In 2015 Qualcomm stunned the fabless semiconductor world with an unprecedented layoff. When I first heard about it the number was 5% but it kept growing and finally hit 15%. The big misstep here was, that after being the SoC leader starting in 2007 with the Snapdragon series of chips that powered the Smartphone revolution, QCOM did… Read More
Author: Daniel Nenni
TSMC and Pokemon Go!
As Pokemon Go invades the world, let me give you a firsthand player’s description of the game and why the next generation of augmented reality apps will energize the fabless semiconductor ecosystem and greatly benefit TSMC.
While I am not a “gamer” per say, I am a technologist and am always looking for new semiconductor market drivers.… Read More
efabless SemiWiki FAQ
The first post on efabless generated some interesting questions that I will re-post here. Again, crowdsourcing is an iterative process so your help is greatly appreciated:
Please forgive me my ignorance, but what is the difference between efabless and ChipEstimate?… Read More
efabless: Think GitHub for ICs and IP
For those of you who don’t know, GitHub is the crowdsourcing version of the defacto industry standard GIT source code management software. Currently, more than 14 million people have deposited more than 35 million software projects (mostly open-source) on GitHub making it the largest host of source code in the world.
Now think… Read More
Why is AMD Stock Jumping?
One of my favorite pastimes is listening to the quarterly investor calls of the leading semiconductor companies. I can then match up the talking points with the calls I do with Wall Street, the conferences I attend, and the other data points I have collected while working inside the fabless semiconductor ecosystem for more than … Read More
More Details on the Smartphone and Wearables Market
The Linley Mobile Conference opened today with a nice keynote overview of the mobile market evolution. In the media I see a lot of doom and gloom articles about smartphones and wearables but if you look at it closely you will see a natural growth curve evolving.
The mobile semiconductor market is evolving as vendors split their focus… Read More
Coming Up Next: ARM IoT ASICs!
The History of ASICs is well documented in our book “Fabless: The Transformation of the Semiconductor Industry” which illustrates the earliest forms of design start driven collaboration. The history of ARM is well documented in our book “Mobile Unleashed” which illustrates an entire company culture based on design start driven… Read More
10nm Will Be an Epic Process Node!
In the history of the fabless semiconductor industry the foundries have always been a process node or two behind the leading semiconductor manufacturers. Starting in Q1 2017, for the first time in fabless semiconductor history, the foundries will have a process node advantage. This is horrible news for some but great news for … Read More
IC and System Design for Mobile and Wearable Devices!
The Linley Mobile and Wearable Conference is coming up so let’s take a look at what is in store for us. Bernard Murphy, Tom Simon, and I will be covering the event live for SemiWiki and we will also be doing a book giveaway/signing for our new “Prototypical” book (compliments of S2C Inc.) during the networking event on Tuesday evening.… Read More
APP ADD Will Cause the Next Tech Bust, Absolutely!
After playing Pokemon Go with my nephew this weekend I have another solid data point to support my hypothesis that we are in yet another tech boom. Let’s call it fad based investors jousting with unicorns. Think dotcom bubble of 2000. What drove the dotcom bubble? Cheap money, magical valuations, market overconfidence, and a good… Read More
Quantum Advantage is About the Algorithm, not the Computer