Manufacturing

Rochester Electronics has been licensed by Freescale Semiconductor to manufacture the 68040 32bit microprocessor product family which Freescale will stop producing in November. Rochester has original Freescale packaged parts and silicon die from which it will manufacture a variety of device options. Freescale has also provided access to full design and test IP, making it possible for Rochester to continue ...

Imec has been looking at the most promising candidates for the next process generation. Finfets will run for the 14nm-16nm node, but 7nm is expected to need a new type of transistor. The question is: which? Promising options for 7nm are Gate-All-Around Nanowire (GAA NW) finfets, which offer significantly better short-channel electrostatics, and quantum-well finfets (with SiGe, Ge, or III-V ...

Imagination is developing audio and vision sensor-based IP sub-systems consisting of blocks combining M-class MIPS CPUs with Ensigma Whisper RPUs for low-power Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Smart and 6LowPan, plus OmniShield security, eRAM and flash. TSMC will add library blocks and prepare the design for tape-out on any node from 55nm to 10nm. According to Imagination: ‘Studies today show it costs 2-3x ...

Nanowire transistors are the most likely successor to finfets and will scale to 5nm, says Professor Asen Asenov, Professor of Electrical Engineering at Glasgow University and CEO of Gold Standard Simulations (GSS) which specialises in the predictive simulation of nano-CMOS devices including statistical variability and reliability.

GLoFo is offering a 28nm SLP-RF process for RF CMOS. RF PDKs provide design flexibility in core RF performance and functionality.

Applied Materials has made a breakthrough in hard mask development allowing scaling to 10nm without a change in materials.

Infineon is the first company worldwide manufacturing automotive power MOSFETs on 300mm thin wafers.

Imec and JSR Have formed a jv to develop photoresists for EUV.

Microchip subsidiary Silicon Storage Technology (SST) has qualified its 55nm embedded Flash process on GloFo’s 55nm low power extended (LPx)/RF enabled platform.

Socionext is repositioning its semiconductor business as a fabless chip company and using a semiconductor foundry yield management tool from Israel-based Optimal Plus. Socionext was formed last month with the merger of the system on chip (SoC) businesses of  Fujitsu and Panasonic. Both parents had a tradition in operating their own semiconductor fabs, and so the new company is creating ...