Chip Industry Week In Review


Applied Materials may scale back or cancel its $4 billion new Silicon Valley R&D facility in light of the U.S. government's recent announcement to reduce funding for construction, modernization, or expansion of semiconductor research and development (R&D) facilities in the United States, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. TSMC could receive up to $6.6 billion in direct funding... » read more

Silicon Photonics Manufacturing Ramps Up


Circuit scaling is starting to hit a wall as the laws of physics clash with exponential increases in the volume of data, forcing chipmakers to take a much closer look at silicon photonics as a way of moving data from where it is collected to where it is processed and stored. The laws of physics are immutable. Put simply, there are limits to how fast an electron can travel through copper. The... » read more

Building Better Bridges In Advanced Packaging


The increasing challenges and rising cost of logic scaling, along with demands for an increasing number of features, are pushing more companies into advanced packaging. And while that opens up a slew of new options, it also is causing widespread confusion over what works best for different processes and technologies. At its core, advanced packaging depends on reliable interconnects, well-def... » read more

Week In Review: Semiconductor Manufacturing, Test


Intel dropped out of a $5.4 billion deal to purchase Tower Semiconductor in Israel. Intel cited the inability to obtain regulatory approval in a timely manner as the reason for ending the deal signed in February. Intel will pay a $353 million termination fee to Tower. The silicon wafer supply has moved back into positive territory for 2023 thanks to a 7% decline in wafer shipments combined w... » read more

Goals of Going Green


The chip industry is stepping up efforts to be seen as environmentally friendly, driven by growing pressure from customers and government regulations. Some manufacturers have been addressing sustainability challenges for more than a decade, but they are becoming more aggressive in their efforts, while others are joining them. A review of sustainability reports across the semiconductor indust... » read more

Heterogeneous Chip Assembly Helps Optimize Medical And Wearable Devices


Heterogeneous integration (HI) has significant implications for the medical, health, and wearables industry. At Promex, we utilize a variety of complex assembly processes to achieve HI for medical and biotech applications. This post will take a closer look at the processes associated with assembling these classes of devices. Click here to read more. » read more

Power Semiconductors: A Deep Dive Into Materials, Manufacturing & Business


Whether you’re the owner of the average smartphone, commuting on trains, or driving around in a Tesla, you use power semiconductor devices every day. In a technology-dependent world, these devices are everywhere, and demand for more types of chips using different materials is growing. In the past, most engineers paid little attention to power semiconductors. They were deemed commodity, off... » read more

Week In Review: Semiconductor Manufacturing, Test


Imec released its semiconductor roadmap, which calls for doubling compute power every six months to handle the data explosion and new data-intensive problems. Imec named five walls (scaling, memory, power, sustainability, cost) that need to be dismantled. The roadmap (below) stretches from 7nm to 0.2nm (2 angstroms) by 2036, and includes four generations of gate-all-around FETs followed by thre... » read more

The Path To Known Good Interconnects


Chiplets and heterogenous integration (HI) provide a compelling way to continue delivering improvements in performance, power, area, and cost (PPAC) as Moore’s Law slows, but choosing the best way to connect these devices so they behave in consistent and predictable ways is becoming a challenge as the number of options continues to grow. More possibilities also bring more potential interac... » read more

Heterogeneous Integration: Fertile Ground For Medical And Biotech Innovation


Sensing components in medical and biotech devices often place severe restrictions on the assembly methods that can be employed, which is part of what is driving heightened demand for heterogeneous integration (HI). It is the newest frontier for the medical and biotech manufacturing services industry to contribute our own innovations by developing the processes to build these unique combinations... » read more

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