Rising from the Ashes: StratEdge Corporation’s Recent Rocky History
Feb 17, 2021 · By Casey Krawiec · Blogs, From Different Dimensions
3D In Context View all
Doing Business in China: A European Company’s Perspective
China consumes more than 50% of all semiconductors annually. However, with a rapidly growing consumer market, domestic Chinese manufacturers can meet only around 30% of their own demand. A statistical report from China Electronic Production Equipment Industry Association (CEPEA) shows that the domestic market self-sufficiency rate of integrated circuit equipment...
2020 Hindsight and 2021 Insight: Edge Computing, 5G, Trade Wars and COVID-19
2020 was a roller coaster of a year from both a forecasting perspective and trying to keep up with shipments. At SEMI’s 2020 ISS in January, most pundits had a slightly positive outlook for the year. IHS was forecasting 5.5% growth. IC Insights was in a similar range forecasting 8%...
News Analysis: What’s Really Going on Inside Intel?
Intel has been in the news for the first weeks of 2021. While this is not unusual due to CES and the associated announcements of new processors for the latest and greatest consumer products, this year has been a bit different. There have been multiple storylines throughout 2020 rolling over...
The Importance of Sustainability in Semiconductor Manufacturing
Sustainability is one of today’s hottest topics in the news, and how to improve sustainability efforts is discussed at companies nearly on a daily basis. It seems only logical for 3D InCites to dedicate a blog to the topic of sustainability, as the semiconductor takes a more active stance, and...
Francoise in 3D View all
Looking Back on 2020 and Moving Forward into 2021
COVID-19 hit the world in early 2020 with very little warning. The semiconductor industry was poised for recovery, and all market indicators pointed to solid growth. For many of us, reality hit with the announcement that SEMICON Korea was canceled the day before it was set to start. Soon after,...
Revamping U.S. Export Controls to Benefit the Global Semiconductor Supply Chain
At Virtual ISS 2021, during the session on geopolitics, Martijn Rasser of The Center for a New American Security (CNAS); and Congressman Michael McCaul of Texas’ 10th District, addressed the current situation with U.S. export controls on the sale of semiconductor chips to China in the name of national security....
Closing Out 2020 at the MEPTEC Holiday Hangout
After nine months of Zooming into all the virtual events, I can’t wait for things to go live again. In the meantime, I took the opportunity last week to pop into the MEPTEC Holiday Hangout. As my last blog post of 2020, I thought I’d share some tidbits of the...
3D Packaging Breakthroughs, The GSA Awards, and How the Election Impacts the Microelectronics Industry
See that title? That was only part of how I spent last Thursday (December 3). My morning started with the monthly Global SemiSister Social Hour, segued right into Yole’s Webinar about 3D packaging breakthroughs, then it was on to The GSA Awards (I have never been to the live awards...
From Different Dimensions View all
The Big Squeeze – Why OSATs Need to Work Smarter
Analysts are projecting strong growth in advanced packaging, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2026 approaching 7% across the segment; much higher for certain high-end technologies, including 3D stacking, embedded die, and fan-out. Outsourced assembly and test (OSAT) firms, which package finished die manufactured by independent device manufacturers...
The Future is Heterogeneous Integration
2020 proved to us that our world is wholly unpredictable. As the year began with optimism for a new decade and excitement for what the new decade might bring, the last thing expected was the arrival of COVID-19. Within a short time, the pandemic created unprecedented disruption while shattering lives...
A Start-up Grows Stronger In Spite of COVID-19
As an early-stage start-up company, Mosaic Microsystems worked hard to navigate the Covid-19 pandemic. Our #1 goal was to keep our employees safe. Fortunately, we had recently closed a $2.25M seed investment from BlueSky Capital and Corning Incorporated, received a Phase II Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grant from the...
What the Pandemic Brought to Me
In the middle of December 2020, Germany went into its second lockdown. It seemed that people were more careless compared to March and April, when COVID-19 pandemic started, and we had to go into the first lockdown. Numbers are much worse now and reaching sad records every day. Too many...
Packaging IFTLE View all
IFTLE 476: 2020 3D Test Workshop – IMEC Co-Packaged Optics & Intel Foveros Testing
November 2020 saw the 7th IEEE International Workshop on Testing 3D, Chiplet-Based, and Stacked ICs (which IFTLE has been calling the 3D Test Workshop), held in conjunction with the IEEE International Test Conference (ITC). It was spearheaded again by Erik Jan Marinisssen of IMEC and Yervant Zorian of Synopsys. IMEC...
IFTLE 475: EPTC 2020: IME on Hybrid Bonding Challenges; Latest on Intel
IME – Hybrid Bonding Studies Singapore’s Institute of Microelectronics – IME / AStar – was certainly the most prolific presenter at the conference. In their presentation, “Wafer Level Fine-Pitch Hybrid Bonding: Challenges and Remedies”, they review in great detail processing issues prevalent in hybrid bonding. Wafer-level fine-pitch hybrid bonding, first...
IFTLE 473: More on Reshoring Microelectronics; A Closer Look at AIM Photonics
More on Reshoring Microelectronics By now everyone is aware that the US government, triggered by the pandemic, is in the process of attempting to bring parts of the electronics industry that left our shores (mainly for cheaper Asian production), back onshore. [ see IFTLE 463: DoD Focused on Reshoring Electronics...
IFTLE 472: Qorvo wins SHIP RF Packaging Program; SEMI Working on PLP Standards
Qorvo Begins SHIP RF Packaging Program IFTLE has previously discussed the US State-of-the-art Heterogeneous Packaging and Prototyping (SHIPS) program (see IFTLE 422 “Is Advanced Packaging and Production returning to the US by SHIP?”) Qorvo was among the phase one winners in the SHIP program along with Intel, Xilinx, Northrop Grumman,...
SemiSisters View all
How is COVID 19 Impacting the Semiconductor Industry’s Diversity and Inclusion Efforts?
A headline on CNN Business caught my eye last night: Working mothers are quitting to take care of their kids, and the US job market may never be the same. I started reading and went down a rabbit hole of related articles that revealed a few things: Unlike the recession...
SemiSister Success Story: A Woman on the Edge of 3D Technology
Severine Cheramy has devoted her career to developing 3D integration technologies and bringing them to market. She was the first person to show me what a TSV wafer looked like when I visited CEA-Leti’s cleanroom in 2009 during my Tour de France in 3D. At the time, she was a...
Diversity, Parity, Prosperity: Perspective of an Industry Veteran
“Don’t surround yourself with yourself …” Yes, from I’ve Seen All Good People. “At Japan’s Most Elite University, Just 1 in 5 Students Is a Woman.” The New York Times, 08 December 2019 “The semiconductor industry isn’t known as a standout example of diversity and inclusion. But that’s changing.” Jane...
As a Pioneer in EDA, Dr. Mary Jane Irwin Pays it Forward
Tomorrow evening (Nov. 7, 2019), Dr. Mary Jane Irwin will take the stage at a dinner being held in her honor, as she becomes the first woman to ever receive the 2019 Phil Kaufman Award for Distinguished Contributions to Electronic System Design. The award is presented annually by the Electronic...
Latest Posts
The 5G Rollout: An Industry in Transition
As predicted, 2020 will go down as the year 5G hit the big time. But it got off to a...
Navigating COVID-19 in a Demanding Semiconductor Market
As many of you will agree, 2019 was a very tough year for the semiconductor industry but with a strong...
IFTLE 471: UMC moves ahead of GlobalFoundries; 3D Packaging Update
UMC Becomes #3 Foundry TrendForce reports that UMC is expected to overtake GlobalFoundries as the world’s #3 foundry this quarter...
IFTLE 470: More on TSMC’s SoIC Hybrid Bonding and Intel’s Woes
More on TSMC’s SoIC Hybrid Bonding Technology Nikkei Asia announced that TSMC is working with Google and AMD to develop...
How the US Election Results Will Impact the Microelectronics Industry
With the US election FINALLY behind us, SEMI dedicated a recent installment of its free CEO Webinar Series to analyzing...
IFTLE 469: Panel Level Processing and Maskless Lithography at IWLPC 2020
Continuing our look at presentations at the 2020 IWLPC, one of the themes of the conference was panel level processing....
What I’m Thankful for This Thanksgiving
2020 has been a year for the books. Honestly, between the divisiveness in the USA caused by this year’s election...
IEEE IITC 2020 Updates Us on Advanced Interconnect Technology
There are two key components to the ability to continue scaling integrated circuits (ICs): The ability to increase transistor density...
IFTLE 468: Samsung Advanced Packaging at the 2020 Virtual IWLPC
Over its 17 years of existence, the IWLPC has morphed from a conference focused on wafer-level packaging to one basically...
The Semiconductor Industry’s Role in The Social Dilemma
Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse – Sophocles, and the intro to Netflix, The Social Dilemma....
IFTLE 465: AMD’s Bryan Black Opines on Chiplets
In the second great keynote presentation of the Annual IMAPS Symposium a few weeks ago [see IFTLE 465 “ Intel...
IFTLE 465: Intel Reviews Leading-Edge Packaging Technology
In recent blogs, we have discussed the damage done to Intel’s leading-edge technology reputation by major delays in both their... Virtual IWLPC Focuses on Panel Level Packaging
The 2020 International Wafer Level Packaging Conference (Virtual IWLPC) brought up the caboose of several weeks of virtual conferences that...
The Softer Side of the IMAPS Symposium
Because IMAPS is a society, there is a strong community aspect to its events. It was good to see that...
The 2021 Yearbook is Going Digital! Editorial and Marketing Opportunities Now Open
A lot can happen in a year. And 2020 is certainly no exception. COVID-19 had an enormous impact on our...
A Tribute to Herb Reiter, Upon his Retirement
Last week, Herb Reiter shared the sad news with me that it was time for him to listen to his...
Thoughts on ARM, Nvidia, and Virtual Conferences in Microelectronics
My, it has been a busy month for virtual conferences in the microelectronics space. During the week of October 5th,...
IFTLE 464: TSMC’s Family of Packaging Technologies Create 3D Fabric
TSMC recently held its 26th annual Technology Symposium, so let’s take a look at the highlights of their presentations focusing...
IMAPS International Symposium Offers a Glimpse of the Emerging Chiplet Ecosystem
I have finally been in this industry long enough to understand the cycle of discussion, scrutiny, call to arms, and...