tag: Intel

TFETs Cut Sub-Threshold Swing
By Katherine Derbyshire - 16 Mar, 2017 - Comments: 0

One of the main obstacles to continued transistor scaling is power consumption. As gate length decreases, the sub-threshold swing (SS) — the gate voltage required to change the drain current by one order of magnitude — increases. As Qin Zhang, Wei Zhao, and Alan Seabaugh of Notre Dame explained in 2006, SS faces a theoretical minimum of 60 mV/decade at room temperature in conventional MO... » read more

China: Fab Boom or Bust?
By Mark LaPedus - 16 Mar, 2017 - Comments: 2

China’s semiconductor industry continues to expand at a frenetic pace. At present there are nearly two dozen new fab projects in China. Whether all these fab projects get off the ground is not entirely clear because the dynamics in China remain fluid. What is clear is the motivation behind this building frenzy—China is trying to reduce its huge trade imbalance in ICs. The country continu... » read more

Intel To Buy Mobileye
By Ed Sperling - 13 Mar, 2017 - Comments: 2

Intel today said it would acquire embedded vision leader Mobileye for roughly $15.3 billion in equity—$14.7 billion in "enterprise value"—setting the stage for a huge push by the chipmaker into the autonomous driving market. Intel has been dabbling in the automotive market for some time, starting with an unsuccessful bid to replace 8-bit microcontrollers with low-end processors. With the... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing
By Mark LaPedus - 10 Mar, 2017 - Comments: 0

Fab tools In response to SEMI members and partners, SEMI says it is not organizing Semicon Russia 2017, or any other events in Russia this year. “In light of the current market conditions and SEMI stakeholder concerns, SEMI reached out to members and customers over the last six months to assess how to provide the most value for our community in Russia,” said Laith Altimime, president of SE... » read more

Quality Issues Widen
By Ed Sperling - 06 Mar, 2017 - Comments: 0

As the amount of semiconductor content in cars, medical and industrial applications increases, so does the concern about how long these devices will function properly—and what exactly that means. Quality is frequently a fuzzy concept. In mobile phones, problems have ranged from bad antenna placement, which resulted in batteries draining too quickly, to features that take too long to load. ... » read more

A Brief History of Test
By Jeff Dorsch - 06 Mar, 2017 - Comments: 5

The history of semiconductor test systems is the subject of this blog post. We’ll turn to printed circuit board testing at another time. Boston-based Teradyne sold its D133 diode tester to Raytheon in 1961. Five years later, it introduced the J259 integrated circuit tester, which had a minicomputer to run the test programs. For many, this marks the beginning of automatic (or automated) tes... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing
By Mark LaPedus - 03 Mar, 2017 - Comments: 2

SPIE news At this week’s SPIE Advanced Lithography conference, the industry paid close attention to the progress of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. Here’s the general report card: EUV is making noticeable progress, but there are still some challenges ahead, such as the power source, resists and pellicles. Several issues need to be resolved before chipmakers can put EUV into mass... » read more

Big Data On Wheels
By Jeff Dorsch - 02 Mar, 2017 - Comments: 0

By Jeff Dorsch & Ed Sperling All kinds of chips are going into driver-assisted and autonomous cars. On one side are arrays of sensors, which are generating huge amounts of data about everything from lane position and proximity to other cars to unexpected objects in the road. On the other side are the chips required to process that data at blazing speed. As the market for PCs and mobil... » read more

What Does An AI Chip Look Like?
By Ed Sperling - 01 Mar, 2017 - Comments: 5

Depending upon your point of reference, artificial intelligence will be the next big thing or it will play a major role in all of the next big things. This explains the frenzy of activity in this sector over the past 18 months. Big companies are paying billions of dollars to acquire startup companies, and even more for R&D. In addition, governments around the globe are pouring additional... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing
By Mark LaPedus - 24 Feb, 2017 - Comments: 0

Chipmakers Recently, Intel announced plans to invest more than $7 billion to complete its previously-announced fab in Chandler, Ariz. Targeted for 7nm processes, Fab 42 will be completed in 3 to 4 years. As reported, the fab announcement was made by U.S. President Donald Trump and Intel CEO Brian Krzanich at the White House. There is more to the story. Typically, Intel has two fabs for a gi... » read more

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