Each year, Solid State Technology turns to industry leaders to hear viewpoints on the technological and economic outlook for the upcoming year. Read through these expert opinions on what to expect in 2016. New technologies will fuel pockets of growth in 2016 By Mike Plisinski, Chief Executive Officer, Rudolph Technologies, Inc. While the 2016 outlook for the semiconductor industry as a whole appears increasingly uncertain, there are areas where significant…
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CMOS-Photonic Integration Thermally Sensitive
As published in the journal Nature, CMOS transistors have been integrated with optical-resonator circuits using complex on-chip sensors and heaters to maintain temperature to within 1°C. While lacking the laser-source, these otherwise-fully-integrated solutions demonstrate both the capability as well as the limitation of trying to integrate electronics and photonics on a single-chip. The Figure shows a simplified schematic cross-section of the device. Lead author Chen Sun—affiliated with UC Berkeley and…
Apple Fab Speculation
Apple Corp. recent purchased an old 200mm-diameter silicon wafer fab in San Jose capable of creating as small as 90nm device features. Formerly owned and operated by Maxim, the US$18.2M purchase reportedly includes nearly 200 working fab tools. Some people outside the industry have speculated that Apple might use this fab to do R&D on the A10 or other advanced logic chips, but this old tool-set is completely incapable of…
MPU Cores and Legal Boors
As reported by The Register, AMD has been sued by a customer who claims that the number of Bulldozer cores in some Opteron and FX microprocessor (MPU) chips are fewer than advertised. The claim is based on the argument that a “real” MPU core has it’s own floating point unit for calculations, and that consumers were misled by product claims. I am not a lawyer (IANAL) and have no connections…
The First Degree – Ominous Threshold Reached
In light of the Paris climate talks going on this week, I’m delighted to turn this blog over to a guest blogger, Mike Czerniak. Mike is the Environmental Solutions Business Development Manager at Edwards, and has been working in the semiconductor industry for more than 30 years. In 2014, he received SEMI’s Merit Award for his work on the Energy Saving Equipment Communication Task Force responsible for developing new standards…
Thermoplastically Deformable Electronic Circuits
Philips is testing a technology developed by imec and CMST (imec’s associated lab at Ghent University) to create low-cost 3D LED packages. As shown at last month’s International Microelectronics Assembly and Packaging Society (IMAPS 2015) meeting, these thermoplastically deformable electronic circuits are already being integrated by Philips into LED lamp carriers, a downlight luminaire, and a omnidirectional light source. The technology is based on meander-shaped interconnects, which are patterned using …
Is the Semiconductor Industry Ready for Industry 4.0 and the IIoT?
An industrial revolution is in the making, equivalent some say to the introduction of steam power at the tail end of the 18th century. Known as smart manufacturing, Industry 4.0 (after the German initiative Industrie 4.0), the industrial internet of things (IIoT), or simply the fourth industrial revolution, the movement will radically change how manufacturing is done. The first industrial revolution was based on water/steam, the second was due electricity,…
EUV Cost at 1000 Daily Exposures
On October 14, 2015, ASML Holding N.V. (ASML) published its 2015 third-quarter results: Q3 net sales of €1.55 billion with gross margin of 45.4% (in line with guidance), and guided Q4 2015 net sales at approximately €1.4 billion and a gross margin of around 45%. Due to mismatched financial analyst expectations, Bloomberg reported that ASML’s stock price dropped ~7% in a single day of trading, despite the company also reporting…
Check out the finalists for MEMS & Sensors Technology Showcase at MEMS Executive Congress 2015
By Karen Lightman, Executive Director, MEMS Industry Group Back in 2001 when I was a young mother with a baby in diapers, I dreamed of a MEMS-enabled gizmo (perhaps on her diaper?) that would remotely indicate if my daughter was sleeping. She was (and still is) a restless sleeper, and I had many nights where I tip-toed into her room to ensure that she was breathing and yes, indeed, still…
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