Yesterday was Intel’s Q2 conference call. I think that there are some interesting little pieces of information. The financials were what analysts expected although they did take down their guidance for the rest of the year. But that is never the interesting point of Intel conference calls (they almost always hit guidance).… Read More
Ajit’s Semicon Keynote
The opening keynote to this year’s Semicon West was by Ajit Manocha, the CEO of GlobalFoundries entitled Foundry-driven Innovation In the Mobility Era. It is no secret that mobile applications, especially smartphones and tablets, are the most significant semiconductor market today. It is not just large, it is disruptive.… Read More
The Semiconductor IDM Business Model is Dead!
While this was not specifically stated, it was certainly implied during the sessions I attended at SEMICON West this week: The traditional semiconductor business model (IDM) is coming to an end. Starting with the keynote: Foundry-driven Innovation in the Mobility Era,cost was the common theme in any discussion involving mobile… Read More
Deploying 14nm FinFETs in your Next Mobile SoC
At DAC in Austin a design company, foundry and EDA vendor teamed up to present their experiences with 14nm FinFETs during a breakfast on Tuesday.
Panelists included:
- Ed Sperling, Semi Mfg and Design
- Anil Jain, Cavium
- Subramani Kengeri, GLOBALFOUNDRIES
- Kelvin Low, GLOBALFOUNDRIES
- Raymond Leung, Synopsys
- Bari Biswas, Synopsys
Global Foundries Does DAC
Global Foundries will be at DAC in booth 1314. There will be 6 pods there demonstrating:
- Advanced Technology: 28nm ready and ramping, and next is 20LPM and 14XM.
- PDKs: For 28nm, 20nm and 14nm. 14nm handles FinFET enablement complexity. Robust, easy to use and high quality, supports pretty much the full range of EDA tools.
- Design
Solido CEO on 20nm/16nm TSMC and GLOBALFOUNDRIES Design Challenges
EDA needs more CEOs like Amit Gupta. Solido, which is now profitable, is his second AMS EDA company. The first, Analog Design Automation (ADA), was purchased by Synopsys for a hefty multiplier. Prior to becoming an EDA entrepreneur, Amit was product manager for the wireless group at Nortel and a hardware engineer for the RF communications… Read More
GlobalFoundries in Singapore
I hosted a webinar today for GlobalFoundries. Yes, I know that today was TSMC’s Technology Symposium, we weren’t that smart when we picked the date. It was basically a “fireside chat” with me as the moderator asking the questions and Paul Colestock and Aabid Husain as my guests. We actually did it at Cadence… Read More
GF, Analog and Singapore
The world is analog and despite enormous SoCs in the most leading-edge process node being the most glamorous segment of the semiconductor industry, it turns out that one of the fastest growing segments is actually analog and power chips in older process technologies. Overall, according to Semico, analog and power ICs, including… Read More
Can Japan Regain Semiconductor Leadership?
In the 1980s, Japan was seen as the leader in the semiconductor industry. Their quality was higher, especially in memories, and the US was worried about falling behind. In fact Sematech was created in 1987 by the US government and a consortium of 14 US-based semiconductor companies primarily to pool investment on common problems… Read More
Want 10nm Wafers? That’ll Cost You
As you know, I’ve been a bit of a bear about what is happening to wafer costs at 20nm and below. At the Common Platform Technology Forum last week there were a number of people talking about this in presentations and at Harvey Jones’s “fireside chat”.
At the press lunch I asked about this. There are obviously… Read More
More Headwinds – CHIPS Act Chop? – Chip Equip Re-Shore? Orders Canceled & Fab Delay