The explosion in volume and consumption of data, fueled by industry trends in virtualization, networking, and computing among others, continues to push photonic solutions forward into leading positions. On Feb 2nd, I attended a panel by Ansys at DesignCon that brought together industry experts from Intel, GlobalFoundries,… Read More
Webinar: The Data Revolution of Semiconductor Production
How Advancements in Technology Unlock New Insights
The demand for efficient and scalable chip production has never been greater. The need to scale at volume and adapt to shorter innovation cycles makes machine learning and advanced data analytics essential components of semiconductor production.
Join us on Tuesday, March … Read More
Exponential Innovation: HFSS
The old adage: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” is as offensive to innovators as it is to grammarians. Just because something works well, doesn’t mean it cannot work better. As times change and technology advances, you either move forward or get left behind.
If you haven’t upgraded to the latest Ansys HFSS electromagnetic simulation… Read More
AMAT- Flat is better than down-Trailing tool strength offsets memory- backlog up
-Strength in trailing tools offsets weak memory resulting in flat
-Order book very volatile but backlog surprisingly still grew
-Trailing edge VS Leading edge = 50/50 – Foundry/logic over 2/3
-Not nearly as bad as Lam but not as good as ASML
AMAT posts good quarter & guide – Flat for three quarters
Applied Materials… Read More
IEDM 2023 – 2D Materials – Intel and TSMC
Intel and TSMC make up two of the three leading edge logic companies. At IEDM held in December 2022, Intel presented a paper on 2D Materials and TSMC presented 6 papers. Clearly 2D materials are of great interest at least to two of the three leading edge logic companies. Before diving into the papers, some background context is needed.… Read More
Speeding up Chiplet-Based Design Through Hardware Emulation
The first chiplets focused summit took place last month. So many accomplished speakers gave keynote talks on what direction should and would the Chiplets ecosystem evolution take. Corigine presented the keynote on what direction hardware emulation should and would evolve for speeding up chiplet- based designs. During a pre-conference… Read More
Optimization Tradeoffs in Power and Latency for PCIe/CXL in Datacenters
PCI Express Power Bottleneck
Madhumita Sanyal, Sr. Technical Product Manager, and Gary Ruggles, Sr. Product Manager, discussed the tradeoffs between power and latency in PCIe/CXL data centers during a live SemiWiki webinar on January 26, 2023. The demands on PCIe continue to grow with the integration of multiple components… Read More
Alphawave Semi at the Chiplet Summit
The first annual Chiplet Summit was held last week in San Jose and I must say it exceeded my expectations, but I have some advice for the participating speakers and sponsoring companies. A good portion of the content was on WHY chiplets and not HOW. I think we have progressed passed this point and if we keep dwelling on it we will delay… Read More
Lam chops guidance, outlook, headcount- an ugly, long downturn- memory plunges
-Lam Research chops guidance, outlook & headcount sharply
-Further declines as 2023 will be H1 weighted- No end in sight
-System sales cut by more than half as even service is cut
-Memory is the culprit as expected-Forcing business “reset”
A sad sounding conference call….
While Lam reported a good December,… Read More
ASML – Powering through weakness – Almost untouchable – Lead times exceed downturn
-Demand far exceeds supply & much longer than any downturn
-Full speed ahead-$40B in solid backlog provides great comfort
-ASP increase shows strength- China is non issue
-In a completely different league than other equipment makers
Reports a good beat & Guide
Revenues were Euro6.4B with system sales making up Euro4.7B… Read More


Semidynamics Unveils 3nm AI Inference Silicon and Full-Stack Systems