Semiconductors
To address future demand for semiconductors amid severe chip shortages of 2020 – 2022, all leading chipmakers announced plans to build new fabs and even disclosed their estimated costs. But spiraled inflation, caused by the disruption of supply chains by the pandemic and then by the Russian war against Ukraine, increased costs of fabs for Intel and Samsung by billions of dollars, according to reports. When Intel announced plans to establish a new manufacturing site near Magdeburg, Germany, last year, it said that its first production fab and supporting facilities would require investments of $18.7 billion (€17 billion) and negotiated $7.2 billion of state aid. But because of high inflation, increasing costs of materials, and high energy prices, the company now believes that the initial...
Cadence Announces The Tensilica DNA 100 IP: Bigger Artificial Intelligence
Cadence is an industry player we don’t mention nearly enough as much as we should - they make a lot of IP and specialises in accelerator blocks which augment...
9 by Andrei Frumusanu on 9/19/2018Samsung Foundry Updates: 8LPU Added, EUVL on Track for HVM in 2019
Samsung recently hosted its Samsung Foundry Forum 2018 in Japan, where it made several significant foundry announcements. Besides reiterating plans to start high-volume manufacturing (HVM) using extreme ultraviolet lithography...
29 by Anton Shilov on 9/6/2018Micron to Expand Its Fab 6 in Virginia, Build New R&D Center
Micron this week announced plans to expand production of DRAM and NAND memory at its fab in Manassas, Virginia. In total, Micron intends to invest $3 billion into the...
11 by Anton Shilov on 8/31/2018AMD's 7nm CPUs & GPUs To Be Fabbed by TSMC, on Track for 2018 - 2019
With the announcement that its long-time manufacturing partner (and outright former fab) GlobalFoundries is dropping out of the race for bleeding-edge manufacturing nodes, the second big question of the...
28 by Ryan Smith & Anton Shilov on 8/27/2018GlobalFoundries 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 8/27/2018Hot 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 8/21/2018Hot 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 8/21/2018TSMC: 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 8/9/2018MRAM Developer Day, GlobalFoundries Keynote Live Blog
Second Keynote today is from GlobalFoundries, Everspin's MRAM partner.
1 by Ian Cutress on 8/6/2018ASML 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 8/2/2018SK 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 7/30/2018Intel 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 7/25/2018GlobalFoundries 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 7/10/2018Arm 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 7/6/2018UMC 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 6/29/2018Samsung 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 6/19/2018GlobalFoundries 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 5/31/2018Samsung 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 5/24/2018Intel 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 5/18/2018TSMC 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