Semiconductors
Optical connectivity – and especially silicon photonics – is expected to become a crucial technology to enable connectivity for next-generation datacenters, particularly those designed HPC applications. With ever-increasing bandwidth requirements needed to keep up with (and keep scaling out) system performance, copper signaling alone won't be enough to keep up. To that end, several companies are developing silicon photonics solutions, including fab providers like TSMC, who this week outlined its 3D Optical Engine roadmap as part of its 2024 North American Technology Symposium, laying out its plan to bring up to 12.8 Tbps optical connectivity to TSMC-fabbed processors. TSMC's Compact Universal Photonic Engine (COUPE) stacks an electronics integrated circuit on photonic integrated circuit (EIC-on-PIC) using the company's SoIC-X packaging technology. The foundry says that usage...
GlobalFoundries Stops All 7nm Development: Opts To Focus on Specialized Processes
GlobalFoundries on Monday announced an important strategy shift. The contract maker of semiconductors decided to cease development of bleeding edge manufacturing technologies and stop all work on its 7LP...
127 by Anton Shilov & Ian Cutress on 8/27/2018
Hot Chips 2018: Xilinx DNN Processors Live Blog
Xilinx has several talks this year at Hot Chips, and aside from the ACAP earlier in the day, the talk about their Deep Neural Network processor also looks interesting...
3 by Ian Cutress on 8/21/2018
Hot Chips 2018: Going Deep on NVSwitch Live Blog (8:45am PT, 3:45pm UTC)
The first talk on Day 2 of Hot Chips is from NVIDIA, going into more detail about how the NVSwitch works with a lot more detail than from previous...
2 by Ian Cutress on 8/21/2018
TSMC: Outbreak of Malware That Triggered Delays & Losses Caused by Software for New Tool
TSMC announced this week that it suffered a computer malware outbreak, resulting in a roughly 3 day outage for parts of the fab while systems were restored. As a...
42 by Anton Shilov on 8/9/2018
MRAM Developer Day, GlobalFoundries Keynote Live Blog
Second Keynote today is from GlobalFoundries, Everspin's MRAM partner.
1 by Ian Cutress on 8/6/2018
ASML Ships Twinscan NXT:2000i Scanner for 7nm and 5nm DUV
ASML, the company known for producing equipment for the manufacture of processors and semiconductors at foundries, has started to ship its new Twinscan NXT:2000i DUV (Deep Ultra Violet) scanner...
15 by Anton Shilov on 8/2/2018
SK Hynix Set to Build a New Memory Fab
SK Hynix last week announced plans to build another semiconductor fab near its headquarters in Icheon, South Korea. The production facility is not going to be as big and...
16 by Anton Shilov on 7/30/2018
Intel Provides Royalty-Free License for Data Bus to DARPA’s Modular Chips Initiative
Taking place this week is DARPA’s 2018 Electronic Resurgence Initiative (ERI) Summit, the defense research agency's first gathering to address the direction of US technology manufacturing as Moore's Law...
14 by Anton Shilov on 7/25/2018
GlobalFoundries Announces 22FDX Milestone: $2 Billion in Design Wins
GlobalFoundries on Monday announced a milestone concerning its 22FDX-branded fully-depleted SOI low-power planar transistor platform. The company initiated volume production using the technology with yields and performance meeting expectations...
13 by Anton Shilov on 7/10/2018
Arm and Samsung Extend Artisan POP IP Collaboration to 7LPP and 5LPE Nodes
Arm and Samsung Foundry this week announced plans to extend their collaboration to 7LPP and 5LPE process technologies. Under the terms of the agreement, Arm will offer Samsung Foundry...
23 by Anton Shilov on 7/6/2018
UMC Acquires Fujitsu’s Stake in Semiconductor Joint Venture
Fujitsu Semiconductor and UMC on Friday said that the latter will acquire 100% ownership of Mie Fujitsu Semiconductor (MIFS), a joint venture between two companies. The move essentially ends...
2 by Anton Shilov on 6/29/2018
Samsung to Pay $400 Million for Infringing FinFET Patent
A federal jury in Texas ordered Samsung Electronics to pay $400 million to a South Korean university for infringing one of fundamental patents related to double gate FinFET transistors...
33 by Anton Shilov on 6/19/2018
GlobalFoundries Gives 7 nm Capacity Update, Mulls Skipping 5 nm
High-ranking executives of GlobalFoundries this month gave several updates concerning future plans of the contract maker of semiconductors. As it appears, in a bid to provide more tangible advantages...
19 by Anton Shilov on 5/31/2018
Samsung Foundry Roadmap: EUV-Based 7LPP for 2018, 3 nm Incoming
Samsung Foundry this week updated its fabrication technology roadmap, introducing a number of changes and announcing the first details about its 3 nm manufacturing process that is several years...
25 by Anton Shilov on 5/24/2018
Intel Discloses Plans to Spend $5 Billion on Fab 28 Expansion in Israel
Intel and two Israeli ministries this week announced that the chip giant plans to invest $5 billion in its Kiryat Gat fab complex – Fab 28 – through 2020...
35 by Anton Shilov on 5/18/2018
TSMC Details 5 nm Process Tech: Aggressive Scaling, But Thin Power and Performance Gains
At a special event last week, TSMC announced the first details about its 5 nm manufacturing technology that it plans to use sometime in 2020. CLN5 will be the...
10 by Anton Shilov on 5/8/2018
Intel Delays Mass Production of 10 nm CPUs to 2019
Intel on Thursday announced that it would delay mass production of its 10 nm processors from 2018 to 2019 due to yield issues. The company has claimed to be...
156 by Anton Shilov on 4/27/2018
TSMC Kicks Off Volume Production of 7nm Chips
TSMC last week announced that it had started high volume production (HVM) of chips using their first-gen 7 nm (CLN7FF) process technology. The contract maker of semiconductors says it...
63 by Anton Shilov on 4/24/2018
Cadence Announces Tensilica Vision Q6 DSP
Today’s announcement comes from Cadence, and we see the unveiling of a new DSP IP called the new Tensilica Vision Q6. The Q6 succeeds the Vision P6 which as...
20 by Andrei Frumusanu on 4/11/2018
Change of Strategy: A New GlobalFoundries CEO in Dr. Thomas Caulfield
In a surprising move, GlobalFoundries has announced that its CEO is stepping down. Sanjay Jha, who lead the world’s second largest foundry for four years, was in the past...
15 by Anton Shilov on 3/15/2018
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