Caulfield
By Mark LaPedus - 21 May, 2015 - Comments: 0

Semiconductor Engineering sat down to talk about fabs, process technology and the equipment industry with Thomas Caulfield, senior vice president and general manager of Fab 8 at [getentity id="22819" comment="GlobalFoundries"]. Located in Saratoga County, N.Y., Fab 8 is GlobalFoundries’ most advanced 300mm wafer fab. What follows are excerpts of that discussion. SE: Last year, GlobalFoundr... » read more

Brain-Inspired Computing
By Ann Mutschler - 18 May, 2015 - Comments: 0

Approaching power/performance tradeoffs from an architectural perspective is essential given the complexities of today’s SoCs. And beyond some traditional techniques that I discussed in a recent article, Bernard Murphy, CTO at Atrenta mentioned that there is currently a lot of buzz about using non-Von Neumann architectures — especially for recognition functions (voice, image and text). ... » read more

Week 49: Are We There Yet?
By Anne Cirkel - 15 May, 2015 - Comments: 0

When I was a little kid my parents would pack me and my sister into the car and drive to the Mediterranean for our summer camping vacation. It was quite a haul from our home on the west side of Germany near the border with Belgium to the south of France, and as is true of any long car trip, the last stretch was the hardest. After hours in the backseat, my sister and I would be craning our necks... » read more

Security Progress In Some Places, Not Others
By Ed Sperling - 07 May, 2015 - Comments: 0

Security is big business, and it's increasingly part of business done between big businesses in the semiconductor market. The deal that was announced this week between NXP and Qualcomm, adding a secure NFC module to the Snapdragon chip, is certainly good business. But what's really interesting about this arrangement is that it was done between two very prominent companies, which saw a potent... » read more

New Robots For The IoT
By Ernest Worthman - 07 May, 2015 - Comments: 0

Until recently, remote telepresence has largely been a fixed screen with a video link between participants, and mostly in business setting. But all of that is about to change once the [getkc id="76" comment="Internet of Things"]/Internet of Everything begins to take root. There is a plethora of development going on in mobile robotic telepresence (MRT). Companies such as iRobot, Cisco, Suitab... » read more

The End Of Silicon?
By Katherine Derbyshire - 04 May, 2015 - Comments: 1

As transistors shrink, not all device parameters scale at the same rate—and therein lies a potentially huge problem. In recent years, manufacturers have been able to reduce equivalent oxide thickness (EOT) more quickly than operating voltage. As a result, the electric field present in the channel and gate dielectric has been increasing. Moreover, EOT reduction is achieved in part by reduci... » read more

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