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

Stacking The Deck


By Javier DeLaCruz The pinnacle of system-on-chip has passed. There are several dynamics that are moving the industry away from the SoC philosophy that was so popular just a few short years ago. One of the significant factors is that the cost per gate for CMOS nodes below 28nm is rising for the first time in the history of our industry. Another critical factor is the emergence of through-silic... » read more

Experts At The Table: 450mm Fab And Facilities Challenges


Semiconductor Manufacturing & Design sat down to discuss future 450mm fab and facilities challenges with Gerald Goff, director of the project management office for fab design and construction at GlobalFoundries; Joe Cestari, president of Total Facility Solutions; Ivo Raaijmakers, chief technology officer of ASM International; and Michael Brain, senior director of the Fab Solutions Business... » read more

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