Recently, the combined market share of the top ten and top twenty semiconductor companies has been increasing, contrary to the trend of the last fifty years. Given the acceleration in mergers and acquisitions that began in 2015, one might assume that, as the semiconductor industry approaches maturity, companies are consolidating… Read More
It is pretty common for physical layout to work from a flattened hierarchy for blocks or even full chips, even though the front-end design starts with a hierarchical representation. This was not always the case. Way back when, the physical layout matched the logical hierarchy during the design process. Of course, this led to all… Read More
Semiwiki readers are no doubt very familiar with the increasing impact of the automotive market on the semiconductor industry. The magnitude and complexity of the electronic systems that will be integrated into upcoming vehicle designs reflects the driver automation, safety, and entertainment features that are in growing… Read More
Last Friday I learned something new about IoT by attending a SEMI event in Wilsonville, OR just a few short miles away from where I live in Tualatin. SEMI puts on two events here in Oregon each year, and their latest event on IoT Sensors was quite timely and popular judging by how many attendees showed up. First up was Jeff Miller from … Read More
Power protection chips are widely used these days to protect sensitive circuitry from over-voltage and over-current stress. However, these workhorse chips are often subjected to extraordinary thermal stress themselves and need to be protected from burning up – literally.
Power protection chips work like electronic fuses,… Read More
This week it was announced that Fairchild Semiconductor was sold to On Semiconductor for $2.4B. The end of an era. As I look back at my career of 36 years with the only company that I have worked for since graduating college, I can’t help but feel a bit sad but extremely grateful for the wonderful experience that Fairchild has … Read More
Last week ON Semiconductor announced it had agreed to acquire Fairchild Semiconductor for $2.4 billion. The combined company will be a major player in power analog and power discretes. It also combines two companies with ties to the beginning of the semiconductor industry.
Fairchild Semiconductor was founded in 1957 when eight… Read More
For 20 years PDF Solutions have been working with fabs on yield enhancement. Today, they announced their Exensio Platform for big data manufacturing environments. They haven’t really been keeping it a secret and have been talking about it at events since late last year, but it has basically been in stealth mode for the last… Read More
