Turning Down The Power


Chip and system designers are giving greater weight to power issues these days. But will they inevitably hit a wall in accounting for ultra-low-power considerations? Performance, power, and area are the traditional attributes in chip design. Area was originally the main priority, with feature sizes constantly shrinking according to Moore's Law. Performance was in the saddle for many years. M... » read more

Predictions: Markets And Drivers


Semiconductor Engineering received a record number of predictions this year. Some of them are just wishful thinking, but many are a lot more thoughtful and project what needs to happen for various markets or products to become successful. Those far reaching predictions may not fully happen within 2018, but we give everyone the chance to note the progress made towards their predictions at the en... » read more

Beacons Beckon Ubiquity In IoT Era


In the early 1900s, radio beacons were created with the aim of tracking ships and planes. Prior to this innovation, pilots and ships’ captains usually relied on celestial navigation, and anyone who wanted to know their location was in the dark. A century later, engineers took the concept and devised Bluetooth Low Energy-enabled beacons, a vast use never envisaged by their 20th cent... » read more

The Route To A Trillion Devices


Technology vendors like to talk about data being big, really big. Petabytes of storage; gigabits of bandwidth; megaflops of processing power. But data doesn’t have to be big to be valuable. One of the most successful financial trades of all time was premised on a piece of information that could have been represented by a single bit (1 or 0). On June 19 1815, the bond market in London wa... » read more

What Will 2018 Bring To The IoT?


The Internet of Things is widely expected to progress in 2018—especially the Industrial IoT—as industry standards get hashed out and more vendors take cybersecurity seriously. On the home front, many Americans are growing accustomed to artificial intelligence technology from their use of Amazon Echo, Apple HomeKit, and Google Home devices. They’re talking to their remote controls to ch... » read more

Packaging Challenges For 2018


The IC packaging market is projected to see steady growth this year, amid ongoing changes in the landscape. The outsourced semiconductor assembly and test ([getkc id="83" kc_name="OSAT"]) industry, which provides third-party packaging and test services, has been consolidating for some time. So while sales rising, the number of companies is falling. In late 2017, for example, [getentity id="2... » read more

The Week in Review: IoT


Products/Services No matter the size of your button! You can now order up a flight on a private jet with the push of, yes, a button! GrandView Jets, an affiliate of GrandView Aviation, is bringing out a Web-enabled “Press for Jet” button, an Amazon Web Services Internet of Things button enabled by ButtonJoy Software. GrandView Jets says it has a fleet of Embraer Phenom 300 private jets to ... » read more

Sensors Drive IoT Intelligent Systems


Back in 1980, it is believed that the first intelligent electronic sensor was proposed (by S. Middelhoek and J.B. Angell). Their idea was to combine a MEMS sensor, an analog-to-digital convertor, and a processor to analyze the analog data generated by the sensor. But, as many great electronics ideas, the technology to put this all together on a CMOS IC was not nearly ready at that time. Toda... » read more

The Week in Review: IoT


Equities Zacks Equity Research has a “strong buy” recommendation for shares of Marvell Technology Group, noting the chip company’s improving financial results this year and its competitive position in supplying controllers for solid-state drives. “Furthermore, we believe the elevated demand for Marvell’s 4G LTE products could be a key growth driver. This will be supported by growth f... » read more

Foundry Challenges in 2018


The silicon foundry business is expected to see steady growth in 2018, but that growth will come with several challenges. On the leading edge, GlobalFoundries, Intel, Samsung and TSMC are migrating from the 16nm/14nm to the 10nm/7nm logic nodes. Intel already has encountered some difficulties, as the chip giant recently pushed out the volume ramp of its new 10nm process from the second half ... » read more

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