The Week In Review: IoT


M&A ARM Holdings this week announced the acquisition of two firms, Mistbase and NextG-Com, to help bring narrowband Internet of Things technology to its chip designs. In addition, the company announced the development of ARM Cordio-N radios to reduce the complexity of adopting cellular IoT connectivity. Meanwhile, Blu Wireless Technology of the U.K. reported that ARM made an equity investment ... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers Intel has announced plans to invest more than $7 billion to complete its previously-announced fab in Chandler, Ariz. The fab was announced several years ago, but Intel delayed the plant in 2014. Now, the plant, dubbed Fab 42, is moving forward again. Targeted for 7nm technology, Fab 42 will be completed in 3 to 4 years and will create approximately 3,000 jobs. The announcement was m... » read more

The Week In Review: IoT


Finance NXP Semiconductors reported its Secure Connected Devices group posted revenue of $569 million in the fourth quarter, a gain of 10% from a year earlier. NXP CEO Richard Clemmer said in a statement, “All major product lines contributed to a seasonally solid quarter.” The chip company reported Q4 revenue of $2.44 billion and 2016 revenue of nearly $9.5 billion. Consortia Bosch, C... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers and OEMs Samsung NEXT, formerly called the Samsung Global Innovation Center, has announced the creation of the Samsung NEXT Fund, a $150 million venture capital investment fund. The idea is to fund early stage startups. What’s next in consumer electronics? At CES 2017, Samsung unveiled a wide range of new products, such as quantum dot TVs, smart appliances, gaming laptops and s... » read more

Foundries See Mixed Future


Amid a tumultuous business environment, the silicon foundry industry is projected to see steady growth in a number of process segments in 2017. As in past years, the foundry market is expected to grow faster than the overall IC industry in 2017. But at the same time, the IC industry—the foundry customer base—continues to witness a frenetic wave of merger and acquisition activity. Basical... » read more

RF GaN Gains Steam


The RF [getkc id="217" kc_name="gallium nitride"] (GaN) device market is heating up amid the need for more performance with better power densities in a range of systems, such as infrastructure equipment, missile defense and radar. On one front, for example, RF GaN is beginning to displace a silicon-based technology for the power amplifier sockets in today’s wireless base stations. GaN is m... » read more

Waiting For 5G Technology


For some time, carriers, equipment OEMs and chipmakers have been gearing up for the next-generation wireless standard called 5th generation mobile networks, or 5G. 5G is the follow-on to the current wireless standard known as 4G, or long-term evolution (LTE). It will enable data transmission rates of more than 10Gbps, or 100 times the throughput of LTE. But the big question is whether 5G wil... » read more

What’s The Outlook For ICs?


As the semiconductor industry heads into the second half of 2016, it’s time to take the pulse of the IC sector. Based on the current signs, there’s a faint pulse, if that. Simply put, the IC market has been in the doldrums in the first half of 2016. And it looks sluggish heading into the second half. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. At the beginning of this year, many predicte... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers Samsung Electronics has unveiled its newest memory card globally–the EVO Plus 256GB microSD card. Based on Samsung’s 3D NAND technology, the EVO Plus 256-GB offers the highest capacity for a microSD card in its class. Consumers can now record up to 12 hours of 4K UHD video or 33 hours of Full HD video on their mobile device or action camera without needing to change or replace t... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers IC Insights released its foundry rankings in terms of sales in 2015. TSMC was the leader with $26.4 billion in sales last year. Second ranked GlobalFoundries, which took over IBM’s IC business in 2015, made some gains. With IBM’s chip unit, GlobalFoundries’ quarterly sales in 4Q ‘15 were about $1.4 billion, an annual run-rate of $5.6 billion, about 12% greater than the compa... » read more

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