5 Reasons EUV Will Or Won’t Be Used


Digging into this subject, there are five metrics that count in a lithography tool: resolution, throughput, defects, overlay, and reliability. So what does the best data tell us about the current state and realistic prognosis for [gettech id="31045" comment="EUV"]. Semiconductor Engineering posed this question to Matt Colburn, senior manager for patterning research at [getentity id="22306" comm... » read more

Rethinking The Cloud


Data center architectures have seen very few radical changes since the commercial introduction of the [getentity id="22306" comment="IBM"] System/360 mainframe in 1964. There have been incremental improvements in speed and throughput over the years, with a move to a client/server model in the 1990s, but from a high level this is still an environment where data is processed and stored centrally ... » read more

NXP To Buy Freescale For $16.7B


By Ann Steffora Mutschler & Ed Sperling Dutch semiconductor giant NXP Semiconductors will buy Texas-based Freescale Semiconductor for $16.7 billion—$11.8 billion in cash, $5.6 billion worth of debts, minus $696 million in cash reserves—creating a combined company with a broad-based product portfolio and projected annual revenue of more than $10 billion. Given the size of the deal... » read more

How To Deal With Electromigration


The replacement of aluminum with copper interconnect wiring, first demonstrated by IBM in 1997, brought the integrated circuit industry substantial improvements in both resistance to electromigration and line conductivity. Copper is both a better and more stable conductor than aluminum. Difficult though the transition was, it helped extend device scaling for another eighteen years (and counting... » read more

The Week In Review: Design/IoT


Mergers & Acquisitions NXP acquired Quintic’s Bluetooth Low Energy and Wearable businesses, adding BLTE to their low power RF-connectivity portfolio. The team of approximately 65 is expected to join NXP when the deal closes in Q1 2015. Tools Cadence unveiled the integration of Forte's Cynthesizer with their own C-to-Silicon Compiler. The result is the Stratus high-level synthesis... » read more

GaN Manufacturing Meets Big Silicon


I have been talking about GaN on Silicon for several years because it offers a path to cost reduction in LED’s in the same way as silicon semiconductors. This year at Photonics West 2015, Aixtron presented its next generation 6-inch wafer system with all the automation that the semiconductor guys expect to be able to build GaN power transistors. The systems are configured as cluster tools... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


For years, chipmakers have attempted to build fabs in India. So far, however, India has failed to set up modern fabs and for good reason. There are issues in terms of obtaining dependable power and water for a fab in India, according to Will Strauss, president of Forward Concepts, who added that India also suffers from government bureaucracy. India is still trying. Last week, Cricket Semicon... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


IBM continues to cut jobs, according to IEEE Spectrum and an IBM employee organization. Meanwhile, IBM and SUNY Polytechnic Institute announced that more than 220 engineers and scientists who lead IBM's advanced chip R&D efforts at SUNY Poly's Albany Nanotech campus will become part of IBM Research. While military applications continue to experience strong growth in RF gallium-nitride (GaN)... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


This week, IBM began to cut jobs amid lackluster results. Big Blue is also in the process of selling its chip unit to GlobalFoundries. GlobalFoundries said the jobs are safe at IBM Micro, at least for now, according to a report the Press and Sun-Bulletin. What’s the latest with Applied Materials’ proposed acquisition with Tokyo Electron Ltd. (TEL)? “Germany, Israel and Singapore approv... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


China’s ambitious plan in the 1990s to create numerous foundries did not come to fruition. But in 2014, the Chinese government described new semiconductor industry programs that will utilize investments by both the Chinese national government ($19.5 billion) and local government and private equity investors ($97.4 billion). “IC Insights believes that these outlays have the potential to sign... » read more

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