Tsinghua bids for SPIL and ChipMOS
Tsinghua Unigroup, the acquisitive Chinese company which has made offers for Micron, MediaTek and Powertech and owns a $3.8 billion stake in Western Digital, has now made bids for 25% shares in two Taiwanese test houses Siliconware Precision Industry (SPIL) and ChipMOS Technologies. The SPIL stake will cost $1.7 billion; the ChipMOS stake will cost ...
FBI arrests counterfeit chip traffickers
The U.S. Department of Justice is bringing criminal charges against three Chinese nationals for trafficking in stolen Intel and Xilinx chips. The three defendants are charged with illegally redistributing military semiconductors and selling counterfeit hardware to US military contractors. “In October 2014 and in March 2015, Yan (Ben Yan, one of the three men charged) ...
FBI arrests counterfeit chip traffickers
The U.S. Department of Justice is bringing criminal charges against three Chinese nationals for trafficking in stolen Intel and Xilinx chips. The three defendants are charged with illegally redistributing military semiconductors and selling counterfeit hardware to US military contractors. “In October 2014 and in March 2015, Yan (Ben Yan, one of the three men charged) ...
SEMI sees 0.5% capex rise this year; 2.6% rise in 2016
Worldwide semiconductor fab equipment capex growth (new and used) for 2015 is expected to be 0.5% reaching $35.8 billion, says SEMI, increasing another 2.6% to $36.7 billion in 2016. SEMI reports that in 2015, Korea outspent all other countries ($9.0 billion) on front-end semiconductor fab equipment, and is expected to drop to second place in ...
SEMI sees 0.5% capex rise this year; 2.6% rise in 2016
Worldwide semiconductor fab equipment capex growth (new and used) for 2015 is expected to be 0.5% reaching $35.8 billion, says SEMI, increasing another 2.6% to $36.7 billion in 2016. SEMI reports that in 2015, Korea outspent all other countries ($9.0 billion) on front-end semiconductor fab equipment, and is expected to drop to second place in ...
Trojan Horse warning for Taiwan government
The Taiwan government was accused of being prepared to let in a Trojan Horse by a member of the island’s parliament, the Yuan, reports the Taipei Times. “Do not open the doors and let a Trojan horse into Taiwan,” parliamentarian Gao Jyh-leng warned Taiwan’s Minister for Economic Affairs John Deng (below). It turns out that ...
Trojan Horse warning for Taiwan government
The Taiwan government was accused of being prepared to let in a Trojan Horse by a member of the island’s parliament, the Yuan, reports the Taipei Times. “Do not open the doors and let a Trojan horse into Taiwan,” parliamentarian Gao Jyh-leng warned Taiwan’s Minister for Economic Affairs John Deng (below). It turns out that ...
Stanford uses N3XT carbon nanotubes to stack ICs
A team from Stanford University has produced a working prototype of 3-D stacked chips using carbon nanotubes. The team describes its new approach as Nano-Engineered Computing Systems Technology, or N3XT. Engineers have previously tried to stack silicon chips but with limited success because IC fabrication requires temperatures close to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, making it extremely ...
Google makes big claims for D-Wave quantum computer
Google claims that the $10 million quantum computer it bought from Canada’s D-Wave Systems two years ago is now performing at 100x the speed of a PC. “What a D-Wave does in a second would take a conventional computer 10,000 years to do,” says Google’s director of engineering, Hartmut Nevan. The D-Wave machine uses quantum ...
Glasgow and Leeds researchers move towards racetrack memory
Researchers from the Universities of Glasgow and Leeds have developed materials for implementing racetrack memory. Racetrack memory uses lines of nanowires. Electricity passed through the wires creates ‘domain walls’ – spaces between the wires where information can be stored. Materials are still a key question for implementing the technology. The team from Glasgow and Leeds ...
