Week In Review: Manufacturing And Design


Wearable computing is one of the hottest topics being discussed today. Angela McIntyre, research director at Gartner, said digital health and fitness will be among the hottest segments in the arena. Don't look now, but ASML Holding has delayed its 450mm tool programs. "As for 450, ASML has paused the development of 450mm lithography systems, both EUV and 193, until customer demand and the ti... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing & Design


GT Advanced Technologies has entered into a multi-year supply agreement with Apple for sapphire materials. GT will own and operate its furnaces and related equipment to produce the sapphire materials at an Apple-owned facility in Arizona. GT expects to employ more than 700 people in the facility. Apple will provide GT with a prepayment of about $578 million. “We believe Apple likely has signi... » read more

The Week In Review: Sept. 3


By Mark LaPedus The cellular chip supplier landscape is littered with corpses. So will 4G lead to the destruction of Qualcomm and Intel? That’s highly unlikely, according to a blog from Strategy Analytics. “With the recent announcement of a multimode LTE chipset from Intel, it seems likely that Qualcomm and Intel will maintain their status as the top two cellular radio chipset suppliers in... » read more

Foundries Eye 300mm Analog Fabs


By Mark LaPedus In 2009, Texas Instruments changed the semiconductor landscape when it opened the industry’s first 300mm fab for analog chips. Until then, analog chip production was conducted in fabs at 200mm wafer sizes and below. With a 300mm fab, TI potentially could gain a die-size and cost advantage over its analog rivals. On paper, a 300mm wafer provides 2.5 times more chips than a... » read more

New Foundry Gold Rush: RF SOI


By Mark LaPedus About every five years or so, a new and hot market emerges in the specialty foundry business that resembles a frenetic gold rush. The last big gold rush occurred around 2008, when more than a dozen foundries jumped into the bipolar-CMOS-DMOS (BCD) market to capitalize on the booming power-management sector. Now, the next gold rush is centering on an emerging technology—th... » read more

Foundry Models In Transition


By Jeff Chappell There may have been a time when AMD founder Jerry Sanders famous quote: "real men (i.e., real companies) have their own fabs” rang true, but in today's business climate it seems quaint at best. Fabless or fab-lite business models are more popular than ever today, while some IDMs have turned back the clock, so to speak, looking to improve capacity utilization and revenues ... » read more

Leveraging The Past


By Ann Steffora Mutschler It’s easy to forget that not every design today is targeted at 20nm, given the amount of focus put on the bleeding edge of technology. But in fact a large number of designs utilize the stability and reliability of older manufacturing nodes, as well as lower mask costs, by incorporating new design and verification techniques, with 2.5D designs being a prime example. ... » read more

Foundries Going Greener


The ongoing push towards green and energy-efficient systems is prompting the silicon foundries to jump on the bandwagon and devise their next-generation processes based on ultra-high voltage technology. For some time, several foundries have offered 1- and 0.5-micron, ultra-high voltage processes with ratings up to 800 volts. But seeking to get a jump for the next wave of designs, the special... » read more

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