Time To Think


The semiconductor industry seems to be running place these days—maybe even sprinting in place. At the leading edge of design, companies are still looking at the ramifications of moving to finFETs. The move to a 20nm process with double patterning on 16/14nm finFETs, depending on the foundry, looks like a fairly safe bet for those companies with the volume and the resources to design and de... » read more

New Architectures Redefining The Data Center


By Ed Sperling The cost of powering and cooling data centers, coupled with a better understanding of how enterprise-level applications can utilize hardware more effectively, are spawning a new wave of changes inside of data centers. Data centers are always evolving, but in this sector that evolution is deliberate and sometimes painstakingly slow. In fact, each major shift tends to last a de... » read more

Applied To Buy TEL


In a deal that could shake-up the fab tool landscape, Applied Materials has announced a definitive agreement to acquire rival Tokyo Electron Ltd. (TEL) in a stock deal valued at around $9.3 billion. Under the terms of the blockbuster deal, Applied Materials will own approximately 68% of the new company and TEL will own about 32%.  The combined entities will have a new name, dual headquarter... » read more

The Week In Review: Sept. 23


By Mark LaPedus For some time, Apple’s iPhones have incorporated a separate RF switch and diversity switch from Peregrine Semiconductor (PSMI). The switches are based on a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) variant called silicon-on-sapphire (SOS). Murata takes Peregrine’s RF switches and integrates them into a module. Doug Freedman, an analyst with RBC Capital, said Apple is no longer using PSMI�... » read more

Litho Roadmap Remains Cloudy


By Mark LaPedus For some time, the lithography roadmap has been cloudy. Optical lithography has extended much further than expected. And delays with the various next-generation lithography (NGL) technologies have forced the industry to re-write the roadmap on multiple occasions. Today, there is more uncertainty than ever in lithography. Until recently, for example, leading-edge logic chipma... » read more

The Week In Review: Sept. 16


By Mark LaPedus In June, Crucial.com teamed up with Lou Ferrigno to invite all frustrated computer users to submit a short video showing their most fearsome, frustration-filled and computer-induced roar. Each video was evaluated according to a variety of factors, including volume, enthusiasm, perceived distress, frustration, anxiety, irritation and overall hopelessness. The memory module suppl... » read more

The Week In Review: Sept. 13


By Ed Sperling Cadence unveiled its next-generation emulation platform, greatly boosting the speed by up to 60x for embedded OS verification and by up to 10x for hardware/software verification. Overall, Cadence says the platform doubles verification productivity with a capacity of up to 2.3 billion gates. Cadence also reported that its mixed-signal LP flow allowed Silicon Labs to cut its MCU p... » read more

HotChips: Power8


It’s another year, another HotChips Conference and another update on IBM’s POWER processor. IBM continues to impress with its big iron processor, and this year it’s the new POWER8. IBM announced more details of its new POWER8 processor at HotChips and IBM now joins Intel at 22nm, but with the twist that IBM’s process is based on SOI technology. The POWER8 quadruples the thread count ... » read more

New Risk Factors For SoCs


By Ed Sperling Third-party IP is becoming increasingly important in SoC designs. It saves development time and adds unique value. It also can improve performance and lower power, because a company specializing in IP frequently can build and optimize it better than a company that builds entire chips. But there are also plenty of landmines in IP integration, and there is a growing concern abo... » read more

Low-Power CPUs Hitting Their Stride In The Datacenter


By Ann Steffora Mutschler Without a doubt, the cloud has and continues to change the nature of the datacenter, particularly the requirements the infrastructure has to deliver. Diane Bryant, senior vice president and general manager of the Datacenter and Connected Systems Group at Intel, noted during a Webcast last week, “The infrastructure must change in support of cloud-based services.�... » read more

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