Semiconductor Fabrication

A combination of a weak economy and skyrocketing costs has forced many entities to rethink their commitment to funding newer and bigger semiconductor facilities. And the squeeze is affecting more than private companies. The government of Taiwan recently denied a funding request, a critical part of efforts to consolidate its memory-chip business. Where will it end? At what point will the unpleasant economics of semiconductor fab derail Moore's Law more successfully than the Laws of Physics has managed so far? How will you continue to develop new designs if the ever-shrinking device features stop shrinking? How will the resulting bottleneck affect your short-term and long-term plans?

The preceding article is a "sneak peek" from Semiconductor & MEMS Fabrication, a newsletter from GlobalSpec. To stay up-to-date and informed on industry trends, products, and technologies, subscribe to Semiconductor & MEMS Fabrication today.

Whether you call them necessary restrictions or the result of raging paranoia, delays at rail stations and airports discourage long-distance travel for all but the very patient. Cost, too, discourages face-to-face contact. How does the way you meet with your customers, suppliers, and colleagues differ from years past? Do you travel to their sites or central locations like trade shows? Do you forego travel altogether in favor of much less expensive alternatives like Webinars and other virtual functions? Are these newer venues as successful as the more personal touch has been? Why or why not? What can you do to make the most of the current travel trends?

The preceding article is a "sneak peek" from Semiconductor & MEMS Fabrication, a newsletter from GlobalSpec. To stay up-to-date and informed on industry trends, products, and technologies, subscribe to Semiconductor & MEMS Fabrication today.

Increasing complexity in semiconductor devices means that they consume ever more power and dissipate ever more heat. Heat sinks, fans, and other cooling mechanisms only delay the inevitable. Several techniques have been suggested that will help to break that cycle — multicore processors that give greater performance at a lower speed, bare die on a silicon substrate, and nanocircuitry made from DNA, to name a few. How will you reduce power consumption in your next-generation devices? How quickly will your product mix shift toward these new designs? How will you recoup your development costs amid the commodity-level price patterns of electronic products?

The preceding article is a "sneak peek" from Semiconductor & MEMS Fabrication, a newsletter from GlobalSpec. To stay up-to-date and informed on industry trends, products, and technologies, subscribe to Semiconductor & MEMS Fabrication today.

Ever-shrinking electronic components, microelectromechanical systems, flexible device substrates, and similar developments at various stages of implementation herald the dawn of the next technological revolution. What kinds of applications will launch from these exotic building blocks? How will they change the way we live? Will any of them produce a step-change in the way we live — the way cars, telephones (and their step-children, mobile phones), electric lights, television, computers and so many other previous products have done? How will they affect the core of life on Earth? Of engineering? Of business in general? Of the shape of the overall economy? How will you adapt to these changes?

The preceding article is a "sneak peek" from Semiconductor & MEMS Fabrication, a newsletter from GlobalSpec. To stay up-to-date and informed on industry trends, products, and technologies, subscribe to Semiconductor & MEMS Fabrication today.

When naysayers challenge the wisdom of the half-century-old Moore's Law, they bring up design difficulties and the inevitable limits of physics. Yet even in the absence of such limitations, the cost of these technological advances has exploded in recent years. Building a fab costs in the billions of dollars, and price pressures on the devices that come out of it make recouping those costs a long-term gamble, at best. How will industry respond to the situation? Will we continue to seek the exalted performance that the next device generation can give us? What applications will demand capabilities that we cannot yet achieve?

The preceding article is a "sneak peek" from Semiconductor Fabrication, a newsletter from GlobalSpec. To stay up-to-date and informed on industry trends, products, and technologies, subscribe to Semiconductor Fabrication today.