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Imec.xpand II, the second fund raised by the early-stage deep tech investor, has closed its second fund at €150 million in committed capital. The independently managed imec.xpand funds invest in ambitious startups that benefit significantly from imec’s knowledge, expertise, network and/or infrastructure in the development of their innovative, technology roadmap. All imec.xpand portfolio companies are deeply rooted in unique technology ...

In 2021, IC manufacturers responded to widespread shortages by increasing capacity 8.6%, says Knometa Research, which was the highest rate since 8.0% in 2011 or 10.4% in 2008. For 2022, an 8.7% expansion of capacity is expected, followed by 8.2% growth in 2023. Capital spending for fabs and equipment, expressed as a percent of semiconductor revenue, was at 25% in ...

NEC claims to have developed the world’s first LHZ (Lechner, Hauke and Zoller) scheme unit cell facilitating scaling up to a fully-connected architecture using superconducting parametron qubits.   Figure 1: LHZ scheme unit cell (left) and diagram of scaled up architecture (right) Figure 2: Diagram of the three-dimensional structure technology In 1999, NEC developed a superconducting qubit for use in ...

Intel is to invest €80 billion in Europe over the next decade with a new fab site in Germany, an expansion to its Irish fab site, a possible packaging plant in Italy, an R&D centre in France and  additional space at its lab facilities  in Poland. The German fab site, at Magdeburg, will cost €17 billion and will be capable ...

Shenzhen has been locked down after a handful of Covid cases were diagnosed. Foxconn has closed two plants in the city which is the HQ for Huawei, TenCent and tens of thousands of electronics manufacturers. It shut operations at two of its largest manufacturing sites in Shenzhen on Monday, after authorities in China’s southern tech hub ordered the city of ...

ADI’s MAX30009 BioZ AFE  claims to reduce the size and extends the life of bioimpedance (BioZ) remote-patient monitoring (RPM) devices. For developers of small, battery-powered, continuously wearable devices, this AFE on a chip offers clinical-grade vital sign measurements of bioimpedance analysis for patient health assessment for wellness wearables and medical-grade patches. The device  monitors a  range of BioZ modalities through ...

Imec, KU Leuven, and PragmatIC Semiconductor have developed an 8-bit microprocessor in 0.8µm metal-oxide flexible technology capable of running real-time complex assembly code. The microprocessor was implemented with a design flow that allowed the creation of a new standard cell library for metal-oxide thin-film technologies – relevant for designing a broad range of loT applications. The thin-film technology offered by ...

Farnell’s Q2 sales were up  35.3% YoY to $441 million while operating margin grew to 13.7% in Q2, up from 10.9% in Q1 and 8.3% in the final quarter of FY21. Farnell’s growth has been driven in large part by continued investments in expanding the global product portfolio. The business planned to add 250,000 new SKUs through FY22 and has ...

 GlobalFoundries has set up a dedicated photonics unit called GF Fotonix. GloFo is collaborating with Broadcom, Cisco Systems, Marvell, NVIDIA and photonics specialists Ayar Labs, Lightmatter, PsiQuantum, Ranovus and Xanadu, to deliver the advantages of photonics.  GloFo says it has active design wins with major customers, significant market share today and expects its growth in this segment to outpace the market.     GLoFo is partnering with Cisco on ...

Last year, CapEx investments of about $11.6 billion were made in packaging  by the top players, reports Yole Developpement. Intel is the top investor, with $3.5 billion. Its 3D chip stacking technology – Foveros – consists of stacking a die on an active silicon interposer.  An embedded multi-die interconnect bridge is its 2.5D packaging solution, utilising a 55-micron bump pitch.  ...