Tiny Chiplets Are a New Level of Micro Manufacturing

The technology, on display at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, or PARC, is part of a new system for making electronics, one that takes advantage of a Xerox invention from the 1970s: the laser printer.

If perfected, it could lead to desktop manufacturing plants that “print” the circuitry for a wide array of electronic devices — flexible smartphones that won’t break when you sit on them; a supple, pressure-sensitive skin for a new breed of robot hands; smart-sensing medical bandages that could capture health data and then be thrown away.

Today’s chips are made on large wafers that hold hundreds of fingernail-sized dies, each with the same electronic circuit. The wafers are cut into individual dies and packaged separately, only to be reassembled on printed circuit boards, which may each hold dozens or hundreds of chips.

The PARC researchers have a very different model in mind. With financing from the National Science Foundation and from Darpa, the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, they have designed a laser-printer-like machine that will precisely place tens or even hundreds of thousands of chiplets, each no larger than a grain of sand, on a surface in exactly the right location and in the right orientation.

The chiplets can be both microprocessors and computer memory as well as the other circuits needed to create complete computers. They can also be analog devices known as microelectromechanical systems, or MEMS, that perform tasks like sensing heat, pressure or motion.

The new manufacturing system the PARC researchers envision could be used to build custom computers one at a time, or as part of a 3-D printing system that makes smart objects with computing woven right into them.

The technology is still in the future. The researchers are years from simultaneously placing tens or hundreds of thousands of circuits accurately in a fraction of a second. And they acknowledge that this would be only the first step in designing a commercially viable system.

Still, if the PARC researchers are successful, they will have thrown out 50 years of Silicon Valley conventional wisdom.

A related but simpler technology was pioneered by Alien Technology, a maker of RFID tags in Silicon Valley. Called Fluidic Self Assembly, it is based on suspending small integrated circuits called “nanoblocks” in a fluid and then flowing them over a surface where they drop into tiny holes of corresponding shapes.

Both approaches reverse a five-decade long tradition of making computers faster and more powerful by doubling every two years the number of transistors squeezed onto fingernail-sized computer chips.

The emerging printing technology poses a heretical idea: Rather than squeezing more transistors into the same small space, why not smear the transistors across a much larger surface?

Moreover, the research could have tremendous economic consequences — feeding the emergence of a new digital era in manufacturing, much as laser printing transformed publishing three decades ago.

By replacing the circuit boards now assembled in factories, the technology would vastly compress a supply chain that spans the globe and employs hundreds of thousands of workers.

It is one of a variety of technologies related to 3-D printers, which have captured the public’s imagination, raising the specter of homemade manufacturing of everything from tools to guns.

“Digital fabrication will allow individuals to design and produce tangible objects on demand, wherever and whenever they need them,” Neil Gershenfeld, a physicist who directs the Center for Bits and Atoms at M.I.T., wrote in December in the journal Foreign Affairs.

While there has already been an explosion in 3-D printing of solid and mechanical objects both for prototyping and increasingly for small production runs, PARC’s scientists believe that there will also ultimately be an ensemble of manufacturing technologies that seamlessly blend microelectronics with mechanical components.

“You can print mechanical objects, but a lot of things in the world today are more than mechanical,” said Stephen Hoover, PARC’s chief executive. “A lot of the opportunities we’re going to find in the ‘Internet of things’ are going to be about how to embed intelligence at very low cost in a distributed way into the world.”

Advanced Micro Devices Posts a $157 Million Net Loss

The company’s chief executive, Rory Read, said he did not expect the personal computer industry to improve for several quarters.

A.M.D., which is a distant No. 2 to the top chip maker, Intel, said in a statement that it expected its restructuring actions to result in savings of $190 million next year. It expects to record a restructuring expense in the fourth quarter of about $80 million.

“It’ll bring earnings up, I guess, but you still have to ask how disruptive this will be and what roles are they cutting,” said Stacy Rasgon, an analyst at Bernstein Research. “The market is not going their way, and they’re not in a strong position.”

Last week, A.M.D. warned that its third-quarter revenue fell more than it had previously expected and that gross margins suffered from a $100 million write-down because of lower future growth of some products.

A.M.D. posted a net loss of $157 million, or 21 cents a share, compared with a profit of $97 million, or 13 cents a share, in the period a year earlier. Revenue dropped to $1.27 billion from $1.69 billion.

Mr. Read took over at A.M.D. last year promising to fix long-standing execution problems that have plagued the company. But A.M.D. has continued to lose money as well as market share to Intel and the graphic chip rival Nvidia.

“The trends we knew would reshape the industry are happening at a much faster pace than we anticipated,” Mr. Read told analysts in a conference call.

Looking for markets with faster growth than personal computers, A.M.D. said it planned to increase its focus on selling chips for communications, industrial and gaming applications. Mr. Read said those areas would grow to account for 20 percent of quarterly revenue by the fourth quarter of next year, compared with 5 percent now.

Like Intel, A.M.D., which is based in Sunnyvale, Calif., was caught flat-footed in recent years with the emergence and fast growth of mobile devices like Apple’s iPad.

A.M.D. and Intel have been slow to adapt their computer chip designs to mobile. But while Intel has poured its huge resources into efforts to catch up to smartphone chip makers like Qualcomm, A.M.D. has yet to define a clear mobile strategy.

Shares of A.M.D. closed at $2.62., down 5.4 percent, before it announced its results.

Advanced Micro Devices Reports Profit Down 40%

SUNNYVALE, Calif. (AP) — Trouble in the global economy dragged the chip maker Advanced Micro Devices’ profit down 40 percent in the second quarter, and the company warned Thursday that revenue would continue to be hurt through the summer.

“Overall weakness in the global economy, softer consumer spending and lower channel demand for our desktop processors in China and Europe made the closing weeks of the quarter challenging,” Rory Read, the president and chief executive of A.M.D., said in a statement.

A.M.D. is the world’s No. 2 maker of microprocessors, behind Intel. Mr. Read warned that though the company was acting to improve its performance, he expected headwinds to continue in the third quarter. A.M.D., which makes about a fifth of the world’s computer processors, said its gross margin, a measure of profitability, was 45 percent in the second quarter, compared with 46 percent last year.

Early this month, A.M.D., which is based here, slashed its second-quarter revenue forecast, citing weaker-than-expected sales in China and Europe and lackluster consumer demand over all.

Some analysts said that the largest issue for the company, other than weak demand for personal computers, was that Intel became very competitive on prices in late May and June.

A.M.D.’s net income tumbled to $37 million, or 5 cents a share, from $61 million, or 8 cents, a year earlier. Excluding one-time charges and gains, the company earned 6 cents a share, missing analysts’ expectations by a penny, according to data provider FactSet.

Revenue fell 10 percent to $1.41 billion, in line with analysts’ revised expectations. A.M.D. said computing services revenue fell 13 percent because of lower desktop sales in China and Europe.

The company’s stock fell 61 percent Thursday to close at $4.86.

A.M.D. said it expected third-quarter revenue to fall 1 to 3 percent from the second quarter.

Advanced Micro Devices Reports Profit Down 40%

SUNNYVALE, Calif. (AP) — Trouble in the global economy dragged the chip maker Advanced Micro Devices’ profit down 40 percent in the second quarter, and the company warned Thursday that revenue would continue to be hurt through the summer.

“Overall weakness in the global economy, softer consumer spending and lower channel demand for our desktop processors in China and Europe made the closing weeks of the quarter challenging,” Rory Read, the president and chief executive of A.M.D., said in a statement.

A.M.D. is the world’s No. 2 maker of microprocessors, behind Intel. Mr. Read warned that though the company was acting to improve its performance, he expected headwinds to continue in the third quarter. A.M.D., which makes about a fifth of the world’s computer processors, said its gross margin, a measure of profitability, was 45 percent in the second quarter, compared with 46 percent last year.

Early this month, A.M.D., which is based here, slashed its second-quarter revenue forecast, citing weaker-than-expected sales in China and Europe and lackluster consumer demand over all.

Some analysts said that the largest issue for the company, other than weak demand for personal computers, was that Intel became very competitive on prices in late May and June.

A.M.D.’s net income tumbled to $37 million, or 5 cents a share, from $61 million, or 8 cents, a year earlier. Excluding one-time charges and gains, the company earned 6 cents a share, missing analysts’ expectations by a penny, according to data provider FactSet.

Revenue fell 10 percent to $1.41 billion, in line with analysts’ revised expectations. A.M.D. said computing services revenue fell 13 percent because of lower desktop sales in China and Europe.

The company’s stock fell 61 percent Thursday to close at $4.86.

A.M.D. said it expected third-quarter revenue to fall 1 to 3 percent from the second quarter.