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This is the fourteenth in the series of “20 Questions with Wally Rhines”
I joined Mentor Graphics (now Mentor, A Siemens Business), in late 1993. Tom Engibous, one of my direct reporting people at TI, was promoted to replace me as head of the Semiconductor business of TI and I moved on to what I knew would be a real challenge,… Read More
Before we jump into the specifics, let us understand what’s driving custom solutions in the high performance computing and networking space. It’s the growing demand for core capacity and greater performance, which is due to the increase in the level of parallelism and multitasking required to handle the enormous amount of data… Read More
The cell-based ASIC business that we know today was born in the early 1980s and was pioneered by companies like LSI Logic and VLSI Technology. Some of this history is covered in Chapter 2 of our book, “Fabless: The Transformation of the Semiconductor Industry”. The ASIC business truly changed the world. Prior to this revolution,… Read More
FPGA Prototyping started with the advent of FPGAs in the 1980s and today it is a fast growing market segment due to increasing chip and IP complexities up against tightening windows of opportunities. Getting your design verified quickly and allowing hardware and software engineers the opportunity to develop, test, and optimize… Read More
This is the thirteenth in the series of “20 Questions with Wally Rhines”
My development of a calculator program to determine the Black Scholes value for an option was not the only application that attracted financial people to programmable calculators. As the SR-52, and later TI 59, grew in popularity, and took market… Read More
It’s no secret that I have been a big fan of GLOBALFOUNDRIES since they came about in March of 2009. We even included them in our first book “Fabless: The Transformation of the Semiconductor Industry” right next to TSMC. I am also a big fan of pivoting which is the term we use here in Silicon Valley to describe some of the most innovative… Read More
This is the twelfth in the series of “20 Questions with Wally Rhines”
Among the companies that bought a license from AT&T to produce the transistor was Sony. While the U.S. maintained its lead in technology, other countries like Japan emerged as competitors. Semiconductor manufacturing was both labor intensive… Read More
One of my favorite traditions at the Design Automation Conference is the Synopsys foundry events (the videos are now available). I learned a long time ago that the foundries are the foundation of the fabless semiconductor ecosystem and your relationships with the foundries can make or break you, absolutely. I also appreciate … Read More
The Linley Group is an industry-leading source for independent technology analysis of semiconductors for networking, communications, mobile, and data-center applications. Their Microprocessor Report is widely read as a source of un-biased, no-nonsense analysis of technologies and trends. So, when they dig into something… Read More
This is the eleventh in the series of “20 Questions with Wally Rhines”
In high technology, there are numerous instances of highly productive groups coming together and generating game-changing ideas and products. This happened at Shockley Semiconductor in the 1960s when Gordon Moore, Bob Noyce, Jean Hoerni and… Read More
Rapidus, IBM, and the Billion-Dollar Silicon Sovereignty Bet