Week In Review: Semiconductor Manufacturing, Test


Nikkei Asia reports the U.S. is urging allies, including Japan, to restrict exports of advanced semiconductors and related technology to China. The U.S. holds 12% of the global semiconductor market, Japan has a 15% share, while Taiwan and South Korea each have about a 20% share. Some U.S. companies have called for other countries to adopt U.S.-style export curbs, arguing it is unfair for only A... » read more

Bricked IoT Devices Are Casualties Of Lax Semiconductor Security


Earlier this summer, a new strain of destructive malware known as Silex began to spread and effectively brick unprotected IoT devices. Although victims of Silex theoretically can resurrect their IoT devices by manually reinstalling factory firmware, most remain wary of an installation process that is often time consuming and complicated. Moreover, many victims assume their device has suffered a... » read more

Fab Investment Increases In China


By Mark LaPedus & Ed Sperling Fab construction in China is heating up, driven by real and projected demand for IoT devices and the government's push for internally manufactured chips. [getentity id="22819" comment="GlobalFoundries"], UMC and [getentity id="22586" comment="TSMC"] are all actively building up fab capacity inside of China, usually in conjunction with other local governme... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Samsung Semiconductor unveiled its North American R&D Headquarters for its Device Solutions group in San Jose, Calif. The new campus is a 1.1 million-square-foot R&D, sales and marketing center. Is 5G the next big thing in wireless? Verizon–the first company to introduce 4G LTE–is once again poised to usher in a new era with an aggressive roadmap for fifth-generation, or 5G, wireless t... » read more

MEMS Foundries Play Waiting Game


By Mark LaPedus For years, the foundries in the microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) business have been patiently waiting for the MEMS integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) to outsource some or all of their production. The MEMS foundries are still waiting for that development. Because MEMS are custom devices tuned to a proprietary process and toolset, IDMs still prefer to use their own f... » read more