The Week In Review: July 19

By Ed Sperling - 19 Jul, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Ed Sperling Synopsys rolled out a 28nm data converter IP portfolio for analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters, as well as integrated PLLs. Synopsys says the new architecture saves up to 76% of the power and 86% of area. Mentor Graphics added intelligent software-driven verification to its functional verification platform. New is the ability to automatically generate embedded ... » read more

Medical Drives Boom In MEMS

By Ed Sperling - 20 Jun, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Mark LaPedus At a recent event, an executive from a startup called Proteus Digital Health described the medical benefits of swallowing the company’s ingestible sensors or digital pills. First, a consumer would swallow Proteus Digital’s tiny ingestible sensor, along with one’s current medication. With no battery or antenna, the stomach fluid generates the power in the ingestible sen... » read more

Foundry Models In Transition

By Jeff Chappell - 18 Apr, 2013 - Comments: 0

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

Foundry Arms Race Under Way

By Mark LaPedus - 21 Feb, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Mark LaPedus A year ago, chipmakers were reeling from a severe shortage of 28nm foundry capacity, prompting foundries to ramp up their fabs at a staggering pace. At the time, foundries were unable to keep up with huge and unforeseen demand for mobile chips. The shortfall was also caused by low yields and the overall lack of installed 28nm capacity. Today, the 28nm crunch is largely ov... » read more

The Best Foundry Strategy

By Joanne Itow - 21 Feb, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Joanne Itow Today, foundries supply more than 20% of the silicon used to produce all the semiconductor products sold. The foundry impact has grown from only 10% in 1997 to 24% today. The significance of foundries is even more evident when focused on logic wafers alone. Figure 1. Foundry Wafers as a Percent of Total, IC’s, and IC’s Minus Memory [caption id="attachment_7339" align="... » read more

Making The Right Choices

By Ed Sperling - 21 Feb, 2013 - Comments: 0

FD-SOI at 28nm, or finFETs at 20/14nm? To companies looking at the cost equation, the total market opportunity for SoCs and the NRE required to get there, this is still a manageable formula. It requires lots of number crunching and some unknowns, but by the time you get done with the math it still falls within an acceptable margin of error and the choices are relatively simple. For foundries... » read more

Stacked Die From A Networking Angle

By Mark LaPedus - 24 Jan, 2013 - Comments: 1

By Mark LaPedus The first wave of 2.5D chips using silicon interposers are trickling out in the marketplace.FPGA vendor Xilinx was the first chipmaker to ship a 2.5D device, and Altera, Cisco, Huawei and IBM recently have talked about their respective 2.5D chip developments. Generally, Altera and Xilinx have taken a somewhat identical and straightforward approach. The two companies are sepa... » read more

Foundry Landscape Changes In 3D

By Mark LaPedus - 13 Dec, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Mark LaPedus Over the last year, leading-edge silicon foundries announced their new and respective strategies in the emerging 2.5D/3D chip arena. The ink is barely dry and now the foundry landscape is changing. One new vendor, Tezzaron Semiconductor, is entering the market. The 3D DRAM supplier plans to provide select 2.5D/3D foundry services within its recently acquired fab in Austin, T... » read more

Straight Talk On 3D TSVs

By Ed Sperling - 13 Dec, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Mark LaPedus Semiconductor Manufacturing & Design sat down to discuss 3D device challenges and applications with John Lau, a fellow at the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), a research organization in Taiwan. SMD: What is ITRI doing in 3D TSVs? Lau: At ITRI we have developed the world’s first Applied Materials’ 300mm (3D TSV) integration line. The line was comple... » read more

Node Skipping Reaches New Heights

By Ed Sperling - 15 Nov, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Mark LaPedus For years, silicon foundries have rolled out their respective leading-edge processes roughly on a two-year cadence. The long-standing goal has been to keep foundry customers on a competitive price, power and performance curve. But as leading-edge chipmakers move from the 28nm node and beyond, the predictable process progression is changing. And the phenomenon of “node skip... » read more

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Knowledge Centers
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