Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers TSMC posted its results for the quarter and confirmed its long-awaited plans to build a fab in Japan. It’s not a leading-edge fab, but rather a plant for 28nm/22nm processes. “The company confirmed plans to build a new fab in Japan for 22nm + 28nm,” said Aaron Rakers, an analyst at Wells Fargo, in a research note. “An average 22/28nm fab costs ~$4-5B range per 45k wspm. Fab ... » read more

The Silicon Carbide Race Begins


The growing adoption of silicon carbide (SiC) for a variety of automotive chips has reached the tipping point where most chipmakers now consider it a relatively safe bet, setting off a scramble to stake a claim and push this wide-bandgap technology into the mainstream. SiC holds great promise for a number of automotive applications, particularly for battery electric vehicles. It can extend d... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers, OEMs Intel plans to establish foundry capacity at its fab in Ireland. The company has also launched the so-called Intel Foundry Services Accelerator to help automotive chip designers transition from mature to advanced nodes. The company is setting up a new design team and offering both custom and industry-standard intellectual property (IP) to support the needs of automotive custom... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers, OEMs At Intel’s Architecture Day this week, the company revealed several new chip architectures. Some were already announced, while others are new. These include Intel’s first performance hybrid architecture, a data center architecture, a discrete gaming graphics processing unit (GPU) architecture, infrastructure processing units (IPUs), and a data center GPU architecture. Here... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers and OEMs China has been working on compound semiconductors, such as gallium-nitride (GaN) and silicon carbide (SiC). Now, a China-backed company has taken a big step in the SiC and related markets. Chip supplier Nexperia, a subsidiary of China’s Wingtech Technology, has acquired Newport Wafer Fab (NWF), a U.K.-based manufacture of power and compound semiconductors, including Si... » read more

Automotive IC Shortage Drags On


The current automotive semiconductor shortages won’t end anytime soon. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, it wreaked havoc on the worldwide supply chain, but it especially caught automakers flat-footed. When the auto OEMs canceled chip orders during a roughly eight-week period of plant shutdowns, they later found their supplies of critical ICs had evaporated. To make it an ev... » read more

Startup Funding: March 2021


Self-driving vehicles revved up investors in March, with two companies receiving over $200M apiece as they prepare for their systems to enter mass production. One focuses on software for passenger vehicles, while the other is looking to autonomous trucks. Both of the companies received investment from automakers, with China's largest carmaker SAIC joining each of the funding rounds. It was also... » read more

Recent Advances in Thermal Metamaterials and Their Future Applications for Electronics Packaging


Abstract: "Thermal metamaterials exhibit thermal properties that do not exist in nature but can be rationally designed to offer unique capabilities of controlling heat transfer. Recent advances have demonstrated successful manipulation of conductive heat transfer and led to novel heat guiding structures such as thermal cloaks, concentrators, etc. These advances imply new opportunities to gui... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive/Mobility Toyota Motor Corporation developed a hydrogen fuel cell (FC) system packaged in a compact module. Toyota plans to start selling it in the spring of 2021. The module can be used by other companies developing products powered by fuel cells. Micron is sampling an ASIL D level LPDDR5. The low-power memory is qualified for automotive safety applications. Samsung Foundry ce... » read more

A Look Inside ADAS Modules


You glance down at your phone while rolling in slow-moving traffic. Against your better judgment, you proceed to read your latest email, oblivious to the fact that the car in front of you has braked. In the nick of time, your car starts beeping and flashing. You look up and slam the brakes. Whew! That was close. If this has happened to you, don't forget to thank the radar and camera modules in ... » read more

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