SEMICONDUCTORS BLOGS

ElectroIQ’s bloggers provide an insider’s point-of-view for electronic manufacturing such as semiconductor wafer fab, solar photovoltaics, micro electromechanical systems (MEMS) manufacturing, and advanced packaging and test product announcements, industry tradeshows, process advances, and technologies.

INSIGHTS FROM THE LEADING EDGE

Insights From Leading Edge

Dr. Phil Garrou gives his insight into leading edge developments in 3-D integration and advanced packaging, reporting the latest technical goings on from conferences, conversations, and more.

IFTLE 88 Apple TSV Interposer rumors; Betting the Ranch ; TSV for Sony PS-4; Top Chip Fabricators in Last 25 Years

02/11/2012
Apple about to Join the 2.5D TSV club?Click on any of the images to enlarge.It's not news that Apple has been considering moving fabrication of its A6 ARM processor from its current supplier Samsung to TSMC. The "A6," was scheduled to appear in the iPad 3 later in 2012. [link] By mid 2011 there w... Read More >>

IFTLE 87 JEDEC Wide IO Stds, Elpida 3D shipments start while merger rumors loom , Renesas joins 3D wide IO Club; Comments from IBM on 22 nm & Beyond

01/29/2012
JEDEC Wide IO Mobile DRAM StandardsWe have been talking about the JEDEC wide IO DRAM standards for a few years. [see IFTLE 19, "Semicon Taiwan 3D Forum Part 2"] Wide I/O mobile DRAM using 3D stacking with TSV provides "double the bandwidth at the same power, or can cut power in half at the same b... Read More >>

IFTLE 86 3D Headlines at the RTI 3D ASIP part deux

01/22/2012
Continuing  with key developments at the 2011 RTI ASIP ST Ericsson / CEA Leti / CadenceOne of the best received presentations of the conference was “A Three-Layers 3D-IC Stack including Wide IO and a 3D NoC - a Practical Design Perspective –“ by Pascal Vivet, and Vince... Read More >>

IFTLE 85 2.5/3D Headlines at the 2011 RTI ASIP

01/15/2012
Research Triangle Institutes 3-D Architectures for Semiconductor Integration and Packaging Conference, or 3D ASIP (as it has become known) normally finishes off the “3D conference circuit” for the year and is a good gauge of how far things have progressed in the last 12 months. At the... Read More >>

IFTLE 84 .... and the Winner is

01/07/2012
Well, all the ballots have been cast. The winner of our contest was determined by who could correctly identify the most  faces that they had seen previously in the pages of  PFTLE/IFTLE …and the winner is...... Dr. Beth Kesser of Qualcomm who correctly identified 38 . Dr Kesser was sh... Read More >>

IFTLE 83 Orange County IEEE CPMT 3DIC Workshop

01/07/2012
In early December the Orange County chapter of IEEE CPMT held a 1 day workshop entitled "3D Integrated Circuits: Technologies Enabling the Revolution," which included presentations by Xilinx, IMEC, Mentor Graphics, FCI, Microelectronic Consultants of NC, STATSChipPAC, Henkel, EPWorks and Apache (... Read More >>

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ELECTROIQ BLOG

ElectroIQ Blog

Read opinions/analysis on the day's news, tradeshow updates, and more. We blog about solar, semiconductor, advanced packaging and nanotech manufacturing industries.

Intel's (INTC) 2011 earnings, Q1 outlook, and executive reshuffle

01/22/2012
January 22, 2012 - BUSINESS WIRE -- Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) reported full-year revenue of $54 billion, operating income of $17.5 billion, net income of $12.9 billion and EPS of $2.39 -- all records for the semiconductor company. The company generated approximately $21 billion in cash from... Read More >>

Samsung plans record investments in 2012

01/17/2012
January 17, 2012 -- Samsung Group, which includes Samsung Electronics Co, is raising its 2012 investment to a record $41.4 billion (47.8 trillion won), the company said in a statement (in Korean). Miyoung Kim, Reuters, says that this record amount underscores "the widening gulf between the domina... Read More >>

Cleaner lines in the new ElectroIQ.com

12/15/2011
Hello again readers! I recently told you about some new functionalities on the ElectroIQ.com website, but that's only part of our redesign work. Looks are important too, and organization even more so. Very soon, you'll see a lighter color scheme on ElectroIQ.com. We've pared down the blue and red... Read More >>

Reading into INTC's 4Q downdate: HDDs, PCs, and SSDs

12/13/2011
The impact of the Thailand flooding has, as expected, spread throughout the tech supply chain, and now appears to be affecting even chip giant Intel. The company now says its 4Q11 sales will be about -7% below estimates ($13.4B-$14B, vs. $14.2-$15.2B) due to ramifications from the disaster. Gross... Read More >>

ElectroIQ.com is getting a new look

12/08/2011
You're going to notice some changes around ElectroIQ.com soon, and may have seen some of them already. We'll be adding new coverage areas, streamlining the topics in each of our "Channels," and revamping the site design for a better user experience. We'll talk about all of these changes here in t... Read More >>

Early 450mm orders: Tire-kicking or seat-warming?

11/23/2011
As formal efforts to prove 450mm cost-effectiveness get underway, we're starting to see the announcements from tool vendors joining the fray. Neither company is outing its customer(s), but the news has generated some interesting analysis about the state of 450mm progress. German supplier Innolas,... Read More >>

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CHIPWORKS REAL CHIPS BLOG

Chipworks Real Chips Blog

DICK JAMES is a 40-year veteran of the semiconductor industry and the senior technology analyst for Chipworks, an Ottawa, Canada-based specialty reverse engineering company. Chipworks analyses a broad range of devices, giving Dick a unique overview of what technologies make it into the real world of semiconductor production.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES' Ajit Manocha Visits Vegas for CES

01/17/2012
GLOBALFOUNDRIES has hosted a reception for the last three years at CES, although they don't exhibit there, or even take a suite for the show - they find it a useful way to connect with customers and the analyst and journalist community. Held on CES Tuesday (Jan 10), I expected a large Intel-style... Read More >>

Intel Press Briefing and Keynote at CES 2012

01/13/2012
Intel UltraHypes Ultrabook at Monday's Press BriefingThe Intel press session Monday morning at CES was focused exclusively on the Ultrabook, with Mooly Eden hyping up this supposedly new category of laptop. He prefaced the talk by saying there would be no discussion of 22 nm, Ivybridge, or a... Read More >>

TI Debuts 28-nm OMAP 5 Processor at CES

01/11/2012
This year, for the first time I made it to the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. To say it is an endurance test is putting it mildly - close to 150,000 attendees predicted and ~5,000 media/analysts, so we (there's two of us from Chipworks) spend more time standing in lin... Read More >>

IEDM 2011: IBM displays via-middle TSV process for die stacking

12/07/2011
A few days after IBM and Micron publicized their hybrid memory cube, IBM gave their TSV paper at IEDM on the Monday afternoon (paper 7.1).Entitled "3D Copper TSV Integration, Testing and Reliability," they described a node-agnostic through-silicon via (TSV) technology which takes a via-middle con... Read More >>

IEDM 2011 Preview

11/29/2011
Next week the researchers and practitioners of the electron device world will be gathering in Washington D.C. for the 2011 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting. To quote the conference web front page, “IEDM is the world’s pre-eminent forum for reporting technological breakth... Read More >>

Intel clarifies 32nm NMOS stress mechanism at IEDM 2011

11/21/2011
I was browsing through the advance program for the upcoming IEDM conference when, almost at the end, I came across paper number 34.4, "Modeling of NMOS Performance Gains from Edge Dislocation Stress," by Weber et al. of Intel. According to the abstract: "Simulations show stress from edge dislocat... Read More >>

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SEMI NEWS AND VIEWS

SEMI News and Views

SEMI is the global industry association serving the manufacturing supply chains for the microelectronic, photovoltaic, LED and display industries. Bloggers include Jonathan Davis (President, Semiconductor Business), Maggie Hershey (Sr. Director, Public Policy), Tom Morrow (EVP, Emerging Markets Group), Stan Myers (President, SEMI), and Dan Tracy (Sr. Director, Industry Research & Statistics).

SEMI News and Views

02/10/2012
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SEMI News and Views

02/10/2012
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Fearless into a Doomsday Year: Examining Fab Spending and Capacity into 2012 and Beyond

01/13/2012
By Christian Gregor Dieseldorff, SEMI Industry Research and Statistics, San Jose,California, January 6, 2012 The Mayans were highly skilled astronomers, whose “Long Count” calendar marks the end of a 5,126-year era. According to some interpretations of the ancient Mayan calendar, the wo... Read More >>

Semiconductor Equipment Sales to Reach $41.8 Billion in 2011

12/06/2011
By Lara Chamness, SEMI Industry Research and StatisticsSEMI projects that worldwide sales of new semiconductor manufacturing equipment will reach $41.8  billion in 2011, according to the year-end edition of the SEMI Capital Equipment Forecast, released here today by SEMI at the annual SEMICO... Read More >>

450 mm Development Cost: $25 to $40 Billion

11/10/2011
G450C Consortium Gears Up for Global Control of 450 Development EffortsBy Tom Morrow, EVP, SEMI Emerging MarketsIn the most complete, public discussion to date on the scope and character of the 450 mm wafer transition,  representatives of SEMATECH, policy-makers from the European Commission,... Read More >>

Fab Equipment Spending up 23% in 2011 - Still Highest on Record

09/12/2011
By Christian Gregor Dieseldorff, SEMI Industry Research and StatisticsChanges in the global economy affect the semiconductor industry, as the industry depends more on the consumer market. Economic developments in recent months decreased consumer confidence and spending, and the semiconductor indu... Read More >>

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