In 1882, Angus Hibbard, a field operations manager for the Bell Telephone System, heard that copper lines were better for phone calls than the iron lines then being used.
Hibbard bought enough copper wire to run the 90 miles between Madison, Wisconsin and Milwaukee.
A few weeks later none other…
The only thing wrong with the new 100 billion euro programme to get Europe back to a 20% share of the world semiconductor market is its name.
‘New European Industrial Strategy for Electronics’ doesn’t tell you much.
My proposal is: ‘New European Engagement for Leadership in Integrated Electronics.’
It…
It’s been an extraordinary couple of weeks for the European semiconductor industry. Three things happened:
First, STMicroelectronics said it has not given up on being a leader in digital consumer and is pursuing a strategy to have world-class IC processing technology based on FD-SOI.
The second thing…
The EC is to implement a €100 billion plan to get Europe back to manufacturing 20% of the worldwide output of ICs.
“I want to double our chip production to around 20% of global production,” says Neelie Kroes, vice-president of the EC, “I want Europe to produce more chips…
There was once a famous writer who kept a pad of paper by his telephone to record the inadequacies of the phone’s reception.
The writer used such bad language when he complained to telephone operators about the quality of the reception that he was repeatedly cut off by them…
Next month customers can start prototyping on STMicroelectronics’ 28nm FD-SOI process which delivers 30% better performance than 28nm bulk CMOS, according to ST’s CTO and CMO Jean-Marc Chery.
From there the planned progress down the micron trail to 14nm is dramatic: another 30% improvement at the same…
UMC, the No.3 foundry, is to spend $110m at its Singapore fab on R&D projects including CMOS image sensor backside illumination, embedded memory, high voltage applications and TSV (through silicon via) connections.
In 2013, UMC plans to increase headcount of the fab – Fab 12i – by over 80…
The gloomiest forecast yet for the chip industry comes from Mike Cowan with a 1.6% growth forecast for the year.
It’s a long way from Malcolm Penn’s 7.9% and Bill Jewell’s 7.8% growth forecasts, and significantly lags Databeans’ 7.1%, IC Insights’ 6% and…