tag: TechInsights

Electric Cars Gain Traction, But Challenges Remain
By Mark LaPedus - 22 Apr, 2019 - Comments: 4

Battery-powered electric vehicles are expected to reach a milestone in terms of shipments in 2019, but the technology faces several significant hurdles to gain wider adoption in the market. Limited driving range, high costs, battery issues, and a spotty charging infrastructure are the main challenges for battery electric vehicles (BEVs). In addition, there are issues with various power semic... » read more

3D NAND Metrology Challenges Growing
By Mark LaPedus - 09 Apr, 2019 - Comments: 8

3D NAND vendors face several challenges to scale their devices to the next level, but one manufacturing technology stands out as much more difficult at each turn—metrology. Metrology, the art of measuring and characterizing structures, is used to pinpoint problems and ensure yields for all chip types. In the case of 3D NAND, the metrology tools are becoming more expensive at each iteration... » read more

3D NAND Flash Wars Begin
By Mark LaPedus - 20 Aug, 2018 - Comments: 0

3D NAND suppliers are gearing up for a new battle amid a period of price and competitive pressures, racing each other to the next technology generations. Competition is intensifying as a new player enters the 3D NAND market—China’s Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (YMTC). Backed by billions of dollars in funding from the Chinese government, YMTC recently introduced its first 3D NAND techn... » read more

Progress And Chaos On Road To Autonomy
By Jeff Dorsch - 03 Jun, 2018 - Comments: 1

Progress in the development of fully autonomous vehicles is incremental and slow, but not for lack of effort. Research and development in self-driving cars is under way all around the globe, from the biggest automotive manufacturers and their Tier 1 suppliers to companies not traditionally involved in the automotive industry. Add to that fleets of startups working on sensor technologies and ... » read more

Nodes Vs. Nodelets
By Mark LaPedus - 22 Jan, 2018 - Comments: 0

Foundries are flooding the market with new nodes and different process options at existing nodes, spreading confusion and creating a variety of challenges for chipmakers. There are full-node processes, such as 10nm and 7nm, with 5nm and 3nm in R&D. But there also is an increasing number of half-nodes or "node-lets" being introduced, including 12nm, 11nm, 8nm, 6nm and 4nm. Node-lets ar... » read more

Wirebond Technology Rolls On
By Mark LaPedus - 08 May, 2017 - Comments: 2

Several years ago, many predicted the demise of an older interconnect packaging technology called wire bonding, prompting the need for more advanced packaging types. Those predictions were wrong. The semiconductor industry today uses several advanced packaging types, but wire bonding has been reinvented over the years and remains the workhorse in packaging. For example, Advanced Semiconducto... » read more

5 Takeaways from IEDM
By Mark LaPedus - 15 Dec, 2016 - Comments: 1

As usual, the recent IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) was a busy week. The event, which took place in San Francisco, featured a plethora of subjects, such as next-generation transistors and memories. The event also included tracks on non-traditional approaches like quantum and neuromorphic computing. And then, there were sessions on power semis and others. In no partic... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing
By Mark LaPedus - 16 Sep, 2016 - Comments: 0

Chipmakers The finFET market is heating up. GlobalFoundries, Intel, Samsung and TSMC are ramping 16nm/14nm finFETs. And 10nm and 7nm finFETs are in the works. The market will shortly have a new competitor—Taiwan’s United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC). Some years ago, UMC licensed finFET technology from IBM. UMC has been a bit quiet about the 14nm finFET technology, but it has made si... » read more

What’s Next For Memory?
By Mark LaPedus - 14 Aug, 2014 - Comments: 4

Apple, Samsung and others are developing the next wave of smartphones and tablets. OEMs want to integrate new memory schemes that provide more bandwidth at lower power. But there are some challenges in the arena that are prompting memory makers to rethink their mobile DRAM roadmaps. The conventional wisdom was that memory makers would ship mobile DRAMs based on the new LPDDR4 interface stand... » read more

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