tag: IBM

The Week In Review: Manufacturing
By Mark LaPedus - 30 May, 2014 - Comments: 0

GlobalFoundries’ campus in upstate New York employs over 2,200 workers. It is looking to add 600-800 more people by the end of 2014. The company is seeking out engineers with four-year degrees and technicians with associates degrees. It is also bringing in engineers from IBM to ramp its fab in New York. Applied Materials introduced the Endura Ventura PVD system that helps reduce the cost o... » read more

Reduced Power To The People!
By Steve Schulz - 29 May, 2014 - Comments: 0

Fifteen years ago, many of us involved in writing the design chapter of the ITRS (International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors) already knew that power/energy consumption eventually would become a major problem for the industry’s growth. Engineers developing microprocessors (CPUs and DSPs) and graphics engines (GPUs) led the wave of predictions, because extrapolating known trend data s... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing
By Mark LaPedus - 23 May, 2014 - Comments: 1

About 150 to 200 employees from IBM’s chip unit will be dispatched to work at GlobalFoundries, according to the Poughkeepsie Journal. GlobalFoundries said the arrangement is temporary, according to the report. GlobalFoundries is the leading candidate to buy IBM’s chip unit, which is apparently on the block. To date, however, GlobalFoundries and IBM have yet to make any announcements on the... » read more

Taming The PDK Beast At DAC
By Steve Schulz - 19 May, 2014 - Comments: 0

A quick Web search on the phrase “process design kit” reveals about 48 million matches. This happens to be about 10 times larger than for the current pop dance sensation “twerking,” so I guess that’s at least something to brag about. Yet if we now add the word interoperability to our PDK search, we find only 200K matches, or less than 0.5% — and therein exposes the chronic problem w... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing
By Mark LaPedus - 16 May, 2014 - Comments: 0

IC Insights has released its rankings of the Q1 ‘14 top 25 semiconductor suppliers. Outside of the top five spots, there were numerous changes. MediaTek jumped up four positions. Also, last year’s Micron/Elpida merger created a new giant semiconductor company with Micron’s sales expected to be over $17 billion this year. Toshiba will demolish the No. 2 semiconductor fabrication facilit... » read more

Shootout At 28nm
By Ed Sperling - 15 May, 2014 - Comments: 0

By Ed Sperling & Mark LaPedus Samsung, Soitec and STMicroelectronics are joining forces on 28nm FD-SOI, creating a showdown with TSMC and others over the best single-patterned processes and materials and raising questions about how quickly companies need to move to the finFET technology generation. The multi-source manufacturing collaboration agreement for fully depleted silicon-on-insulato... » read more

The Bumpy Road To FinFETs
By Mark LaPedus - 15 May, 2014 - Comments: 2

The shift from planar transistors to finFETs is a major inflection point in the IC industry. FinFETs are expected to enable higher performance chips at lower voltages. And the next-generation transistor technology also could allow the industry to extend CMOS to the 10nm node and perhaps beyond. But as it turns out, finFET technology is also harder to master than previously thought. For exam... » read more

The Week In Review: Design
By Ed Sperling - 18 Apr, 2014 - Comments: 0

Certifications TSMC certified Mentor Graphics’ DFM, place and route and custom IC tools, as well as its SPICE simulator, for the 16nm finFET process.  The foundry also certified Cadence’s digital and custom/analog tools for that process, including physical verification, QRC extraction, timing sign off and its power integrity solution. And it certified Synopsys’ digital and custom soluti... » read more

Real Countries Have Fabs
By Ed Sperling - 17 Apr, 2014 - Comments: 3

Persistent rumblings about the sale of IBM’s semiconductor unit might have seemed absurd a couple decades ago—before IBM sold off its PC unit to Lenovo and lost the gaming chip business to AMD’s x86 chips—but no one is scoffing at the possibility these days. The reality is that IBM will never reach the volume necessary to be the No. 1 or No. 2 player in its segment. It’s not even i... » read more

Billions And Billions Invested
By Mark LaPedus - 17 Apr, 2014 - Comments: 4

Over the years, next-generation [getkc id="80" kc_name="lithography"] (NGL) has suffered various setbacks and delays. But until recently, the industry basically shrugged its shoulders and expressed relatively little anxiety about the NGL delays. After all, optical lithography was doing the job in the fab and NGL would eventually materialize. Today, however, the mood is different. In fact, th... » read more

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