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Moore’s Law: A Status Report
Moore’s Law has been synonymous with “smaller, faster, cheaper” for the past 52 years, but increasingly it is viewed as just one of a number of options—some competing, some complementary—as the chip...
View ArticleThe Week In Review: Manufacturing
Fab tool vendors In the wafer fab equipment (WFE) rankings, Applied Materials was the leader in terms of market share in 2016, according to Gartner. For WFE, Lam Research jumped from fourth place in...
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Enabling Magnetic Tunnel Junctions Array Processing For Embedded STT MRAM
The semiconductor industry is entering a new era of next-generation memory technologies, with several major inflections taking shape. Among these is the emergence of Magnetic RAM (MRAM). Over several...
View ArticleBlog Review: April 26
Cadence’s Paul McLellan provides an introduction to single-event effects and the challenges created when high-energy neutrons bombard chips. Synopsys’ Robert Vamosi looks at the strange turf war...
View ArticleU.S. Fab Investments Rise
Thin Film Electronics is opening a chip fabrication facility in San Jose, Calif., that will produce devices on rolls of flexible materials, using technology similar to inkjet printing, rather than the...
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200mm Crisis?
Over the last year or so, the IC industry has experienced an acute shortage of both 200mm fab capacity and 200mm equipment amid a surge of demand for certain chips. Right now, though, the 200mm...
View ArticleThe Week In Review: Manufacturing
Market research Intel retained its No. 1 position as the largest semiconductor manufacturer and grew its semiconductor revenue 4.6% in 2016, according to Gartner. Samsung Electronics continued to...
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The Race To 10/7nm
Amid the ongoing ramp of 16/14nm processes in the market, the industry is now gearing up for the next nodes. In fact, GlobalFoundries, Intel, Samsung and TSMC are racing each other to ship 10nm and/or...
View ArticleMaking Interconnects Faster
In integrated circuits, interconnect resistance is a combination of wire and via resistance. Wire resistance of a conductor depends on several factors, one of which is the electron scattering at...
View ArticleThe Week In Review: Manufacturing
Chipmakers Samsung has formed a new foundry division and rolled out a range of new processes. Specifically, Samsung plans to develop 8nm, 7nm, 6nm, 5nm and 4nm. It also introduced an 18nm FD-SOI...
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Going Vertical?
The topic of transistor scaling has been traditionally covered at SEMICON West in its own right. This year’s event, however, will also explore scaling in 3D, as well as using packaging to accomplish...
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New BEOL/MOL Breakthroughs?
Chipmakers are moving ahead with transistor scaling at advanced nodes, but it’s becoming more difficult. The industry is struggling to maintain the same timeline for contacts and interconnects, which...
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NAND Market Hits Speed Bump
Demand for NAND flash memory remains robust due to the onslaught of data in systems, but the overall NAND flash market is stuck in the middle of a challenging period beset by product shortages, supply...
View ArticleThe Week In Review: Manufacturing
Chipmakers The NAND market is in flux. Not long ago, troubled Toshiba put its memory unit on the block. Finally, the company has selected a group to buy its memory business. The consortium includes the...
View ArticleBlog Review: June 28
Mentor’s Craig Armenti notes the benefits, and challenges, of investing in modular design in the PCB domain. Cadence’s Paul McLellan covers a DAC chat with CEO Lip-Bu Tan on the rise of advanced...
View ArticleThe Week In Review: Manufacturing
Chipmakers Toshiba and its fab partner, Western Digital, have jointly rolled out a 96-layer 3D NAND product amid a legal dispute. The companies have developed prototype samples of a 96-layer 3D NAND...
View ArticleBlog Review: July 5
Cadence’s Paul McLellan checks out the current state of System-in-Package technology and how different products incorporate SiP. Synopsys’ Robert Vamosi digs into the differences between two major...
View ArticleThe Week In Review: Manufacturing
Market research SEMI has released its mid-year forecast at Semicon West. SEMI reported that worldwide sales of new semiconductor manufacturing equipment are projected to increase by 19.8% to a total of...
View ArticleBlog Review: July 19
Synopsys’ Prishkrit Abrol provides a detailed explanation of how the USB Type-C connector works. Mentor’s Ricardo Anguiano examines how the RISC-V ecosystem is expanding and latest developments in the...
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Toward Smarter Manufacturing
Semiconductor manufacturing is becoming increasingly competitive as significant investments in capital equipment are required to meet consumer demand for higher performing devices with greater...
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