Money Pours Into New Fabs And Facilities


Fabs, packaging, test and assembly, and R&D all drew major funding in 2023. Companies poured money into offshore locations, such as India and Malaysia, to access a larger workforce and lower costs, while also partnering with governments to secure domestic supply chains amid ongoing geopolitical turmoil. Looking ahead, artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, and data applications... » read more

Proprietary Vs. Commercial Chiplets


Large chipmakers are focusing on chiplets as the best path forward for integrating more functions into electronic devices. The challenge now is how to pull the rest of the chip industry along, creating a marketplace for third-party chiplets that can be chosen from a menu using specific criteria that can speed time to market, help to control costs, and behave as reliably as chiplets developed in... » read more

A Flexible Cluster Tool Simulation Framework With Wafer Batch Dispatching Time Recommendation


The semiconductor manufacturing process consists of multiple steps and is usually time-consuming. Information like the turnaround time of a certain batch of wafers can be very useful for manufacturing engineers. A simulation model of manufacturing process can help predict the performance of manufacturing process efficiently, which is very beneficial to the manufacturing engineers. The simulatio... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Jesse Allen, Gregory Haley, and Liz Allan Synopsys acquired Imperas, pushing further into the RISC-V world with Imperas' virtual platform technology for verifying and emulating processors. Synopsys has been building up its RISC-V portfolio, starting with ARC-V processor IP and a full suite of tools introduced last month. The first high-NA EUV R&D center in the U.S. will be built at... » read more

IC Manufacturing Targets Less Water, Less Waste


Fabs, OSATs, and equipment makers are accelerating their efforts to consume less water while recycling more material waste in a trend toward better sustainability. With chips, sustainability is heavily focused on carbon emissions, and energy consumption is a significant contributor. But there is an equal effort underway to reduce water consumption and pollution. Across the globe, the number ... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Susan Rambo, Gregory Haley, Jesse Allen, and Liz Allan President Biden issued an executive order on the “Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence.” It says entities need to report large-scale computing clusters and the total computing power available, including “any model that was trained using a quantity of computing power greater than 1,026 inte... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


By Susan Rambo, Gregory Haley, and Liz Allan SRC unfurled its Microelectronics and Advanced Packaging (MAPT) industry-wide 3D semiconductor roadmap, addressing such topics as advanced packaging, heterogeneous integration, analog and mixed-signal semiconductors, energy efficiency, security, the related foundational ecosystem, and more. The guidance is the collective effort of 300 individuals ... » read more

Securing Chip Manufacturing Against Growing Cyber Threats


Semiconductor manufacturers are wrestling with how to secure a highly specialized and diverse global supply chain, particularly as the value of their IP and their dependence upon software increases — along with the sophistication and resources of the attackers. Where methodologies and standards do exist for security, they often are confusing, cumbersome, and incomplete. There are plenty of... » read more

Week In Review: Semiconductor Manufacturing, Test


China’s restrictions on the export gallium and germanium took effect this week. Any Chinese company exporting gallium or germanium that could be used in military and civil applications (dual-use) must obtain a license from China’s Ministry of Commerce. China produces 60% of the worldwide supply of germanium and 80% of the world’s gallium, both of which have to be processed from other mate... » read more

Goals of Going Green


The chip industry is stepping up efforts to be seen as environmentally friendly, driven by growing pressure from customers and government regulations. Some manufacturers have been addressing sustainability challenges for more than a decade, but they are becoming more aggressive in their efforts, while others are joining them. A review of sustainability reports across the semiconductor indust... » read more

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