450mm: Out Of Sync


By Mark LaPedus The IC industry has been talking about it for ages, but vendors are finally coming to terms with a monumental shift in the business. The vast changes involve a pending and critical juncture, where the 450mm wafer size transition, new device architectures and other technologies will likely converge at or near the same time. In one possible scenario, 450mm fabs are projected ... » read more

OLED Displacing LCD, But Not Affecting Industry Leaders


By Michael P.C. Watts One of the most common themes in high tech is how companies fail to deal with game-changing new products. Think about Kodak and digital cameras, Sony and the flash memory music player, Microsoft and the tablet, GE and Osram and the Light Emitting Diode (LED). The overwhelming conclusion seems to be that you have to be committed to making your own most valuable product red... » read more

The Week In Review: May 31


By Ed Sperling Mentor Graphics and GlobalFoundries teamed up to deliver 20nm design kits that include Mentor’s place and route tool, including verification and conflict resolution engines for double-patterning violations. The 20nm process is used for GlobalFoundries’ 14nm finFETs. Mentor also received 16nm finFET certification from TSMC for the same tools plus its physical verification pl... » read more

Converge And Consolidate


Electronics has always been about convergence, and convergence inevitably spawns new companies while forcing consolidation of others. What used to be in a device moved to a board, from a board there has been a perpetual push to put things in a chip. At one point, circa 2000, analog companies claimed that mixed signal chips were a thing of the past and that there would be separate analog chip... » read more

Battery Progress Inches Forward


By Ed Sperling Chip companies that have been betting the future on better battery technology and holding off on the often painful process of reducing voltage should probably start rethinking their plans. Battery technology is not expected to improve by more than 3% per year, and even that may slow. Compared with the chip side, there are no breakthrough materials such as halfnium or techno... » read more

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