Dawn Of The Data-Centric Era


A recurring theme of the recent Industry Strategy Symposium (ISS) in Half Moon Bay, California, was how the explosion of new applications such as autonomous vehicles, digital healthcare, quantum computing, and crytocurrency mining are driving the need for more industry-wide collaboration to enable companies to compete in the “Data Centric” era. The resulting digital economy is creating unpr... » read more

Auto Chip Test Issues Grow


By Jeff Dorsch & Ed Sperling Semiconductor suppliers are flocking to the automotive chip market to gain share in fitting out the connected car and the autonomous vehicle. But before those chips are sold to automotive manufacturers and Tier 1 suppliers, they must be tested and certified to meet stringent industry standards. This is no ordinary testing, though. Assisted and autonomous v... » read more

Get Ready For 5G


The 5G wireless rollout, expected to occur over the next few years, will have a major impact on both the number and types of ICs in end-user devices, and on the base stations and repeaters needed to transmit the higher frequency signals. The 5G standard is expected to deliver 10 Gbps of bandwidth— up to 10X the data rates achievable using the advanced forms of 4G— and sub-5ms latencies. ... » read more

Where MEMS Can Boldly Go Now


MEMS chips are being designed to go into the human body as biosensors, which will require unique packaging. And as demand grows for assisted and automated driving, MEMS devices also are finding new use cases in automotive electronics, their chief market segment prior to the millennium. Pressure sensors, such as those that monitor the air pressure in tires, remain the biggest type of [getkc i... » read more

What’s Up With MEMS?


New sensor technologies, and smarter ways of integrating more intelligence, continue to generate unexpected opportunities in the changing MEMS business. Changes needed for sensors for context awareness If digital assistants are ever going to be really useful, they’ll need some particular sensor capabilities to understand emotion, suggests Lama Nachman, head of Intel’s Anticipatory Compu... » read more

The Week In Review: IoT


Deals Advanced Semiconductor Engineering was selected by zGlue as its strategic manufacturing partner. The ASE Group will make the zGlue Integrated Platform, which is said to enable customization for consumer and industrial IoT markets. The ZiP integrates hardware and software in a modular 3DIC-based platform. ASE will assemble zGlue-certified chiplets for connecting through zGlue Smart Fabric... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers TDK has agreed to acquire MEMS supplier InvenSense for cash at an acquisition price of $13.00 per share, for a total acquisition price of $1.3 billion. Cypress has begun volume shipments of microcontrollers (MCUs) based on its 40nm Embedded Charge-Trap (eCT) flash technology. The MCUs are made on a foundry basis at UMC. UMC’s technology is a 40nm low power (40LP) logic process.... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Fab tools Is Nikon’s semiconductor lithography equipment business on the ropes? Amid losses and dwindling market share, the company has announced a major restructuring plan for this unit. It will reduce fixed costs related to its 193nm immersion scanner business “by headcount rationalization and re-assignments of 1,000 employees,” according to Nikon. In addition, Nikon is reassessing its... » read more

The Week in Review: IoT


Technology The Internet of Things got some attention at this week’s Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich introduced the Joule compute module in his opening-day keynote address. The module is a high-performance developer platform supporting Intel RealSense depth-sensing cameras. Canonical, Microsoft, and PivotHead were among the IDF exhibitors demonstrating the Jou... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Fab tools Lam Research’s proposed move to acquire KLA-Tencor has been pushed out for the second time. The deal was supposed to be completed by mid-2016. Then, it was pushed out to the third quarter amid regulatory issues. Now, the companies hope to close the deal by the fourth quarter of 2016. “The KLA-Tencor acquisition is expected to close in the December quarter. This reflects another p... » read more

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