Supply Chain Corruption


The more the chip supply chain relies on third-party sources, the greater the risk for a design containing potential malicious code or functions. Today, complex and sophisticated ICs are ubiquitous in virtually every industry. They are being relied upon, as never before, to control critical infrastructure subsystems such as power, finance, communications, and transportation. In a recent r... » read more

Secure SoC Manufacturing


As mobile usage continues to permeate daily lives with increasingly sensitive data and high-value transactions, the importance of device security has become even more important. Information security begins at the point when Internet- connected devices are designed and manufactured. But today’s complex global supply chains are fraught with numerous challenges that can result in both security b... » read more

Semicon West Preview: Packaging


By Paula Doe The evolving mobile device market means the packaging, assembly and test supply chain faces a growing range of alternative technologies vying for its investment dollar, everything from Google’s modular electronics with 3D printing, to more solutions for integrating varied chips in smaller packaged systems. One potentially disruptive change is the wider use of more open-source... » read more

The Hidden Side Of Security


Inside of large chip companies, security is being taken very seriously these days. They just don’t talk about it very much—and sometimes not at all, even to their own employees. In fact, procedures have been instituted inside all of the major chipmakers to ensure that chips are secure on every level, including who gets to see what data within those companies, according to multiple Semico... » read more

Shootout At 28nm


By Ed Sperling & Mark LaPedus Samsung, Soitec and STMicroelectronics are joining forces on 28nm FD-SOI, creating a showdown with TSMC and others over the best single-patterned processes and materials and raising questions about how quickly companies need to move to the finFET technology generation. The multi-source manufacturing collaboration agreement for fully depleted silicon-on-insulato... » read more

How To Improve The Profitability Of Fabless Semiconductor Companies


Semiconductor industry gross margins are under pressure. The average gross margin of the industry in Q4 2013 was 53 percent, which was a quarter-over-quarter decline of over 100 basis points (bps), and a continued decline of over 300 bps from the high water mark in Q3 2010 of 56 percent. This white paper explores several effective strategies available to meet the challenges of managing the c... » read more

Living On The Edge


Looking around the globe at the big foundries these days, many of them are in danger zones—geopolitical, seismological, or areas that have been the incubators for public health disasters in recent years. This is one of the risks of a global supply chain, and it’s one that should cause ulcers for any supply chain management executive. South Korea’s Samsung is within a short missile laun... » read more

What’s The Backup Plan?


Over the past dozen years we have witnessed two major breakdowns in the global semiconductor supply chain. The first occurred in 2002, when an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) basically closed off Chinese manufacturing for several months. The second major problem occurred in 2011, when the Tohoku earthquake and a devastating tsunami shut down a good portion of Japanese produ... » read more

Where Is 2.5D?


After nearly five years of concentrated research, development, test chips and characterization, 2.5D remains a possibility for many companies but a reality for very few. So what’s taking so long and why hasn’t all of this hype turned into production runs instead of test chips? Semiconductor Engineering spent the past two months interviewing dozens of people on this subject, from chipmakers ... » read more

The IC Supply Chain: The Day After Tomorrow


Last month, I wrote about the implications of hacking in a connected world. Judgment Day from the Terminator franchise came to mind. All that paranoia is still “out there” a bit, I admit. Let’s bring it down to a more pedestrian level in this post… Plenty has been written about the disaggregated, distributed, worldwide semiconductor supply chain. Design groups all over the world work... » read more

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