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Picture this: four people cradled inside a luxuriously appointed interior cabin, being transported safely to their destination in a self-driving vehicle. The autonomous car takes over for the most part, if not entirely, the function of driving, leaving passengers more time to spend as they see fit—with some already starting work with their mobile devices via in-car connectivity during slow-moving traffic. Throughout the city, the ride-sharing public is doing the same: hailing self-driving cars to get from place to place. Fantasy or fiction? No: this is the vision of carmakers for the self-driving vehicle of the future, in which the Read More

Abstract The semiconductor content in cars is projected to grow significantly as cars are being transformed into autonomous driverless vehicles. Today, a typical car contains $799 of electronics (including $353 of semiconductors) which is expected to grow to $886 ($386) by 2022[1]. This transformation is anticipated to change the way people navigate, access information, and interact with one another [2]. With pivotal challenges lying ahead for future automotive electronics, an evolution from semi-autonomous to fully-autonomous vehicles is expected. Designing and managing the car electronic systems to achieve those functions in mobility mode will depend heavily on complex semiconductor circuits and Read More

China's growing presence in technology is hard to ignore. But to date the direct impact on semiconductors has been minor. That is going to change in a big way. China’s impact on technology is impossible to ignore. Lenovo buying IBM's PC division in 2005 was perhaps the first symbol of China’s technology leadership: the exit of the PC’s inventor was symbolic and now Lenovo leads that space. That was followed last year by them buying the server business too. In communications infrastructure the success of Huawei and ZTE is hard to ignore; some people wrongly think they are “cheap followers” Read More

By some estimates, lithography now accounts for 50% of wafer cost. Since 2007 when 193nm immersion (193i) lithography reached its 80nm resolution limit, semiconductor lithography has undergone a series of seismic shifts: At 28nm node and below, leading IC companies have adopted unidirectional (1D) design layout style with “Lines and Cuts” to facilitate manufacture of advanced IC designs. At 20nm node and below, leading fabs are deploying “pitch splitting” (also called “pitch division”) using advanced deposition and etch technologies to achieve line-pitch resolution much smaller than the 80nm limit. At 14nm node and below, printing line-cuts and contact/via holes with Read More

Michelle Kelsey, PLM, Sensor Solutions Division, Freescale, Inc. INTRODUCTION “Big Data” is here, but it is still in its adolescence and its growth is expected to continue. One of the main sources of big data may be the smallest components.  Sensors may be perceived to generate “little data”, but it adds up quickly. As Walmart claims to have access to “petabytes” of consumer data from 145 million Americans (more than 60 percent of U.S. adults), sensors are providing factors of 100 times that transaction data for the same consumers who are walking down the shopping aisles.  Unlike the data that Read More