Home Win: Challenging The Traditional Semiconductor Manufacturing Model


Across Europe, many of us have grown accustomed to a model where semiconductor products, subassemblies and components are sourced from the Far East almost by default. The rationale has always been clear: significantly lower labor and manufacturing costs made offshore supply the most commercially viable option. Yet, while this approach has long been convenient, it has never been without compromi... » read more

The Smart Advantage: How Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming Inspection And Metrology In Semiconductor Manufacturing


There is no doubt that the semiconductor industry is in an era of rapid and profound transformation, driven by an increasing demand for smaller, faster, and more powerful chips. As the speed of innovation continues to advance, so does the pressure on semiconductor manufacturers to detect and address defects and inconsistencies with near-perfect accuracy to keep pace with this demand. Manual ... » read more

Tool Matching Getting Tougher Across Test & Metrology


Key Takeaways Engineers leverage both device-specific and tool-level data to identify a process "sweet spot." Tight, frequent tool-to-tool matching enables greater yield and fab flexibility. Machine learning helps capture the nuances of a tool's signature. Many people outside of the semiconductor industry wonder how humans can fabricate transistors with tens of nanometer sca... » read more

Encapsulating Wearable Sensors Using A Pre-Mixed Two-Part Epoxy


By Anthony Buzzerio, Venkat Nandivada, and Rohit Ramnath The growing field of wearable medical technology relies heavily on miniaturized sensors capable of providing accurate and continuous physiological data. Ensuring the long-term reliability and performance of these sensors — often subjected to demanding conditions including physical stress, thermal fluctuations, and exposure to bodily ... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


The IEEE ISSCC conference was held this week in San Francisco. Among the highlights: IBM detailed an AI accelerator based on its new inferencing dataflow architecture. CEA-Leti presented a chip-scale, ultra-fast, battery-operated EPR spectrometer. QuTech introduced a cryo-CMOS SoC with NV centers in diamond. UTokyo showed its low-jitter PLL architecture for beyond 5G/6G. Imec d... » read more

Chip Industry’s Top Videos 2025


Rising complexity, new architectures, and AI's permeation of nearly everything left engineers struggling to keep up in 2025, as evidenced by this year's viewership numbers. Among the hottest topics were verification, agentic AI, DRAM/HBM, optimization of data movement, chiplets, and heterogeneous integration, but there was steady traffic growth across all sectors. Top 10 most-watched videos ... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


Deals of the week: Arteris announced plans to acquire cybersecurity provider Cycuity. “Expanding our technology portfolio to include Cycuity’s hardware security assurance products will enable our customers to achieve secure on-chip data movement,” said Charlie Janac, chairman and CEO of Arteris. Qualcomm acquired Ventana Micro Systems, a maker of RISC-V data center-class CPU IP. ... » read more

Overview Of Radiation Dose During X-ray Inspection Of Electronics


X-ray imaging of semiconductor and electronic devices is an invaluable tool; enabling non-invasive sub-surface inspection, identification of defects and measurement of critical dimensions. Figure 1 shows a schematic and description of a typical X-ray inspection system for electronics and semiconductor devices. Unfortunately, semiconductor devices are sensitive to sustained radiation dose, which... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


Samsung and SK hynix joined OpenAI's Stargate initiative to ensure there will be enough memory chips to meet the needs of AI data centers. The goal is to produce up to 900,000 DRAM wafer starts per month. OpenAI also inked agreements to explore the development of next-gen data centers in Korea. Axcelis Technologies (ion implantation systems) will merge with Veeco Instruments (compound semic... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


The EU’s tariffs on semiconductors will not exceed 15%, according to Trump’s latest trade deal. In addition, the EU committed to purchasing at least $40 billion worth of U.S. AI chips as well as other investments. [FAQ is here.] Lifelines for Intel: Intel inked a deal to sell the U.S. government a 10% non-voting equity stake in its business, worth $8.9 billion. The stake will be fun... » read more

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