The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Semicon West is always a busy week. Typically, there are a plethora of events going on during the week. It’s also a good week to get a pulse on the industry. The good news: Innovation is alive and well. Bad news: Intel cut its CapEx. And tool makers are in the midst of a lull right now, with a cloudy outlook projected for 2016. Some even see a dreaded downturn next year. Pacific Crest Secu... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


An alliance led by IBM Research has produced the semiconductor industry’s first 7nm test chips with functioning transistors. The breakthrough, accomplished in partnership with GlobalFoundries and Samsung at SUNY Polytechnic Institute’s Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, could result in the ability to place more than 20 billion tiny switches, or transistors, on a chip. There i... » read more

The Week In Review: Design/IoT


The EDA Consortium announced EDA industry revenue increased 7.5% for Q1 2015 to $1877 million, compared to $1746.1 million in Q1 2014. The four-quarters moving average, which compares the most recent four quarters to the prior four quarters, increased by 8.0%. Employment also increased, and according to Wally Rhines, "all categories showed revenue increases except CAE. Geographically, the Ameri... » read more

Here Comes 7nm


A consortium of companies involving IBM, GlobalFoundries and Samsung has rolled out the first 7nm test chip using silicon germanium as a substrate, using EUV to pattern multiple layers. While this doesn't mean the cost equation is even close to being solved, or that more than a handful of companies will push forward to that node anytime soon using SiGe as the substrate material, it does cre... » read more

Cloud 2.0


Corporate data centers are reluctant adopters of new technology. There is too much at stake to make quick changes, which accounts for a number of failed semiconductor startups over the past decade with better ideas for more efficient processors, not to mention rapid consolidation in other areas. But as the amount of data increases, and the cost of processing that data decreases at a slower rate... » read more

The Patent Aspect Of IoT


Wearing objects on the body that perform a function is, of course, nothing new — but the level of sophistication has exploded in the recent past. Along with this is the number of patent applications that have been filed in order to corner some aspect of the market that could be worth as much as tens of billions of dollars in five years. To note: 41,301 patents have been published on wearab... » read more

Electronic Labeling Takes Off


One hit product for the Internet of Things (IoT) market is the electronic shelf label (ESL). The ESL is rapidly replacing the paper price labels on store shelves throughout Europe and Asia, as well as within retail giants such as Walmart in the United States. But why are retailers replacing nearly zero cost paper labels with an electronic widget that sells for on the order of $5 each (prici... » read more

DoD Scratches Its Head Over Foundry Security


When the GlobalFoundries deal with IBM to acquire its foundries closes, as it is slated to sometime during 2015, the U.S. Department of Defense has a small problem on its hands. Military programs no longer will have access to a trusted fab to manufacture semiconductors. How do you ensure that the foundry did not modify or alter your design, add backdoor access or implement a remote control mech... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Since the global economic recession of 2008-2009, the IC industry has pared down older fab capacity. From 2009-2014, semiconductor manufacturers have closed or repurposed 83 wafer fabs, including a few 300mm plants, according to IC Insights. Are 3D DRAMs finally here? SK Hynix is shipping mass production volumes of its first-generation High Bandwidth Memory (HBM1). Samsung is also backing it... » read more

Foundries Expand Planar Efforts


Competition is heating up in the leading-edge foundry business, as vendors begin to ramp up their new 16nm/14nm finFET processes. But that’s not the only action in the foundry arena. They are also expanding their efforts in the leading-edge planar market by rolling out new 28nm and 22nm processes. On one front, TSMC is offering new 28nm variants, based on bulk CMOS technology. And on an... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →