Fab Equipment Challenges For 2019


After a period of record growth, the semiconductor equipment industry is facing a slowdown in 2019, in addition to several technical challenges that still need to be resolved. Generally, the equipment industry saw enormous demand in 2017, and the momentum extended into the first part of 2018. But then the memory market began deteriorating in the middle of this year, causing both DRAM and NAND ... » read more

The Long Pause


Carmakers are leaping over each other to roll out cars that meet SAE Level 3 requirements, whereby under some conditions drivers can let go of the steering wheel. Getting to Level 5 will take a lot longer, and there is some debate about where and even whether Level 4 will ever happen (see Fig. 1). Fig. 1: Levels of autonomy. Source: Auto Alliance There are two big gaps that need to be a... » read more

The Implementation Of Embedded PVT Monitoring Subsystems In Today’s Cutting Edge Technologies


This new whitepaper from Moortec takes a comprehensive look at the Implementation of Embedded PVT Monitoring Subsystems in Today’s Cutting Edge Technologies and how this can benefit today’s advanced node semiconductor design engineers by improving the performance and reliability of SoC designs. With advances in CMOS technology, and the scaling of transistor channel lengths to nanometer (nm)... » read more

Semiconductor Wafer Demand: Growing Pains


Semico Research is forecasting total semiconductor unit growth to exceed 13% this year, the first double-digit growth year since 2010. The exceptional unit growth is what the industry hopes for, but it does come with some growing pains. MOS logic, optoelectronics, MEMS and sensors, and even analog and discrete products are experiencing more than 10% unit growth in 2017. The challenge is that... » read more

Equipment Sales Were Mixed Bag In 2015


Semiconductor equipment billings were up in Q3 of 2015, the most recent statistics available from SEMI, compared with Q3 of 2014. The strongest growth was reported in China, which grew 63%, and Taiwan, which was up 22%. Billings in North America were down 23%, while in Korea they were down 22%. Europe was down 36%. Japan was up 2%, which is consistent with the growth seen in recent EDA C... » read more

Tech Talk: Configurable Logic


Cliff Lloyd, business development director at NXP Semiconductors, talks about designing in one part for many functions to reduce power consumption and cost. [youtube vid=ut5kCm0kNwE] » read more

Programmable Risk Factors


The semiconductor industry is starting to come around to the realization that security begins at the block level. Intellectual property (IP) is being seen with IP blocks that can be woven into the general-purpose system-on-chip (SoC) hardware layers to secure I/O, data, keys, and various other sensitive or critical information. But modifying hardware designs in response to the demands placed... » read more

Relocating Intelligence


For the past couple of decades, intelligence in a system was largely a function of the logic in a processor. That may change, given some of the disparate discussions now under way across the electronics industry. Putting all the intelligence in one place can make the design process more efficient, but it doesn’t necessarily make the system more efficient, either from a performance or pow... » read more

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