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Capex

Semiconductor Capex Cutback Inevitable as Downturn Looms

By Bolaji Ojo

Chipmakers pledging to spend billions of dollars to construct new fabs and related capital equipment are likely to put many of those plans on hold next year, severely cutting back on spending and even mothballing fab shells as the industry braces for a steep downturn in 2023, according to researcher Future Horizons and Ojo-Yoshida Report analysis of spending forecasts.

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Future of Automotive

SiFive’s RISC-V Processors Challenge Nvidia’s Auto SoCs

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
Nvidia’s move to acquire Arm in 2020 made SiFive’s full-fledged foray into the automotive market all but inevitable, as the RISC-V IP vendor wagered that automotive chip companies would seek its help to counter the combined forces of Nvidia automotive systems-on-chip and Arm core-based solutions. While the Arm deal never happened, SiFive prepared a portfolio of three low-power, high-performance automotive RISC-V processors. SiFive thinks it solutions, when used in combination, can compete with Nvidia’s automotive SoCs.

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Training Future Engineers in the Semiconductor Metaverse

By George Leopold

What’s at stake:
New U.S. fabs will generate tens of thousands of jobs. The outsourcing of chip manufacturing and the decline in engineering graduates mean many can’t be filled by qualified candidates. Proponents of the virtual factory scheme claim they can attract newcomers to the profession by training them on extended-reality tools.

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Augmented Reality on Factory Floor

Revealing AR’s Unintended Consequences on the Factory Floor

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake?
The novelty of AR and/or VR goggles tempts corporations to embrace the technology to bolster worker productivity. What many companies overlook is that short-term productivity gains achieved through technology may come at the cost of workers’ long-term ability to innovate.   

Surely, technology can improve worker efficiency in manufacturing – it always has. This truism helps explain why so many corporations are eyeing the new tools of augmented reality and virtual reality (AR and VR) as the next big thing to streamline and improve their production lines. But equally significant is the impact of a given technology on human behavior.

Read More »Revealing AR’s Unintended Consequences on the Factory Floor