Every day, staggering numbers of air, land and sea passengers, as well as millions of tons of cargo, move between nations. International trade and commerce has long driven the development of nations and provided unprecedented economic growth. Indeed, our future prosperity depends upon it. At the same time, threats to trade and travel — whether… Continue reading Davos 2012: The urgent need to protect the global supply chain

Apple in 2011 became the biggest purchaser of semiconductors, beating out all other leading electronic manufacturers, including Samsung Electronics and HP, technology research firm Garner said on Tuesday. Apple increased its spending on semiconductors 34.6 percent, from about $12.8 billion in 2010 to $17.3 billion in 2011, Garner estimated. That was enough to boost the… Continue reading PCMag: Apple Top Semiconductor Buyer in 2011

We are very happy with our SAP system that allows us to optimize every aspect of supply chain management for our customers. According to this item in Procurement Leaders, many companies are upgrading their systems to handle the increasing complexity of the industry and meet new challenges: Analytics and business intelligence systems designed to optimise… Continue reading Supply chain analytics ‘top technology’ for 2012

Throughout the past 30 years, the concept of the perfect stackup has changed considerably. This is especially true in more recent years, where engineers and designers have had the opportunity to use simulation tools that act as another pair of eyes when it comes to understanding the intricacies of the effects of transmission lines on… Continue reading Beyond Design: The Perfect Stackup (for High-Speed Design)

Combined, laminate substrates and leadframes will represent an estimated US$ 13.3 billion market in 2011 and is forecasted to reach $14 billion in 2012. This is larger than the revenues for silicon wafers (including silicon-on-insulator wafers) of $10.3 billion in 2011 and $10.7 billion forecast for 2012.  As cited in last month’s article on packaging… Continue reading Laminate, Leadframe Materials to Hit $14 Billion in 2012

The microchip revolution has seen a steady shrinking of features on silicon chips, packing in more transistors and wires to boost chips’ speed and data capacity. But in recent years, the technologies behind these chips have begun to bump up against fundamental limits, such as the wavelengths of light used for critical steps in chip… Continue reading Pushing the Limits for More Compact, Faster Microchips

Technology advancements, changing dynamics in the PC industry, new enterprise server and storage architectures, and near-term hard disk drive (HDD) shortages are all combining to propel the worldwide solid state storage (SSD) market higher from 2011 through 2015. According to new research from International Data Corporation (IDC), the worldwide solid state storage industry revenue reached… Continue reading Solid State Storage Shipments Expected to Soar in 2012