Pop culture-infused humor, vibrant design, and a catchy Mariachi riff bridge brand awareness from protein bars into savory snacks.

Family-owned Ballreich Bros., Tiffin, Ohio, has a large fan base that pines for its various potato chips as well as crispy new shoestring potato sticks, popcorn, pretzels and other snacks. 

Ballreich Bros.’ 75,000-sq.-ft. potato chip and snack plant churns out 2,000-5,000 lb. of product an hour. Manufacturing product on a just-in-time basis, the family owned and operated company in Tiffin, Ohio, also produces new Sweet Potato Chips and shoestring Potato Sticks in three flavors.

Packaging enhancements, a twist on shapes and ingredients and many new flavor combinations continue to win over consumers. 

Harris Interactive recently released the results of its 2012 Harris Poll EquiTrend study, which analyzed the responses of more than 38,500 consumers on key measures of brand health for more than 1,500 lifestyle, product and service brands. When questioned about the brands they are likely to reach for when craving a salty snack, respondents chose Lay’s Potato Chips—the top-ranked salty snack for the past eight years—followed by two other Frito-Lay North America brands, Doritos and Tostitos.

Better-for-you ingredients and innovative flavors continue to keep potato chips at the top of consumers’ list of favorite snacks, while the classics still resonate.

In the wake of strong demand for Donkey Chips, the company needed new equipment to significantly increase production of its line of tortilla chips. Here's how they did it.

The chips segment has grown quite lively over the past year, with new product areas emerging and others, like apple chips, seeing considerable growth and maturation. Snack producers are also starting to grow beyond potatoes, offering sweet potato, beet and parsnip chips.

ICRFQ, a leading distributor in the integrated circuits (IC) industry, proudly announces its continued commitment to excellence and innovation.

The technology enables leading enterprises and data centers to realize the highest-performance Solid-State Drives (SSDs) utilizing next-generation NAND technologies.

World's first 2-in-1 (Putter & Chipper) Golf Club DR.PC 1830 Rolling Putter Kickstarter Launch Preview

P4.8 Rental LED Display For Hungary's Another Ice Hockey Stadium

The Élevé Recovery Room has already begun impacting athletes training at world renowned Atlanta facility

Chip Speicher, PhD, is lauded for his success in education, leadership, acquisitions and financial reporting

The system semiconductor technology is at the core of the application of AI technology in various electric devices.

Intel is struggling to overcome a series of challenges and establish itself as a globally competitive chipmaker.

This is the story behind one of the most valuable — and perhaps, most improbable — technologies humanity has ever created. It's a breakthrough called extreme ultraviolet lithography, and it's how the most advanced microchips in the world are made. The kind of chips powering the latest AI models. The kind of chips that the U.S. is desperately trying to keep out of the hands of China.

For years, few thought this technology was even possible. It still sounds like science fiction: A laser strong enough to blast holes in a bank vault hits a droplet of molten tin. The droplet explodes into a burst of extreme ultraviolet light. That precious light is funneled onto a wafer of silicon, where it etches circuits as fine as a strand of DNA. Only one company in the world that can make these advanced microchip etching machines: a Dutch firm called ASML.

Today on the show, how this breakthrough in advanced chipmaking happened — and how it almost didn't. How the long-shot idea was incubated in U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories and nurtured by U.S. tech giants. And, why a Dutch company now controls it.

This episode was hosted by Jeff Guo and Sally Helm. It was produced by Willa Rubin and edited by Jess Jiang. It was fact-checked by Dania Suleman, and engineered by Patrick Murray. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.

Help support Planet Money and hear our bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

The Defense Department last Friday said it has awarded $148 million that will go to its eight regional hubs under a program designed to bolster domestic microelectronics innovation and production. […]

Guest: Wilbert Albers Host: Markus In this episode we take a look at microchip production, with a special focus on waferscanners. To do this, we talked with Wilbert Albers of ASML, the leading waferscanner manufacturer in the world. In the episode, we talk about the overall chip production process (from silicon sand over wafer cutting […]

Kettle Foods Ltd presents the KETTLE & More range with user-friendly pack reclosability to maintain freshness and support portion control, from Essentra Tapes.

TNA completely redesigned and optimized the company’s manufacturing site in Parkersburg, West Virginia, achieving a remarkable 400% capacity increase.

They might also be used as highly-sensitive sensors and even as integrated light sources.

Apple’s latest 24-inch iMac introduces the powerful M4 chip and enhances the user experience with a nano-texture glass option and a 12-megapixel Center Stage camera.

Apple’s new Mac mini models pack more power than ever into a case that has a smaller footprint but a taller profile than previous versions. The M4 Pro Mac mini also introduces the first Thunderbolt 5 ports in the Mac world.

With the release of new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models based on the M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max chips, Apple has addressed every niggling annoyance in the previous generation—these are glorious machines. But they still aren’t cheap.

The funding is part of a total of €380m and falls under the Chips Joint Undertaking.

Read more: EU invests €133m in Dutch photonic chip plants

Starting November 11, TSMC plans to stop supplying 7 nm and smaller chips to Chinese companies working on AI processors and GPUs. "The move is reportedly to ensure it remains compliant with US export restrictions," reports The Register. From the report: This will not affect Chinese customers wanting 7 nm chips from TSMC for other applications such as mobile and communications, according to Nikkei, which said the overall impact on the chipmaker's revenue is likely to be minimal. TrendForce further cites another China-based source who claims the move was at the behest of the US Department of Commerce, which informed TSMC that any such shipments should not proceed unless approved and licensed by its BIS (Bureau of Industry and Security). We asked the agency for confirmation. Any moves by the silicon supremo is likely to be out of caution to pre-empt accusations from Washington that it isn't doing enough to prevent advanced technology from getting into the hands of Chinese entities that have been sanctioned. As TrendForce notes, it "highlights the foundry giant's delicate position in the global semiconductor supply chain amid the heating chip war between the world's two superpowers."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Applied Brain Research's self-contained, single-chip speech recognition solution?can perform real-time low latency automatic speech recognition.

[This Day] On the back of galloping inflation, regulating expenses, and devaluation of the local currency, a total of 23 leading companies on the Nigeria Exchange Limited (NGX), reported a whooping N5.1 trillion operating expenses in the half year (H1) ended June 2024.

Apple launches faster chips, MacBook Pro laptops and cheaper Airpods - what are the upgrades?

Amsterdam's Schiphol airport to hit airlines with major hike in fees

AI chipmaker Nvidia to join Dow Jones, replacing rival Intel

More memory and better display support make the $1,599 Pro more appealing.

Annapurna Labs, acquired by Amazon in 2015, will release the Trainium 2 in December.

From rendering animal testing obsolete to reducing HIV and preterm birth, Donald Ingber is making the future a reality.

Location: Engineering Library- QA76.8.B35G39 2016

Taiwan, which makes one-fifth of the world's semiconductors, is facing a severe shortage of workers.

Santa Clara chipmaker Nvidia has ridden the AI revolution to briefly vault over Microsoft and Apple and become the world's most valuable company.

Geopolitical tensions and technological constraints make the chip industry more complex to navigate. A groundbreaking engineer talks about it future.

Microfluidic chips that mimic the complex human cervical environment provide a platform to study the reproductive tract and associated infections like bacterial vaginosis.

The Biden administration announced a $162 million investment in microchip technology on Thursday in an attempt to boost domestic production of computer chips.

When Christie Pierce took a photo of a chipmunk named Mr. Stubbs at her Valleyford home, making it appear as if he was playing cards with drink tickets she received at a casino night, she didn't expect it to catalyze the creation of a niche wildlife photography business…

Panelistas consideran que, cerrado el litigio, será importante buscar un acercamiento entre Nicaragua y Colombia para atender asuntos como derechos de pesca.

Nearly every powered device we use these days depends on microchips, from cars to electric guitars. A look at the origin of the integrated circuit, its rapid development, and the way this technology has changed the world's geopolitical and economic landscape.

Piep, piep, piep… hoor je dat? Het is de hartslag van je organisatie. Hoe gaat het met jouw medewerkers – zitten ze in het juiste ritme, of voelt het ergens wat gespannen aan? Tijdens Employee Experience Event zat ik op het puntje van mijn stoel bij Schiphols sessie over luisteren – en dan niet die […]

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., or SMIC, is manufacturing chips with features less than one-15,000th of the thickness of a sheet of paper.