Americas Chip Funding Energizes Industry


This is the second in a series of articles tracking government chip investments. See part one here (global),  part 3 covering EMEA is here and Asia here. Since the first announcement of a non-binding preliminary memorandum of terms with BAE Systems in December 2023, the U.S. Department of Commerce has rolled out comprehensive plans to support more than a dozen companies in order to shore up... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Concerns mount on the use of American-manufactured semiconductors in Russian weapons, with Analog Devices, AMD, Intel and TI set to testify next week before the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Also, U.S. and other government agencies issued a joint advisory and more details about ongoing Russian military cyberattacks, espionage, and sabotage. The U.S. Commerce Departmen... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


The Biden-Harris Administration announced preliminary terms with HP for $50 million in direct funding under the CHIPs and Science Act to support the expansion and modernization of HP’s existing microfluidics and microelectromechanical systems (“MEMS”) facility in Corvallis, Oregon. CHIPS for America launched the CHIPS Metrology Community, a collaborative initiative designed to advance ... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Chinese firms imported almost $26 billion worth of chipmaking machinery, according to fresh trade data released by China’s General Administration of Customs this week, Bloomberg reports. Meanwhile, the global semiconductor manufacturing industry continued to show signs of improvement in Q2 2024 with significant growth of IC sales, stabilizing capital expenditure, and an increase in install... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


BAE Systems and GlobalFoundries are teaming up to strengthen the supply of chips for national security programs, aligning technology roadmaps and collaborating on innovation and manufacturing. Focus areas include advanced packaging, GaN-on-silicon chips, silicon photonics, and advanced technology process development. Onsemi plans to build a $2 billion silicon carbide production plant in the ... » read more

Money Pours Into New Fabs And Facilities


Fabs, packaging, test and assembly, and R&D all drew major funding in 2023. Companies poured money into offshore locations, such as India and Malaysia, to access a larger workforce and lower costs, while also partnering with governments to secure domestic supply chains amid ongoing geopolitical turmoil. Looking ahead, artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, and data applications... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive Renesas announced its integrated development environment (IDE), which car companies can use to develop automotive software for electronic control units (ECUs) with multiple devices, but for which the hardware has not been specified yet. The IDE has co-simulation, debug and trace, high-speed simulation and distributed processing software over multiple SoCs and MCUs. The first develop... » read more

Photonics Moves Closer To Chip


Silicon photonics is resurfacing after more than a decade in the shadows, driven by demands to move larger quantities of data faster, using extremely low power and with minimal heat. Until recently, much of the attention in photonics focused on moving data between servers and storage. Now there is growing interest at the PCB level and in heterogeneous multi-chip packages. Government, academi... » read more

10nm Fab Watch


When will the 10nm logic node happen? Analysts believe that foundry vendors will move into 10nm finFET volume production around 2017. Still others say the 10nm finFET ramp could take place anywhere from 2018 to 2020. The predictions are all over the map. One way to predict the timing, progress and demand for 10nm is simple: Follow the fabs. In fact, Intel, Samsung, TSMC and GlobalFound... » read more