Items tagged with manufacturing
Intel doesn't have a long history of fabricating other people's processors, but the company has made it clear that it seeks to make that a major part of its business going forward. In case you missed it, Intel's Foundry Services (IFS) is accepting customers from around the globe, and the company will make chips with...
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There's been a lot of moving and shaking in the silicon space over the past couple of weeks, the latest of which is Intel announcing it has agreed to acquired Tower Semiconductor for $53 per share in cash, which values the deal at approximately $5.4 billion. The hefty investment plays right into Intel's IDM 2.0...
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Intel is making a few key major foundry moves to bolster its IDM 2.0 strategy, such as setting up a massive $1 billion innovation fund to support both early-stage startups and established companies that are engineering disruptive technologies in the semiconductor space. However, what is most surprising amid today's...
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You might not of known there exists a place called Licking County, which based on a quick peek on Wikipedia is named after the Licking River, itself believed to be coined for the area's salt licks. Going forward, however, that location in Ohio will be recognizable as the home of Intel's biggest fab site as...
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Nobody can accuse screen replacements of being inexpensive or easy to do. The panels must be produced in expensive micro fabrication facilities, by trained technicians, to exacting standards, sometimes using exotic materials. If a group from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities has its way though, that could...
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Samsung announced plans to build an advanced chip manufacturing plant in Taylor, Texas, which will create thousands of new jobs and expand its investment in the US. In fact, this will be Samsung's largest-ever investment in the US, with the total bill expected to be around $17 billion, including buildings, property...
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The vast majority of Apple's product manufacturing takes place overseas, and mostly in China. Labor costs are cheaper in China than they are in the United States, and while Apple CEO Tim Cook contends that is not the reason why, we have to think it plays a role. Even if that was not the case, however, there are other...
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Following the philosophy that it takes spending money to make money, Samsung Electronics announced plans to invest around 15.6 trillion won (around $14.7 billion in U.S. currency) to build a new chip manufacturing plant in South Korea. This qualifies as Samsung's biggest investment ever into a single semiconductor...
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Perhaps the breakup between Apple and Samsung on the manufacturing side won't last all that long, after all. It was recently reported that Apple was reducing its reliance on Samsung by giving coveted chip orders to TSMC for its upcoming iPhone 6 and other mobile devices, but now there are mumblings in the media that...
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It's no secret that companies like to outsource production to overseas markets where labor is cheap and labor laws are often lax, to put it nicely. That isn't about to change, though it's nice to see companies move at least some of their manufacturing operations to U.S. soil, such as Motorola did when it started building Moto X devices in...
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Amazon isn't taking any chances with our future robotic overlords. To show that it's willing to play ball under a mechanical regime, Jeff Bezos recently went on "60 Minutes" and unveiled plans to use delivery drones to drop off packages to flesh and blood customers (or "servants," as robots will call them after the...
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It looks like Apple is trying to drum up some good will and earn brownie points as of late by expanding its manufacturing presence in the U.S. Following a recent announcement that its revamped Mac Pro will be assembled in the Texas, Apple now says it's planning to erect a manufacturing facility further west in...
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Boy, math sure can be a buzz kill sometimes. For example, what a boon to the U.S. economy it would be if Apple suddenly decided to start building its iPhones stateside rather than outsourcing production to China. Unfortunately, if you crunch the numbers, such a move is cost prohibitive, even for a company that makes...
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One of the greatest obstacles standing between chip manufacturers and the pursuit of smaller, faster, processors is the lack of a proper light source. Current chips are etched using a deep ultraviolet wavelength of 193nm, but at a 28nm semiconductor process geometry, we've reached the limits of what a 193nm wavelength...
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3D printing is an exciting technology to track, in large part because of the implications of a mature 3D printing ecosystem wherein 3D printers are inexpensive enough for the average household to have a good one and there are enough designs out there for people to print whatever they need...
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Apple may be closer than previously thought to using Liquidmetal’s technology to manufacture casings for its mobile devices. In a patent filing, a company called “Crucible Intellectual Properties, LLC” (which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Liquidmetal dedicated to Apple work) laid claim to a...
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It's been awhile since we've heard about worker suicides taking place at Foxconn (Hon Hai Precision) and we hoped it would stay that way. Unfortunately, it appears that three more individuals may have decided to end their lives, something that has been an ongoing problem at Foxconn amid reports of poor working...
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There's a great deal of buzz surrounding the Google Nexus 7 tablet announced at Google I/O yesterday. At $199, the 7" tablet is a steal, given that it packs a quad-core CPU, 8GB of storage, a 1200x800 screen, and a front-facing camera. In a clear shot across Apple's bow, Google is prominently highlighting the...
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To celebrate its third anniversary as a chip manufacturing foundry, Globalfoundries over the weekend announced an agreement with Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) to buy out all remaining shares to achieve full independence. Under the amended agreement, AMD will continue to be one of Globalfoundries' "primary and strategic...
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Texas Instruments, maker of the popular OMAP processor line and those pricey calculators high school math teachers insist their students bring to class, announced fourth quarter revenue of $3.42 billion, net income of $298 billion, and earnings per share of 25 cents, all of which exceeded the company's expectations...
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It takes money to make money, and it takes it a whole bunch of cash to make semiconductors. Case in point: Samsung is reportedly holding a massive debt sale in which it will sell about $1 billion in bonds to fund its chip plant operations in the U.S. It's the first major overseas debt sale for Samsung in over 10...
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Samsung's new Line-16 memory semiconductor fabrication facility is now fully operational, the chip maker announced at its Nano City Complex in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province, where the fab is located. According to Samsung, Line-16 is the industry's largest memory fab in the world. Samsung wasted no time in putting its...
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