No matter how impressive the specifications are for an SoC, the power performance and area of the finished design all depend on the IP selected for the IO blocks. In particular, most SOCs designed for consumer and enterprise applications rely heavily on PCI Express. Because PCIe analog IP is critical to design success, Samsung … Read More
Foundry Fantasy- Deja Vu or IDM 2?
– Intel announced 2 new fabs & New Foundry Services
– Not only do they want to catch TSMC they want to beat them
– It’s a very, very tall order for a company that hasn’t executed
– It will require more than a makeover to get to IDM 2.0
Intel not only wants to catch TSMC but beat them at their own … Read More
No Intel and Samsung are not passing TSMC
Seeking Alpha just published an article about Intel and Samsung passing TSMC for process leadership. The Intel part seems to be a theme with them, they have talked in the past about how Intel does bigger density improvements with each generation than the foundries but forget that the foundries are doing 5 nodes in the time it takes… Read More
Can Samsung Foundry Really Compete with TSMC?
The semiconductor foundry business has been front page news of late and for good reason, it’s an exciting time in the semiconductor industry and the foundries are where it all begins. Unfortunately, most of the “exciting” news has been overblown but this topic is of great interest, to me at least. Having been intimately involved… Read More
Smartphone Processor Trends and Process Differences down through 7nm
This comparison of smartphone processors from different companies and fab processes was originally going to be a post, but with the growing information content, I had to put it into an article. Here, due to information availability, Apple, Huawei, and Samsung Exynos processors will get the most coverage, but a few Qualcomm Snapdragon
Can TSMC Maintain Their Process Technology Lead
Recently Seeking Alpha published an article “Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Losing Its Process Leadership To Intel” and Dan Nenni (SemiWiki founder) asked me to take a look at the article and do my own analysis. This is a subject I have followed and published on for many years.
Before I dig into specific process density… Read More
IEDM 2019 – IBM and Leti
IBM and Leti each presented several papers at IEDM including a joint nanosheet paper. I had the opportunity to sit down with Huiming Bu, director of advanced logic & memory tech and Veeraraghavan Basker, senior engineer from IBM and then in a separate interview Francois Andrieu, head of advanced CMOS laboratory and Shay Reboh,… Read More
STT MRAM Highlights from IEDM 2019
IEDM 2019 had the theme: “Innovative Devices for an Era of Connected Intelligence” of which MRAM is a leading contributor. Following a very informative Plenary Session, Monday afternoon led off with Session 2: Memory Technology – STT-MRAM. This session has seven important STT-MRAM papers describing the progress of this … Read More
TSMC, Huawei, the US Government, and China
The media is trying to disparage the semiconductor industry again. It’s hard to not take this type of desperate journalism personal. Semiconductor people are the smartest and hardest working people in the world and we deserve better, absolutely.
TSMC founder sees trade dispute as ‘reality show with no script’… Read More
IEDM 2019 – TSMC 5nm Process
IEDM is in my opinion the premiere conference for information on state-of-the-art semiconductor processes. In “My Top Three Reasons to Attend IEDM 2019” article I singled out the TSMC 5nm paper as a key reason to attend.
IEDM is one of the best organized conferences I attend and as soon as you pick up your badge you are handed a memory… Read More
Rapidus, IBM, and the Billion-Dollar Silicon Sovereignty Bet