Quarterly earning calls are a great source of information but they can also be a source of confusion and generally it is an unhealthy combination of the two. On one hand these earning calls are to appease the financial community. On the other hand, in my opinion, these calls are also used to generate fear, uncertainty, and doubt amongst… Read More
Author: Daniel Nenni
TSMC (Apple) Update Q2 2015!
The TSMC quarterly conference call was last week and of course it stirred up quite a bit of controversy. Let me share with you my experience, observations, and opinions and maybe together we can come up with an accurate prediction for 2016. First let’s take a look at 20nm and what people now call the “Apple effect.”
Correct… Read More
Leveraging Power Reduction Techniques for MCU Based SoCs
Dolphin Integration launched a new 32-bit microcontroller, RISC-351 Zephyr, targeting low-power SoCs for IoT-like competitive markets taking into consideration three angles for optimization of power consumption: architectural, memory and software.
Architecture Angle
As a reminder, 8-bit versus 16-bit versus 32-bit… Read More
Angela Merkel Visits GlobalFoundries in Dresden!
The Chancellor of Germany visited Fab 1 in Dresden today. I did not get to speak with her personally so I will send her a message here. The fabless semiconductor industry is a force of nature. You can either harness the power or be overwhelmed by it. The United States, Taiwan, China, and South Korea have certainly figured this out. Hopefully… Read More
Silicon Saxony!
The “Saxony” reference comes from the Holy Roman era which is now the tenth largest of Germany’s sixteen states and is divided into ten districts. The “Silicon” comes from the microchip makers in the Dresden area which is district #2. The largest of said chip makers is now GlobalFoundries so in the same vein that California has Silicon… Read More
Conquering the Next IoT Challenges with FPGA-Based Prototyping
The need for ever-connected devices is skyrocketing. As I fiddle with my myriad of electronic devices that seem to power my life, I usually end up wishing that all of them could be interconnected and controlled through the Internet. The truth is, only a handful of my devices are able to fulfill that wish, but the need is there and developers… Read More
After Five Years, 28nm Future Remains Bright!
Five years ago TSMC started 28nm mass production and it went on to become one of the most versatile and successful process technologies in history. The first wave was triggered by an unprecedented demand for application processors from smartphone and tablet vendors. Today it’s widely assumed that 28nm demand will continue growing… Read More
eSilicon ♥ ARM!
The things I enjoy the most at conferences are presentations by customers, the companies that solve the problems we face every day with modern semiconductor design. We all have access to the same tools and IP and use the same foundries so it’s the actual design and implementation that separates the wheat from the chaff, absolutely.… Read More
The First Book on Smartphones!
Now that we all have smartphones you may be interested in how this all came about. There are quite a few books about the smartphone technology and business but one of the first books that emerged after the iPhone era is by SemiWiki blogger and former EETimes Editor Majeed Ahmad:
Smartphone: Mobile Revolution at the Crossroads of Communications,
… Read More
UMC and SMIC 14nm, Too Little Too Late?
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
AI RTL Generation versus AI RTL Verification