EDA Looks Beyond Chips


Large EDA companies are looking at huge new opportunities that reach well beyond semiconductors, combining large-scale multi-physics simulations with methodologies and tools that were developed for chips. Top EDA executives have been talking about expanding into adjacent markets for more than a decade, but the broader markets were largely closed to them. In fact, the only significant step in... » read more

MEMS & Sensors Market Forecast: Impact Of Semiconductor Industry Slowdown


Of all technologies, MEMS and sensors stand out for their far-reaching promise to improve lives across segments such as Internet of Things (IoT), wearables, smart home, digital health, precision agriculture, autonomous vehicles, robotics, and environmental monitoring. Little wonder, then, that the growth of the MEMS and sensor design and manufacturing industry is among the hottest topics at ... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Pervasive computing Renesas introduced a narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) chipset and dev kit for the Indian market. The LTE NB-IoT modem chipset, the RH1NS200, was designed for Indian telecommunications carriers by targeting bands 1,3, 5 and 8 and by following India’s carrier-approved LTE protocol stack and software suite. Low power usage is built in — it has a low Power Saving Mode... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Deals AMD plans to purchase cloud startup Pensando for about US $1.9 billion. In a presentation at the SEMI ISS conference this week, AMD CTO Mark Papermaster described Pensando's technology as a "highly programmable packet-processing engine that allows you to speed up systems designed for the data center." Intel, Micron, Analog Devices and MITRE Engenuity formed an alliance to accelerate c... » read more

Slowdown, But No Correction


The market for chips will continue to grow over the next few years, but not as quickly as over the past couple years when the work-at-home market drove up demand for everything from laptops and TVs to home video equipment. Economists painted a mixed picture for the semiconductor industry at this week's SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium, projecting continue growth in all major markets, but tem... » read more

How Inferencing Differs From Training in Machine Learning Applications


Machine learning (ML)-based approaches to system development employ a fundamentally different style of programming than historically used in computer science. This approach uses example data to train a model to enable the machine to learn how to perform a task. ML training is highly iterative with each new piece of training data generating trillions of operations. The iterative nature of the tr... » read more

Covid Masks And Forecasts At Semicon


Semicon West 2021 was certainty different, if not surreal, this year. The annual event was held in-person from Dec. 7-9, although there is a virtual component that runs until Jan. 7, 2022. In comparison, Semicon West was an all-virtual event in 2020, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. At this year’s in-person event in San Francisco, attendees, exhibitors and speakers were all required to wea... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive Arm announced a new software architecture, two reference hardware implementations, and its role leading a new industry group that will work on open-source software for automotive use. The Scalable Open Architecture for Embedded Edge (SOAFEE) is based on Arm’s Project Cassini and SystemReady, aims to help the automotive industry move to software-defined systems by tackling the comp... » read more

Recovery In Flat-Panel Display Biz


The flat-panel display market is starting to recover after a period of oversupply and lackluster growth, fueled by new technologies as well as more people working from home. The flat-panel display market is complex. Several different technologies are at play, such as liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) for TV screens and other products, as well as organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) for smartph... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers and OEMs At next week’s Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple is expected to roll out its long-awaited Arm-based Mac computers. This could provide a boost for Apple’s foundry vendor as well as equipment makers. It’s the worst-kept secret in the industry. As reported by the Apple sites, Apple is moving from Intel’s microprocessors to its own Arm-based chips for th... » read more

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