The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Market research The IC market remains hot, as several market researchers are raising their forecasts--again. Gartner recently raised its overall IC forecast. Now, IC Insights has raised its IC market growth rate forecast for 2017 to 22%, up six percentage points from the 16% increase shown in its mid-year update. In March, IC Insights raised its worldwide IC market growth forecast for 2017 ... » read more

Exploring New Scaling Approaches


At the recent SPIE Photomask Technology + Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography 2017 conference, Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss semiconductor technology with Tsu-Jae King Liu, the TSMC Distinguished Professor in Microelectronics in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California at Berkeley. More specifically, Liu discussed some of the new... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Materials and equipment A scandal has rocked Japan’s Kobe Steel. The company disclosed that it has falsified inspection data for iron powder, aluminum and copper products that were sent to over 200 customers in the automotive, electronics, transportation and other sectors. The falsified data involves 20,000 tones of products, according to reports. Kobe apologized for the issues and provided ... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Sept. 19


Ion implant lithography At a recent conference, the University of California at Berkeley presented more details about its efforts to develop a multiple patterning method using tilted ion implantation (TII) technology. TII is somewhat similar today’s self-aligned double patterning (SADP) processes in logic and memory. SADP and the follow-on technology, self-aligned quadruple (SAQP), enable... » read more

Survey: Optimism Grows for EUV


The optimism is growing for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography in the market, according to a pair of new surveys released by the eBeam Initiative, which also revealed some new and surprising data about mask writing tools and other photomask technology. In one of the surveys from the [getentity id="22818" e_name="eBeam Initiative"], respondents revealed that they are more optimistic than e... » read more

Notes From The Chip Beat


Over the last several months, I’ve attended a number of conferences, such as IEDM, SPIE, the FD-SOI Summit and others. At each conference, there is a dizzying amount of information and data. Eventually, some information turns into an article, while most ends up buried in a reporter’s notebook. In any case, here are five observations I’ve made, based on those and other events in the pa... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers China’s IC industry is embarking on a recruitment drive to prepare for the operation of new fabs in 2018, according to TrendForce. “TrendForce’s latest analysis on China’s semiconductor sector reveals that the country’s domestic IC manufacturers are affecting the movement of industry talent worldwide as they continue to aggressively headhunt for senior managers and enginee... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


SPIE news At this week’s SPIE Advanced Lithography conference, the industry paid close attention to the progress of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. Here’s the general report card: EUV is making noticeable progress, but there are still some challenges ahead, such as the power source, resists and pellicles. Several issues need to be resolved before chipmakers can put EUV into mass... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers Recently, Intel announced plans to invest more than $7 billion to complete its previously-announced fab in Chandler, Ariz. Targeted for 7nm processes, Fab 42 will be completed in 3 to 4 years. As reported, the fab announcement was made by U.S. President Donald Trump and Intel CEO Brian Krzanich at the White House. There is more to the story. Typically, Intel has two fabs for a gi... » read more

5 Takeaways From BACUS


As usual, the recent SPIE Photomask Technology Conference, sometimes called BACUS, was a busy event. The event, which took place in San Jose, Calif., featured presentations on the usual subjects in the photomask sector. There were presentations on mask writers, inspection, metrology, repair and cleaning. And, of course, the papers included masks based on extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography... » read more

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