I haven’t sat down to speak with S2C since we collaborated on the book, PROTOTYPICAL, published just before DAC 2016 and even then, I hadn’t spoken to Toshio Nakama, their CEO. Toshio splits his time between the San Jose headquarters and the Shanghai headquarters so getting time to meet face-to-face has been challenging. I was finally… Read More
Author: Daniel Nenni
Three Interesting Things from TSMC!
First, the TSMC Museum of Innovation is now open and it’s quite impressive. Located right below Fab 12, it is definitely worth an hour of your time. Second, Morris Chang was on the investor call which made it much more interesting, especially his comments on the recent Report to the President on U.S. semiconductor leadership. Third,… Read More
Making the Move from 28nm to FinFET!
If you click FinFET in the SemiWiki.com Latest News: navigation bar at the top of this page you will get a list of 86 blogs that have been viewed more than 600,000 times. If you go to the last blogs on the list, meaning the first blogs to be published, you will see a three part series, “Introduction to FinFET Technology” written by Tom Dillinger… Read More
Analog Bits and TSMC!
As a long time semiconductor IP professional I can tell you for a fact that it is one of the most challenging segments of semiconductor design. Given the growing criticality of semiconductor IP, the challenges of being a leading edge IP provider are increasing and may be at a breaking point. The question now is: What does it take to … Read More
2017 Semiconductor Dead Pool
In 2015 we saw $85B in semiconductor acquisition activity and in 2016 there was more than $110B. Given 2015 and 2016 were relatively flat years for the $335B semiconductor industry and 2017 looks like more of the same we should expect consolidation to continue, absolutely.
So, let’s come up with a list of companies that may fall in… Read More
Executive Interview: Joe Rowlands, Chief Architect at NetSpeed Systems
Joe has devoted his career to understanding and designing cache coherent systems and has been granted over 95 patents on the subject. For the past four years, he has been Chief Architect at NetSpeed, a developer of network-on-chip SoC interconnect.… Read More
Intel Spreadtrum ARM SoCs
In June of 2013 Edward Snowden copied and leaked classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA). His actions exposed numerous surveillance programs that many governments around the world reacted to, including China. In September of 2013 China Vice Premier Ma Kai declared semiconductors a key sector for the … Read More
CTO Interview: Mohamed Kassem of efabless
Tell us about your personal vision for efabless
You recall that efabless is building a community of analog and mixed signal designers and providing the crowdsourcing platform that lets them (1) create and market their own new designs and (2) respond to customer requests for on-demand IP and ICs. I see us at the forefront of bringing… Read More
GLOBALFOUNDRIES ASIC Update!
Back in my IP days we spent a lot of time with the ASIC companies chasing multi-million dollar licensing deals. IBM was a fierce ASIC competitor back then with leading edge processes and a silicon proven IP catalog that was unmatched.
Unfortunately that ended at 65nm as the pure-play foundries (TSMC and UMC) and fabless ASIC companies… Read More
Flex Logix is a Different Kind of IP Company!
The embedded FPGA business has been getting quite a bit of press lately so it is definitely worth a closer look. Intel started it all when they acquired the #2 FPGA company Altera for $16.7B last year. Microsoft is also a big FPGA fan for search and deep learning. In fact, Microsoft’s commitment to FPGAs, specifically Altera FPGAs,… Read More
TSMC N3 Process Technology Wiki