Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers, OEMs UMC plans to build a new fab next to its existing 300mm fab in Singapore. The new fab, called Fab12i P3, will manufacture wafers based on UMC’s 22nm/28nm processes. The planned investment for this project will be $5 billion. The first phase of this greenfield fab will have a monthly capacity of 30,000 wafers with production expected to commence in late 2024. To account fo... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers Intel has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Tower, a specialty foundry vendor, for approximately $5.4 billion. With the acquisition of Tower, Intel expands its efforts in the foundry business, and put its rivals on notice. With Tower, Intel gains access to mature processes as well as specialty technologies, such as analog, CMOS image sensor, MEMS, power management and RF. ... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Pervasive computing, IoT and 5G Infineon added to its NFC (near-field communications) IP by acquiring NFC patent portfolios from France Brevets and Verimatrix. “With this acquisition, Infineon further strengthens its IP and technology portfolio, specifically in our leadership markets for security and connectivity for the IoT,” said Thomas Rosteck, president of Infineon’s Connected Secure... » read more

Startup Funding: January 2022


China's startups are the star of the month once again, with more companies based or co-headquartered in the country receiving funding in January 2022 than the rest of the world combined. Exact investment figures for Chinese startups are frequently not reported, but based on minimum amounts given, they raised more than the rest of the world as well. The largest round of the month went to a co... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Semicon West news The Semicon West trade show opened this week with a hybrid in-person and virtual event. Several companies introduced new products or made announcements at Semicon. Some announcements coincided with the show. At Semicon, Lam Research introduced the Syndion GP, a new product that provides deep silicon etch capabilities to chipmakers developing next-generation power devices a... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Pervasive computing An outage in network equipment at the US-EAST-1 Region of Amazon Web Services this week reminded customers of the downside to having every appliance run via a data center. Users accessing apps tied to AWS on the East coast found services did not work, including Alexa, Ring, smart appliances, some Amazon warehouses and packaging delivery, web APIs such as Slack, and some str... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


OEMs For some time, the automotive industry has suffered due to chip shortages in the market. And the chip shortages are spreading into other markets. In the latest news, GM plans to idle key truck plants amid chip shortages, according to a report from Bloomberg. “GM said eight of its 14 North American assembly plants will experience shutdowns this month because of chip shortages, includi... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive The chip shortage continues to affect automotive OEMs around the world. Ford is cutting production of its F-150 pickup truck. It is not just passenger car production that is affected. The transportation industry will see chip shortages with 5+ month lead times through the end of 2021, according to ABI Research. Some of the shortages will be in telematics chips, due to high demand wh... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive The New York Auto Show has been canceled due to concerns over the COVID-19 Delta variant. The show, which usually occurs in April, was scheduled for August 20 through 29th. Semiconductor company Qualcomm has offered to acquire Veoneer, an ADAS company, for $37 per share in cash. Automotive Tier 1 Magna International already has a definitive merger agreement to acquire Veoneer, wh... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive SGS-TÜV Saar certified that Cadence’s Tensilica Xtensa processors with FlexLock meets the ISO 26262:2018 standard to ASIL-D level. The new FlexLock feature is key to the certification because it supports lockstep, a fault-tolerant method that runs the same operation on two cores at the same time and then compares the output. Any difference in the output can be examined for issues... » read more

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