The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Fab tools Applied Materials has launched a suite of products that will enable cobalt metallization schemes for contacts and interconnects in chips at advanced nodes. The products from Applied enable a complete cobalt fill process. The tools include CMP, CVD, PVD and RTP systems. At advanced nodes, cobalt promises to reduce unwanted resistance in the critical parts of a chip. Cobalt is bein... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers GlobalFoundries has announced that its 22nm FD-SOI technology platform has been certified to AEC-Q100 Grade 2 for production. As a part of the AEC-Q100 certification, devices must withstand reliability stress tests for an extended period of time and over a wide temperature range in order to achieve Grade 2 certification. Presto Engineering has joined GlobalFoundries’ ecosystem ... » read more

200mm Fab Crunch


Growing demand for analog, MEMS and RF chips continues to cause acute shortages for both 200mm fab capacity and equipment, and it shows no sign of letting up. Today, 200mm fab capacity is tight with a similar situation projected for the second half of 2018 and perhaps well into 2019. In fact, 2018 will likely represent the third consecutive year that 200mm fab capacity will be tight. The sam... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Fab tools and test VLSI Research released its annual "Customer Satisfaction Survey" and listed "THE BEST Suppliers" of 2018. VLSI Research received feedback from more than 94% of the chip market and 76% of subsystems customers for this year’s survey. Who are the winners? Applied Materials reported its second quarter results, along with its business outlook. Compared to the second quarter ... » read more

OSAT Consolidation Continues


Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE) and Siliconware Precision Industries Ltd. (SPIL) are beginning the process of uniting the two companies, which are among the largest outsourced semiconductor assembly and testing contractors in the world. For now, the companies will continue to operate separately, while their shares are traded under the ASX symbol on the New York Stock Exchange. ASE I... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Test and packaging In a major surprise, Cohu has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Xcerra for approximately $796 million. With the deal, Cohu will enter the ATE market. Last year, a group from China entered into a definitive agreement under which it would acquire Xcerra. But the U.S. blocked Xcerra’s sale to the Chinese group. Ironically, at one time, Cohu was reportedly lobbyin... » read more

The Case For Chiplets


Discussion about chiplets is growing as the cost of developing chips at 10/7nm and beyond passes well beyond the capabilities of many chipmakers. Estimates for developing 5nm chips (the equivalent 3nm for TSMC and Samsung) are well into the hundreds of millions of dollars just for the NRE costs alone. Masks costs will be in the double-digit millions of dollars even with EUV. And that's assum... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers Consumers recently filed a class-action suit against the three DRAM makers, alleging that they illegally agreed to raise prices for their respective memory products. The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges that Samsung, Micron and Hynix agreed to limit the supply of DRAM, driving up prices for this widely used memory. The pri... » read more

Challenges At The Edge


By Kevin Fogarty and Ed Sperling Edge computing is inching toward the mainstream as the tech industry begins grappling with the fact that far too much data will be generated by sensors to send everything back to the cloud for processing. The initial idea behind the IoT/IIoT, as well as other connected devices, was that simple sensors would relay raw data to the cloud for processing throug... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers As reported, Intel is struggling at 10nm. Intel already has encountered some difficulties, as the chip giant late last year pushed out the volume ramp of its new 10nm process from the second half of 2017 to the first part of 2018, according to analysts. Intel continues to struggle with 10nm, and has delayed the volume ramp again, according to multiple reports. During its earnings... » read more

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