July 8, 2013, IMEC Technology Forum, San Francisco—Martin van den Brink from ASML discussed the progress and prospects for next-generation lithography. The challenge is to reduce costs and improve performance at the same time. Current assumptions are we will extend 193nm immersion lithography to 10nm. There are no fundamental limits with quad patterns, but logic…
April 7, 2013, National Association of Broadcasters, Las Vegas—We talked with Avid about their latest tools. The latest creative tools start with Media Composer 7 for nonlinear editing, now available starting at $999 USD. The new version features accelerated and simplified file-based workflows including optimized HD delivery from high-res source material and automated media operations….
February 18, 2013, ISSCC, San Francisco—Martin van den Brink from ASML talked about the next generation lithography and the challenges ahead. For the industry to continue its push on decreasing costs and increased functionality, scaling needs to continue. The challenges in scaling are to get more productivity and yield and the same or lower cost….
August 6, 2012, Siggraph, Los Angeles—The production team from Pixomondo described their efforts for Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo”. The size and scale of the production dwarfed previous efforts and the production in 3-D exacerbated the problems. The sets for this movie were very large, some were 4 times larger than the largest studios. As a result,…
September 22, 2011, 3-D User Experience Technical Summit, Hollywood—Ted Kenney from 3ality Technica described the production basics for sports production work. Many techniques and filming considerations differ significantly from 2-D production. The basics for sports productions are fairly constant. To produce good video sporting events requires attention to the basics of all photography. Camera angles,…
April 10, 2011, NAB , Las Vegas—Sony showed off their HD expertise through some customers and partners. They released a lot of new equipment at this show. The Japan earthquake has affected their production of tapes, but they have a 6 month supply. By the end of July, they will have a forecast for production…
April 10, 2011, NAB, Las Vegas—Panasonic reported that the recent earthquake affected some component supplies leading to a short term reduction in revenue. The P2 cards and tape are ok. They are working to become the number 1 green company by 2018, with the goal of recycling 16 percent of their materials within the company…
April 4, 2011, Storage Network World, Santa Clara, CA—Mike Cutler from Dreamworks Animation described the high-performance data management system they used for animation production. Although most people don’t consider cartoons as high technology, their system requirements constantly push the boundaries for state-of-the-art data processing centers. DreamWorks started in the 90s and the artists were also…
January 4, 2011, Storage Visions Las Vegas-Jeff Lowe, COO of Building 4 Media, talked about converting a broadcast studio into a digital flow in his presentation titled “bigger and more expensive doesn’t always mean better”. He noted that enterprise-class storage systems are not suitable for media operations. After spending 10 years of Apple, and thinking…
December 9, 2010, 3-D Architectures for Semiconductor Integration and Packaging conference, Burlingame, CA—Jan Vardaman, president of TechSearch International talked about the issues in getting TSVs into high volume production. Many areas are getting past the power point levels and approaching full production status. Memories, wireless, and high-speed logic ( FPGA) are all looking into 3-D…