CEO Interview: David Dutton of Silvaco

CEO Interview: David Dutton of Silvaco
by Daniel Nenni on 01-30-2017 at 7:00 am

Silvaco has undergone one of the most impressive EDA transformations so it was a pleasure to interview the man behind it. David Dutton’s 30+ year career started at Intel, Maxim, and Mattson Technology where he led the company’s turnaround and finished as President, CEO, and board member. David joined Silvaco as CEO… Read More


AAPl Vs QCOM Who wins?

AAPl Vs QCOM Who wins?
by Daniel Nenni on 01-26-2017 at 7:00 am

Things just got interesting in the iPhone supply chain with the $1B AAPL Vs QCOM legal action filed this week. For the life of me I could not understand why Apple second sourced the normally QCOM modem in the iPhone 7. It caused quite a stir in the technical community but we could only surmise that it was a price issue on the business side.… Read More


DARPA Flex Logix and TSMC!

DARPA Flex Logix and TSMC!
by Daniel Nenni on 01-23-2017 at 10:00 am

When I first saw emerging semiconductor IP company Flex Logix actively involved with TSMC I knew something big was coming and boy was I right. DARPA announced today that an agreement is in place with Flex Logix to develop EFLX eFPGA technology on TSMC 16FFC for use by companies or Government agencies designing chips for the US Government.… Read More


Technology Update With Andrew Faulkner and Jim Lipman of Sidense

Technology Update With Andrew Faulkner and Jim Lipman of Sidense
by Daniel Nenni on 01-23-2017 at 7:00 am

Sidense is an interesting company in a very important market segment. Sidense was founded in 2004 and their 1T-OTP memory macros are now used in hundreds of chips from 180nm to 16nm for code storage, secure encryption keys, analog and sensor trimming and calibration, ID tags, and chip and processor configuration.

If you are designing… Read More


Another Interesting Thing From TSMC!

Another Interesting Thing From TSMC!
by Daniel Nenni on 01-21-2017 at 7:00 am

As I mentioned in my previous post, the TSMC investor call this month was very interesting and Morris Chang was in fine form during the Q&A. As a semiconductor professional I think some of the questions are ridiculous but maybe they have value to the financial people. This one question from Randy, who I think is very astute, is … Read More


DesignCon 2017 and Mentor Graphics

DesignCon 2017 and Mentor Graphics
by Daniel Nenni on 01-17-2017 at 7:00 am

It’s hard to believe but this is DesignCon #22 and being a Silicon Valley conference I have attended my fair share of them. This year it seems like high speed communications will take the lead followed by the latest on PCB design tools, power and signal integrity, jitter and crosstalk, test and measurement tools, parallel … Read More


CEO Interview: Toshio Nakama of S2C

CEO Interview: Toshio Nakama of S2C
by Daniel Nenni on 01-16-2017 at 7:00 am

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


Three Interesting Things from TSMC!

Three Interesting Things from TSMC!
by Daniel Nenni on 01-13-2017 at 12:00 pm

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!

Making the Move from 28nm to FinFET!
by Daniel Nenni on 01-12-2017 at 12:00 pm

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!

Analog Bits and TSMC!
by Daniel Nenni on 01-10-2017 at 12:00 pm

TSMC Wafer

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