Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers GlobalFoundries and the Chengdu municipality have signed an amendment and changed the strategy of their joint fab investment in Chengdu, China. Originally, GlobalFoundries was supposed to install 180nm/130nm processes in the China-based 300mm fab. The partners have decided to bypass that technology. Intead, the fab will start with GlobalFoundries’ 22nm FD-SOI process. “Ch... » read more

Can Graphene Be Mass Manufactured?


Since the isolation of graphene in 2004, the high mobility and unique transport properties of 2-dimensional semiconductors have tantalized physicists and materials scientists. Their in-plane carrier transport and lack of dangling bonds potentially can minimize line/edge scattering and other effects of extreme scaling. While 2-D materials cannot compete with silicon at current device dime... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Fab/mask manufacturing An alliance of companies have formed the Center for Deep Learning in Electronics Manufacturing (CDLe). NuFlare, Mycronic and D2S have established the San Jose, Calif.-based center to advance the state-of-the-art in deep learning for its industry-specific applications. Imec.xpand, an early-stage and growth fund that is initiated by Imec, has closed its first fund at 11... » read more

Cobalt Shortages Ahead


Rapid growth of electric vehicles is creating an enormous demand for cobalt, causing tight supply, high prices and supply chain issues for this critical material. Cobalt is a ferromagnetic metal and one of the key materials used in lithium-ion batteries for cell phones, notebook PCs, battery-electric cars and hybrids. It also is used in alloys and semiconductors. And while the IC industry co... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Aug. 21


World’s smallest transistor The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) has developed what researchers say is the world’s smallest transistor. Researchers have devised a single-atom transistor. The transistor switches an electrical current via a single atom, which resides in a gel electrolyte. The device also works at room temperature. While others have developed single-atom transist... » read more

3D NAND Flash Wars Begin


3D NAND suppliers are gearing up for a new battle amid a period of price and competitive pressures, racing each other to the next technology generations. Competition is intensifying as a new player enters the 3D NAND market—China’s Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (YMTC). Backed by billions of dollars in funding from the Chinese government, YMTC recently introduced its first 3D NAND techn... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Aug. 7


DNA ROMs The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Semiconductor Research Corp. (SRC) are investing $12 million to develop a new class of memories and other technologies, such as DNA-based read-only memory (ROM), nucleic acid memory (NAM) and neural networks based on yeast cells. The effort is called the Semiconductor Synthetic Biology for Information Processing and Storage Technologies... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: July 31


Florida R&D fab A new microelectronics R&D initiative in Florida is expanding its operations and readying its new 200mm fab facility. The initiative, called BRIDG, describes itself as a non-profit, public-private partnership. BRIDG is basically an R&D microelectronics facility, which is focusing on the development of select technologies, such as photonics, sensors, imagers and 2.5D/3D pac... » read more

Leti’s Next Focus


Emmanuel Sabonnadière, chief executive of Leti, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to discuss R&D trends, a new deal with Soitec, and the latest developments at the France-based research organization. Leti is a research institute of CEA Tech. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: Leti recently formed an alliance with Soitec. Under the terms, Leti and Soitec are formin... » read more

Bridges Vs. Interposers


The number of technology options continue to grow for advanced packaging, including new and different ways to incorporate so-called silicon bridges in products. For some time, Intel has offered a silicon bridge technology called Embedded Multi-die Interconnect Bridge (EMIB), which makes use of a tiny piece of silicon with routing layers that connects one chip to another in an IC package. In ... » read more

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