Fab Investments Head Toward Record High


Corporations and governments around the globe are making record-breaking investments in chip manufacturing plants amid a major push to make the semiconductor supply chain more robust and less prone to shortages caused by everything from market variations to geopolitical interruptions. These investments — which range from updating existing fabrication facilities to building entirely new fab... » read more

National Security And Artificial Intelligence


The (U.S.) National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence recently published its final report. The report is 756 pages long, so I am not going to claim that I've read it all. I read the introduction and some of the conclusion, and the chapter on microelectronics (basically, semiconductors and advanced packaging). To give you a flavor, here are the opening paragraphs of the "Letter f... » read more

The Week in Review: IoT


Cybersecurity The United Kingdom government issued a policy report, Secure by Design, calling on Internet of Things device manufacturers to eliminate default passwords, to provide greater transparency in vulnerability disclosure, and to secure credential storage. The report urges shifting cybersecurity responsibility to IoT device vendors, rather than end-users, and protecting the privacy righ... » read more

Meeting The Challenges Of The 2018 National Defense Strategy


In Secretary of Defense James Mattis’ Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy: Sharpening the American Military’s Competitive Edge, he provides a critical framework for driving “urgent change at significant scale.” This paper describes the role that Cadence can play in assisting the nation and its partners in achieving that urgency and scale of change called for in the vision and ... » read more

Xcerra: Back to the Drawing Board


It’s been nearly two weeks since Xcerra and Hubei Xinyan Equity Investment Partnership announced they have terminated their merger agreement in the face of apparent opposition by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, the federal interagency panel that reviews transactions for their impacts on national security. Xcerra and Hubei Xinyan also withdrew their CFIUS application.... » read more

Whither Xcerra?


Trade tensions between the People’s Republic of China and the Trump Administration could sink a big transaction in the automatic test equipment business. Xcerra, a supplier of semiconductor test systems, board testers, and electronic interconnects, announced in April that it had accepted an offer from Unic Capital Management, an affiliate of Sino IC Capital, to acquire the company for $10.... » read more

Putting The Brakes On Consolidation


China's efforts to reduce its trade deficit by acquiring technology outside of its borders—particularly in the areas of process technology and memory—are hitting some snags. Any proposed acquisitions are being closely monitored by government agencies around the globe, and in many cases they have been quietly derailed. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) is pa... » read more