Pretty much out of nowhere UMC let fly a press release about taping out a 14nm test chip with ARM and Synopsys IP which was quickly followed by an SMIC 14nm press release about a joint venture with Huawei, Qualcomm, and imec. It caught me a bit by surprise since I spent time with both UMC and SMIC at #52DAC and nothing was mentioned. Of course… Read More
Author: Daniel Nenni
GlobalFoundries IBM Deal to Close July 1st!
Probably one of the most awaited semiconductor events is coming next week if the Poughkeepsie Journal is correct, which from what I’m told by my Albany friends, they are. The official announcement was made last October using the slide deck which can be found HERE. It was originally thought that the approval process would take a year… Read More
Solido Has Perfected the Emerging EDA Company Business Model!
Last year at #51DAC we gave away more than a thousand printed versions of our book “Fabless: The Transformation of the Semiconductor industry.” This year we gave away pens with a light and stylus. My friends at Solido Design gave away 600 pens in their booth and we gave away another 400 at our DAC reception on Wednesday night. Solido… Read More
The Best Conversations You Missed at #52DAC!
The CEO Fireside Chats were my very favorite part of #52DAC. Dr. Walden Rhines, Lip-Bu Tan, and Dr. Aart de Geus are heroes of the EDA industry, absolutely. I saw all three Fireside Chats and the one word that I’m left with is INSPIRED! … Read More
TSMC Shows 10nm Wafer!
If you really want to know why I write about TSMC it is all about ego, my massive ego, absolutely. Blogs about TSMC and the foundries have always driven the most traffic and they most likely always will. Semiconductor IP is second, Semiconductor Design is third, and I don’t think that is going to change anytime soon:
SemiWiki BI: Daniel… Read More
Vacationing with the Fabless Semiconductor Ecosystem!
The Design Automation Conference is the largest and most diverse event in the fabless semiconductor ecosystem. Next week in San Francisco you will see technology and people you have never seen before. You will benefit from the efforts of hundreds of thousands of semiconductor professionals like myself who have dedicated their… Read More
MIPI Beyond Mobile, Semiwiki Blogger Paper at #52DAC!
IoT or wearable: it’s fascinating to see how many articles, blogs, and comments have been posted about them during the last two years! IoT business potential is huge as are the number of possible applications. If we summarize the functions within a wearable system we can count:
[LIST=1]
Semiconductor Acquisitions will Fuel Innovation!
Has the semiconductor world gone acquisition crazy? It certainly seems that way with the more than $60B in M&A activity which may now include Altera. We are probably getting close to the 80/20 rule where 80% of the semiconductor revenue is being generated by 20% of the companies. Not far off from where we were at 25 years ago when… Read More
Why does Apple do business with Samsung?
The Apple and Samsung relationship is an interesting one. On one hand they have co-developed some of the most innovative products on the market today (iPod, iPhone, iPad, iWatch) yet they are fierce competitors in the mobile market. Some call this type of business relationship “frenemies” others refer to the old Italian proverb… Read More
How Good is Your DRC Deck?
Design Rule Check (DRC) is the #1 foundry sign-off check. Fabless companies receive the DRC deck from the foundry; it’s a file comprising thousands of commands in a proprietary checker language for a specific DRC tool. In advanced technologies such a deck executes tens of thousands of geometric operations on the physical… Read More
Flynn Was Right: How a 2003 Warning Foretold Today’s Architectural Pivot