The semiconductor foundry landscape changed in 2018 when GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Intel paused their leading edge foundry efforts. Intel quietly told partners they would no longer pursue the foundry business and GF publicly shut down their 7nm process development and pivoted towards existing process nodes while trimming headcount… Read More
Webinar: Addressing Multiphysics Challenges in 7nm FinFET Designs
EDA is big on growth through acquisition, being acquired many times throughout my career I know this by experience. In fact, we have a wiki that tracks EDA Mergers and Acquisitions and it is the most viewed wiki on SemiWiki.com with 101,918 views thus far.
In March of 2017 ANSYS acquired CLK Design Automation which did timing variation… Read More
eSilicon Expands Expertise in 7nm
At SemiWiki we usually don’t write about the press releases we are sent. However, a recent press release by eSilicon caught my eye and prompted me to call Mike Gianfagna, eSilicon Vice President of Marketing. The press release is not just about one thing, rather it focuses on a number of interesting things that together show their… Read More
Accelerating 5G Innovation and Reliability Through Simulation and Advanced FinFET Design
In an ANSYS seminar held at DesignCon 2019, Dr. Larry Williams, ANSYS Director of Technology, outlined how 5G design innovation can be accelerated through simulation. He posited that 5G will become a general-purpose technology that affects an entire economy, drastically alter societies and unleash a cascade of complementary… Read More
Where Circuit Simulation Model Files Come From
I started out my engineering career by doing transistor-level circuit design and we used a proprietary SPICE circuit simulator. One thing that I quickly realized was that the accuracy of my circuit simulations depended entirely on the model files and parasitics. Here we are 40 years later and the accuracy of SPICE circuit simulations… Read More
RISC-V End to End Solutions for HPC and Networking
Semiconductor IP is one of the more exciting and most viewed topics we cover on SemiWiki, it has been that way since we began in 2011 and that trend will continue indefinitely, my opinion.
Semiconductor IP: Total Blogs: 640: Total Views: 3253751: Average: 5084
Based on the design starts we track, Cloud Computing is a leading semiconductor… Read More
Parasitic Extraction for Advanced Node and 3D-IC Designs
Technology scaling has made positive impacts on device performance, while creating challenges on the interconnects and the fidelity of its manufactured shapes. The process dimension scaling has significantly increased metal and via resistance for advanced nodes 7nm and onward, as shown in figures 1a,1b. Similar to a fancy… Read More
The Latest from Samsung Semiconductor
Earlier this Spring, Samsung Foundry held a technology forum, describing their process roadmap and supporting ecosystem developments (link). Recently, the larger Samsung Semiconductor organization conducted a Tech Day at their campus in San Jose, presenting (and demo-ing) a broader set of products. The focus of the day was… Read More
Intel Q3 2018 Jibber Jabber
This is what happens when you have a CFO acting as a semiconductor CEO, and Robert Holmes is a career CFO with zero semiconductor experience or education. Granted, no way did he write the opening statement, but it was full of jibber jabber anyway. The real disappointing jibber jabber was from our own Murthy Renduchintala on the status… Read More
Top 10 Highlights from the TSMC Open Innovation Platform Ecosystem Forum
Each year, TSMC hosts two major events for customers – the Technology Symposium in the spring, and the Open Innovation Platform Ecosystem Forum in the fall. The Technology Symposium provides updates from TSMC on:
… Read More


A Century of Miracles: From the FET’s Inception to the Horizons Ahead