The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers Who will buy Toshiba’s memory business? In the latest of what is becoming a confusing saga, Toshiba has signed a deal to sell its memory unit to a group led by Bain Capital. The Bain-led consortium will hold a 49.9% stake in the memory unit, while Toshiba will hold 40.2% and Japan’s Hoya will own 9.9%. Other members in the group include Apple, Dell, Kingston, and Seagate. In add... » read more

5 Takeaways From SEMI’s SMC


At the recent Strategic Materials Conference (SMC), there were a multitude of presentations on a number of subjects. The event, sponsored by SEMI, had presentations on the IC industry, market drivers, electronic materials and other subjects. In no particular order, here are my five takeaways from SMC: Materials M&A mania Last year, the IC industry experienced a dizzying array of merger ... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Packaging and test IoT chip startup zGlue recently announced its technology, dubbed the zGlue Integrated Platform (ZiP). In ZiP, chip customers select and configure their designs based on chiplets. Chiplets are proven silicon IP from existing vendors. Then, the technology automatically generates potential implementations of a design. As part of the effort, zGlue has selected Advanced Semicondu... » read more

RF Device And Process Biz Heats Up


The RF device and process technology markets are heating up, especially for two critical components used in smartphones—RF switch devices and antenna tuners. RF device makers and their foundry partners continue to ramp up traditional RF switch chips and tuners based on RF SOI process technologies for today’s 4G wireless networks. And recently, [getentity id="22819" comment="GlobalFoundri... » read more

China: Fab Boom or Bust?


China’s semiconductor industry continues to expand at a frenetic pace. At present there are nearly two dozen new fab projects in China. Whether all these fab projects get off the ground is not entirely clear because the dynamics in China remain fluid. What is clear is the motivation behind this building frenzy—China is trying to reduce its huge trade imbalance in ICs. The country continu... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


SPIE news At this week’s SPIE Advanced Lithography conference, the industry paid close attention to the progress of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. Here’s the general report card: EUV is making noticeable progress, but there are still some challenges ahead, such as the power source, resists and pellicles. Several issues need to be resolved before chipmakers can put EUV into mass... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers IC Insights has released its rankings of the top 10 pure-play foundries in 2016. TSMC was the largest foundry in terms of sales, followed by GlobalFoundries, UMC, and SMIC, according to IC Insights. TSMC held a 59% share in 2016. According to IC Insights, the three top-10 pure-play foundry companies that displayed the highest growth rates in 2016 were X-Fab (54%), SMIC (31%) and To... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Numbers IC Insights predicts TowerJazz and SMIC sales will jump this year, with the total pure-play foundry revenue forecast to grow 9%. That compares with 6% growth last year. TSMC is expected to shrink slightly to 58% market share, with GlobalFoundries staying flat at 11%. UMC will remain in third place in the rankings, followed by SMIC and TowerJazz. SEMI’s book-to-bill ratio jumped to... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


Tools Synopsys updated its static timing analysis tool to use smart engineering change order (ECO) technology, which the company says reduces memory requirements by 5X and speeds runtime by 2X. The release also allows more scenarios on a single server, or flexible distribution to take advantage of customers' private compute clouds. IP Synopsys released MIPI display and camera interface... » 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

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