Moore’s Law, Supply Chains And Security


The debate about the future of Moore's Law continues, while other parts of the industry look for alternatives. In between, supply chains are being pulled in multiple directions, with safety and security often in the middle. All across the semiconductor industry, significant changes are underway. Some of these have been in the works for some time. Others are new or accelerating faster than an... » read more

Auto Industry Shifts Gears On Where Data Gets Processed


In-vehicle processing is becoming a major challenge in automotive electronics due to the massive amount of data being generated by sensors — especially cameras — and the rapid response time required to avoid accidents. The initial idea that all data could be sent to the cloud for processing has been shelved, most likely permanently. In its place is a growing recognition that data needs t... » read more

Can Germany’s Auto Industry Keep Pace?


Germany's strength for the past half-century has been its automotive industry. The big question now is whether that also will become its biggest vulnerability. Challenged on all fronts by fundamental shifts in automotive technology, the German auto industry is struggling to transform itself from precision metal bending to advanced electronics, and so far its future in the face of competitors... » read more

What Worked, What Didn’t In 2019


2019 has been a tough year for semiconductor companies from a revenue standpoint, especially for memory companies. On the other hand, the EDA industry has seen another robust growth year. A significant portion of this disparity can be attributed to the number of emerging technology areas for semiconductors, none of which has reached volume production yet. Some markets continue to struggle, a... » read more

5 Major Shifts In Automotive


Much of the automotive industry has begun repositioning and retrenching over the past few months, pushing back the projected rollout for fully autonomous vehicles and changing direction on power sources and technology used in the next-generation of electric vehicles. Taken together, these shifts mark a significant departure for traditional automakers, which find themselves playing catch-up t... » read more

Preparing For The Great Auto War


The internal combustion engine's days are numbered, and what comes next is going to cause one of the biggest upheavals in the history of business. Before semiconductors and electronics, it was the auto industry that defined economies of scale. In fact, the auto industry became the model on which the entire electronics industry was built. It always was assumed that the mainframe, minicomputer... » read more

Betting On Hydrogen-Powered Cars


The automotive industry is taking another look at hydrogen fuel cells, but how they ultimately fare depends on a combination of consumer demand, automaker investment and infrastructure build-out. Hydrogen fuel cell technology has been steadily advancing over the past six decades since the first practical fuel cell system was demonstrated by Cambridge engineering professor Francis Bacon. The ... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Packaging and test TrendForce has released its top-10 OSAT rankings in terms of sales for the third quarter of 2019. ASE was in first place in the rankings, followed by Amkor and JCET. “According to the latest research from TrendForce, the decline in the global OSAT industry showed signs of a gradual halt in 3Q19, since the drop in memory prices began to slow down, and smartphone sales stead... » read more

Thoroughly Verifying Complex SoCs


The number of things that can go wrong in complex SoCs targeted at leading-edge applications is staggering, and there is no indication that verifying these chips will function as expected is going to get any easier. Heterogeneous designs developed for leading-edge applications, such as 5G, IoT, automotive and AI, are now complex systems in their own right. But they also need to work in conju... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Autos


IoT/Edge Achronix teamed up with Bittware to develop a smart accelerator card based on a 7nm FPGA from Achronix. The card is targeted for edge devices, where pre-processing and acceleration of data movement is critical due to the enormous quantity of data being generated by sensors. The strategy is to move the processing closer to the data, rather than processing input from multiple sensors in... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →