All Things Semiconductor!
The “20 Questions with John East” series continues
From time to time I present the History of Silicon Valley as I saw it to various audiences. I always enjoy doing that. I’ve learned that the part that audiences like the most is the Apple / Steve Jobs story. That’s not hard to understand. Steve Jobs was truly fascinating! The story… Read More
The “20 Questions with John East” series continues
Intel was founded in 1968 by Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore who had left Fairchild earlier that year. They immediately hired Andy Grove. Noyce, Moore and Grove were a study in contrasts. I had various dealings over the years with Noyce and Grove, but have met Moore only twice. They… Read More
During my Taiwan visit, prior to Las Vegas, I was fortunate to spend time with Willy Chen and Vivian Jiang to prepare for the cloud panel I moderated at #56thDAC. Willy and Vivian are part of the ever-important Design Infrastructure Marketing Division of TSMC, which includes the internal and external cloud efforts. TSMC first announced… Read More
TSMC attends DAC every year and they do something very savvy, it’s a theatre where they invite all of their EDA and IP partners to present something of interest, followed by a drawing for a prize. At the end of the day they even have a nice prize, like a MacBook Air, which I didn’t win. On Wednesday I watched Dave Reed of Synopsys… Read More
Samsung Foundry recently held their 4th annual technology forum in Santa Clara. This article reviews the highlights of the presentations. There were two prevalent themes throughout – focused execution on the current process roadmap, and the introduction of the 3nm process node features and schedule.
Before getting into … Read More
There were quite a few announcements at the Samsung Foundry Forum but my favorite was the IP partnership between Samsung and Silvaco. IP is a critical part of the fabless ecosystem and one of the advantages an IDM foundry has over a pure-play is the vast amounts of internal IP that have been silicon proven over the years. With Samsung… Read More
Since the beginning of May eSilicon has announced the tape-out of three TSMC 7nm test chips. The first of these, a 7nm 400G Ethernet Gearbox/Retimer design, caught my eye and I followed up with Hugh Durdan, their vice president of strategy and products, to learn more about it. Rather than just respin their 56G SerDes, they decided… Read More
Why does it seem like current FPGA devices work very much like the original telephone systems with exchanges where workers connected calls using cords and plugs? Achronix thinks it is now time to jettison Switch Blocks and adopt a new approach. Their motivation is to improve the suitability of FPGAs to machine learning applications,… Read More
It is said that it will cost as much as $600M to develop a 5nm chip. At that price, only a few companies can afford to play, and with that amount of cash in, innovation is severely limited.
At the same time, there is a stampede in the artificial intelligence (AI) market where around 60 startups have appeared, many of which have already … Read More
Hardware is roaring back into prominence in technology innovation, from advanced cars to robots, smart homes and smart cities, 5G communication and the burgeoning electronification of industry, medicine and utilities. While software continues to play a role, all of these capabilities depend fundamentally on advances in … Read More
