Blog Review: April 15


How much memory do you need to look 13 billion years in the past? Rambus' Aharon Etengoff ponders the Square Kilometre Array's massive number of radio telescopes and what it means for computing. NXP's Martin Schoessler argues that for smart cities to work for their citizens, both technology companies and government entities will need a new mind-set. Reinventing the wheel is a good thing i... » read more

TSMC Tech Tour De Force


TSMC held the first of its three North American Tech Symposiums on April 7 in San Jose, with the other two coming up in Boston on April 14 and in Austin on April 16. As was mentioned previously here, the record fast ramp-time of the 20nm node was highlighted among other technological achievements. TSMC also released its March revenue report on April 10, and it shows a dramatic 49.8% increase in... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Intel is quietly delaying its process ramp at the 10nm node, according to multiple sources. In an e-mail, a spokesman for Intel said: “We have not disclosed a schedule for our 10nm process and we won't engage in speculation about it.” In March, though, Intel was supposed to make fab tool buys for high-volume manufacturing at 10nm, sources said. But now, those purchases won’t happen... » read more

The Week In Review: Design/IoT


Certifications TSMC certified a number of tools for its current 10nm FinFET design rules and SPICE models and 16nm FinFET Plus (16FF+) V1.0 process, including: Ansys' power integrity and electromigration tools; Cadence's custom/analog and digital implementation and signoff tools; Mentor Graphics' physical verification, design for manufacturing, and circuit verification tools; and Synopsys' ful... » read more

Big Acquisitions, Big Changes


Rumors swirling about Intel's romance with Altera—this has been off-again, on-again, and now apparently off-again, for the better part of a decade—coupled with Apple's decision to shift A9 APU production to Samsung and away from TSMC, NXP's pending acquisition of Freescale, along with the Chinese' government's massive semiconductor investment fund, all add up to some massive shifts under wa... » read more

How We’ll Get There from Here


The electronics industry is like a battleship with remarkable handling properties. I thought about it this week sitting at an industry event a day after stumbling across Neptune—the technology project, not the god. Those two experiences forced me to rethink some fundamental assumptions about system design and how the ecosystem responds to change. If you’ve not heard of Neptune, it�... » read more

Blog Review: April 8


No other human endeavor has seen such sustained exponential growth. But it's the end of an era for Moore's Law, says Cadence's Axel Scherer—and only the beginning of one for Moore's Law 2.0. Synopsys' Amit Sharma tackles the cache coherency extensions of the ARM Advanced eXtensible Interface (AXI) and points out that the infrastructure required for their verification needs to scale up in s... » read more

Challenges Mount For Patterning And Masks


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss [getkc id="80" comment="lithography"] and photomask trends with Uday Mitra, vice president and chief technology officer for the Etch Business Unit at [getentity id="22817" e_name="Applied Materials"]; Pawitter Mangat, senior manager and deputy director for EUV lithography at [getentity id="22819" comment="GlobalFoundries"]; Aki Fujimura, chief execu... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Intel is in talks to buy Altera, according to The Wall Street Journal. If a deal is reached, Intel would enter the FPGA market amid a slowdown in its core processors business. Intel would also secure its largest foundry customer in Altera. For years, Altera’s sole foundry was TSMC. Then, not long ago, Altera selected Intel as its foundry partner for 14nm. TSMC still handles 20nm and above wor... » read more

TSMC: Rise of the “Phantom Node”


TSMC’s financial results for Q4 of 2014 and for the full year were announced in January with TSMC stating it again had achieved record sales and profits. The fourth quarter saw TSMC set records for revenue, earnings per share and cash balance. TSMC made bold predictions last year about 20nm revenue by Q4 2014, and it appears it has met them (see 28nm Powers TSMC Forward, Part Deux). TSMC repo... » read more

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