Driving By Ethernet


The race to add more sophisticated and safety-critical electronics into cars is forcing carmakers to revisit the communications systems within increasingly electrified and connected vehicles. Until very recently, communication between components within a vehicle was simplistic, and communication between vehicles was non-existent. All of that is changing quickly. Rapid and secure communicatio... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Market research The SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium (ISS) opened with the theme “Smart, Intuitive & Connected: Semiconductor Devices Transforming the World.” Click here for some of the highlights at ISS. Here are more highlights from ISS. Korea is on a spending spree for fab tools. In total, Samsung and SK Hynix are forecast to invest over $20 billion in fab tools worldwide in 2018... » read more

Reflection On 2017: Design And EDA


People love to make predictions, and most of the time they have it easy, but at Semiconductor Engineering, we ask them to look back on the predictions they make each year and to assess how close to the mark they were. We see what they missed and what surprised them. Not everyone accepts our offer to grade themselves, but most have this year. (Part one looked at the predictions associated with s... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Dec. 12


3D diodes At the recent IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) in San Francisco, the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC) presented a paper on what they call the world’s first back-illuminated 3D-stacked, single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) in 45nm CMOS technology. A SPAD is one type of a photodetector. These... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Fab tools and test Four former employees at Applied Materials were charged by the U.S. for allegedly trying to steal the company’s own fab tool technology designs, according to a report from Bloomberg and others. The former employees were allegedly trying to sell the technology to a Chinese startup that would compete against Applied, according to the report. The former employees--Liang C... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Dec. 5


Intel vs. GlobalFoundries At the IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) this week, GlobalFoundries and Intel will square off and present papers on their new logic processes. Intel will present more details about its previously-announced 10nm finFET technology, while GlobalFoundries will discuss its 7nm finFET process. As expected, Intel and GlobalFoundries will use 193nm immersi... » read more

One-On-One: Mike Muller


Arm CTO Mike Muller sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to discuss a wide range of technology and market shifts, including the impact of machine learning, where new market opportunities will show up and how the semiconductor industry will need to change to embrace them. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: It's getting to the point where instead of just developing chips, w... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


IP Cryptographic flaws have been discovered in the IEEE P1735 standard for encrypting IP and managing access rights. A team from the University of Florida found "a surprising number of cryptographic mistakes in the standard. In the most egregious cases, these mistakes enable attack vectors that allow us to recover the entire underlying plaintext IP." The researchers warn that an adversary coul... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Oct. 24


Redefining unit measurements At a recent meeting, the International Committee for Weights and Measures (CIPM) took the next step towards the expected redefinition of four base units within the International System of Units (SI). The SI base units include the following metrics or constants--meter, kilogram, second, ampere, kelvin, mole, and the candela. Here’s the fundamental constant... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Market research The IC market remains hot, as several market researchers are raising their forecasts--again. Gartner recently raised its overall IC forecast. Now, IC Insights has raised its IC market growth rate forecast for 2017 to 22%, up six percentage points from the 16% increase shown in its mid-year update. In March, IC Insights raised its worldwide IC market growth forecast for 2017 ... » read more

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