Trump Blocks Broadcom Bid for Qualcomm


President Trump has blocked Broadcom’s unsolicited, $117 billion takeover bid for Qualcomm, citing national security concerns. The president acted on the recommendation of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which cited the possibility of Qualcomm’s chip technology being compromised by Chinese interests, if it were acquired by Singapore-based Broadcom. The move is t... » read more

Investors Back IoT Startups


Internet of Things startups took in more than $1.35 billion from corporate and private investors during the latter half of 2017, for a total of about $2.2 billion in the full year. Chicago-based Uptake Technologies, an Industrial IoT startup, had the biggest haul of the year, with $117 million raised in a Series D round, on top of a $90 million Series C round earlier in 2017, bringing its to... » read more

Finding Faulty Auto Chips


The next wave of automotive chips for assisted and autonomous driving is fueling the development of new approaches in a critical field called outlier detection. KLA-Tencor, Optimal+, as well as Mentor, a Siemens Business, and others are entering or expanding their efforts in the outlier detection market or related fields. Used in various industries for several years, outlier detection is one... » read more

RISC-V Gains Its Footing


The RISC-V instruction-set architecture, which started as a UC Berkeley project to improve energy efficiency, is gaining steam across the industry. The RISC-V Foundation's member roster gives an indication who is behind this effort. Members include Google, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Rambus, Samsung, NXP, Micron, IBM, GlobalFoundries, UltraSoC, Siemens, among many others. One of the key markets for... » read more

FD-SOI Adoption Expands


Fully depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI) is gaining ground across a number of new markets, ranging from IoT to automotive to machine learning, and diverging sharply from its original position as a less costly alternative to finFET-based designs. For years, [getkc id="220" kc_name="FD-SOI"] has been viewed as an either/or solution targeted at the same markets as bulk [gettech id="31093" c... » read more

Blog Review: Feb. 21


Mentor's Colin Walls posits that one part of the reason modern code has so many bugs may be the way we talk about them, and it's time for a change in terminology. Following up on a post about the challenges of bringing digital literacy to an area where many are unable to read, Cadence's Madhavi Rao looks at the impact agriculture-focused IoT technologies could have on rural areas in India. ... » read more

Blog Review: Feb. 7


Cadence's Paul McLellan checks out why DARPA's excited about open-source IP at last year's RISC-V conference. Synopsys' Richard Solomon checks out what's new in PCIe 4.0, from the 16GT/s data rate to lane margining. Mentor's Colin Walls shares another set of tips for embedded software developers, including when to use [ ] and exception handling. Arm's Jason Andrews presents a tutorial ... » read more

Fan-Out Wars Begin


Several packaging houses are developing the next wave of high-density fan-out packages for premium smartphones, but perhaps a bigger battle is brewing in the lower density fan-out arena. Amkor, ASE, STATS ChipPAC and others sell traditional low-density fan-out packages, although some new and competitive technologies are beginning to appear in the market. Low-density fan-out, or sometimes cal... » read more

Blog Review: Jan. 31


Cadence's Paul McLellan looks back at where TSMC was 30 years ago and the founding philosophy that made the foundry and fabless model work. In a video, Mentor's Colin Walls considers how to make the simplest possible multitasking scheduler with a one line RTOS. Synopsys' Sandeep Taneja checks out the technology behind airbags in cars and the role of the Motorola Serial Peripheral Interfac... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers The IC industry continues to consolidate. For example, Qualcomm has a proposed plan to buy NXP. And then, Broadcom wants to buy Qualcomm. Who is next? In a research note, RBC Capital Markets analyst Mitch Steves said: “According to Bloomberg, Microsemi is exploring a sale and we think logical acquirers could include Skyworks. We continue to view Microsemi as a notable strategic as... » read more

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