Chip Industry Week In Review


The University of Texas at Austin’s Texas Institute for Electronics (TIE) was awarded $840 million to establish a Department of Defense microelectronics manufacturing center. This center will focus on developing advanced semiconductor microsystems to enhance U.S. defense systems. The project is part of DARPA's NGMM Program. The U.S. Dept. of Commerce announced preliminary terms with Global... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Samsung unveiled its latest 2nm and 4nm process nodes, plus its AI solutions during the Samsung Foundry Forum. The company also introduced an aggressive roadmap for the next few years that includes 3D-ICs with logic-on-logic, starting in 2025; custom HBM with built-in logic; backside power delivery on 2nm technology in 2027; and co-packaged optics. In presentations at the event, the company als... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Absolics, an affiliate of Korea materials company SKC, will receive up to $75 million in direct funding under the U.S. CHIPS Act for the construction of a 120,000 square-foot facility in Covington, Georgia, for glass substrates in advanced packaging. imec will host a €2.5 billion (~$2.72B) pilot line for researching chips beyond 2nm, partially funded through the EU Chips Act. imec CEO Luc ... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Tools & IP Codasip debuted two new customizable low power embedded RISC-V processor cores. To support embedded AI applications, the L31/L11 cores run Google’s TensorFlowLite for Microcontrollers. Codasip Studio tools can be used to customize for specific system, software, and application requirements. Licensing the CodAL description of a Codasip RISC-V core grants customers a full archit... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Tools & IP Cadence and Samsung Foundry are offering Mixed-Signal OpenAccess-ready process design kit (PDK) technology files that support a range of Samsung process technologies from 28FDS to GAA base 3nm. Enabling access to mixed-signal designs in a common OpenAccess database, the co-design methodology promotes shared responsibilities and collaboration between the analog and digital teams ... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive Intel’s Mobileye and Sixt SE said they are collaborating on an autonomous ride-hailing services in Munich in 2022. Mobileye will own the robotaxi fleet. Mobileye also recently unveiled its electric autonomous vehicle (AV), which it will use in ridehailing in Munich and Tel Aviv.. To increase the supply of automotive chips, Intel said it will build new chip manufacturing facilit... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


Tools Mentor, a Siemens business, filled in the last of the hardware configurations for its Veloce Strato emulation family, creating a full upgrade path. Users can initially purchase only the hardware that they need (StratoTiL) and if later they require more capacity (StratoTi) or the ability to handle larger designs (StratoT), they can incrementally add the necessary hardware to their existin... » read more

5G Test Equipment Race Begins


Test and measurement vendors stand ready to help with the development and deployment of 5G wireless communications, as the technology is fine-tuned and tested in trials around the world. Juniper Research forecasts 5G operator-billed service revenues will rise to $269 billion by 2025, compared with $851 million in 2019, for a compound annual growth rate of 161% during the first seven years of... » read more

The Week in Review: IoT


Networks The Netherlands and South Korea are both laying claim to installing the first nationwide Internet of Things networks in the world. In the Netherlands, KPN has connected the country with a low-power, wide-area network optimized for IoT. SK Telecom is serving Korea with coast-to-coast IoT coverage, and the Korean carrier plans to spend up to $86.8 million through the end of 2017 on upg... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Fab tools Thermo Fisher Scientific and FEI have announced that their boards of directors have unanimously approved Thermo Fisher’s acquisition of FEI for $107.50 per share in cash. The transaction represents a purchase price of approximately $4.2 billion. In a video, Aki Fujimura, chief executive of D2S, recaps the emerging mask and lithography trends presented at the recent Photomask Ja... » read more