The Week In Review: Design


Tools Mentor Graphics added RF verification capabilities for wireless applications in the connected sensor and IoT markets to its Tanner design and layout suite. Mentor also integrated its Questa verification tool with the open-source Jenkins Continuous Integration and Source Code Management (CI/SCM) ecosystem. The plugin, a free download, gives Jenkins the ability to utilize regression run ... » read more

How Many Nanometers?


What’s the difference between a 10nm and a 7nm chip? That should be a straightforward question. Math, after all, is the only pure science. But as it turns out, the answer is hardly science—even if it is all about numbers. Put in perspective, at 65nm, companies defined the process node by the half pitch of the first metal layer. At 40/45nm, with the cost and difficulty of developing n... » read more

Will There Be Enough Silicon Wafers?


The silicon wafer industry, a critical part of the IC supply chain, is undergoing a new and perhaps alarming wave of merger and acquisition activity. While consolidation in this sector is not new, the pace of M&A activity is picking up and there are fewer companies left. Silicon wafer makers produce and sell raw silicon wafers to chipmakers, which process them into chips. But despite con... » read more

10nm FinFET Market Heats Up


The 10nm finFET market is heating up in the foundry business amid the ongoing push to develop chips at advanced nodes. Not long ago, Intel announced its 10nm finFET process, with plans to ramp up the technology in 2017. Then, TSMC recently introduced its 10nm process, with plans to move into production by the fourth quarter of 2016. Now, Samsung Electronics said that it has commenced mass... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers Alain Kaloyeros, president of SUNY Polytechnic Institute, has resigned. This comes amid charges that Kaloyeros was involved in an alleged bid-rigging scheme, according to multiple reports. SUNY Poly, a high-tech educational ecosystem in New York, was recently formed from the merger of the SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) and the SUNY Institute of Technology. ... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers In 2016, growth in the pure-play foundry business will be driven by leading-edge processes, according to IC Insights. In fact, the increase in pure-play foundry sales this year is forecast to be almost entirely due to processes at » read more

Packaging Wars Begin


The advanced IC-packaging market is turning into a high-stakes competitive battleground, as vendors ramp up the next wave of [getkc id="82" kc_name="2.5D"]/[getkc id="42" kc_name="3D"] technologies, high-density fan-out packages and others. At one time, the outsourced semiconductor assembly and test ([getkc id="83" comment="OSAT"]) vendors dominated and handled the chip-packaging requirement... » read more

Grappling With Manufacturing Data


As complexity goes up with each new process node, so does the amount of data that is generated, from initial GDSII to photomasks, manufacturing, yield and post-silicon validation. But what happens to that data, and what gets shared, remain a point of contention among companies across the semiconductor ecosystem. The problem is that to speed up the entire design through manufacturing process,... » read more

Sorting Out Next-Gen Memory


In the data center and related environments, high-end systems are struggling to keep pace with the growing demands in data processing. There are several bottlenecks in these systems, but one segment that continues to receive an inordinate amount of attention, if not part of the blame, is the memory and storage hierarchy. [getkc id="92" kc_name="SRAM"], the first tier of this hierarchy, is... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers The finFET market is heating up. GlobalFoundries, Intel, Samsung and TSMC are ramping 16nm/14nm finFETs. And 10nm and 7nm finFETs are in the works. The market will shortly have a new competitor—Taiwan’s United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC). Some years ago, UMC licensed finFET technology from IBM. UMC has been a bit quiet about the 14nm finFET technology, but it has made si... » read more

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