When I first started working with the foundries 25 years ago I would have never imagined that I would make a career out of it, which I most certainly have. Fortunately, I recognized early on that not only are the foundries the cornerstone of the semiconductor ecosystem, they are also a very important economic bellwether, absolutely.… Read More
GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Arm Showcase Broad Range of Partnership
I previously blogged on the GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF) Technology Conference (GTC) held in Santa Clara, CA. The main takeaway that I shared in that blog was that GF’s announced “pivot” to a specialty foundry announced over a year ago, including its decision not to pursue 7nm and smaller nodes, appears to be working and GF is gaining momentum.… Read More
The GF Pivot, Specialization Defined
On August 27, 2018, GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF) announced that they were no longer going to compete in the race to the next smaller semiconductor node, at that time, the 7nm node. While surprising to some, on further analysis this move made sense. TSMC had announced its plan to invest around $25B in the 5nm technology node. GF revenue is … Read More
GLOBALFOUNDRIES Ready for IPO in 2022?
Hard to believe but it’s the 10th anniversary of Globalfoundries. What a journey this has been. It truly has been an honor to work with GF over the years as they invested many billions of dollars in the fabless semiconductor ecosystem and added a colorful chapter in semiconductor history, absolutely.
We have written hundreds of … Read More
Semicon West 2019 – Day 4 – Soitec
Last year at Semicon I sat down with Soitec and got an update on the company. You can read my write up from last year here. A key point last year was Soitec was continuing to be profitable and grow after several years of financial struggles.
On Thursday, July 11th I got to sit down with Soitec’s CEO, Paul Boudre and get an update on… Read More
Semicon West 2019 – Day 3 – Global Foundries
On Wednesday, July 10th I got to sit down with Gary Patton, CTO and SVP of worldwide research and development of Global Foundries and get an update on how the company is doing.
We started with a discussion of Global Foundries (GF) general business health. Revenue for the year is expected to be around $6 billion dollars. They are focused… Read More
Semiconductor Foundry Landscape Update 2019
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
GLOBALFOUNDRIES UPDATE 2019
The GLOBALFOUNDRIES story has been one of the more interesting ones inside the fabless semiconductor ecosystem. It started in 2008 when AMD announced a partnership with ATIC of Abu Dhabi to create a new joint venture company to become the world’s first truly global semiconductor foundry. On March 4[SUP]th[/SUP] of 2009 (happy… Read More
Synopsys GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Automotive IP
IP vendors have always had the inside track on the status of new process nodes and what customers are planning for their next designs. This is even more apparent now that systems companies are successfully doing their own chips by leveraging the massive amounts of commercial IP available today. Proving once again that IP really … Read More
GLOBALFOUNDRIES Talks About Enabling Development of 5G ICs
5G is in the news again. Sprint has mounted a legal challenge against ATT, claiming that ATT is misleading people into believing that they already are offering 5G. While ATT is about to start testing of 5G, they have also sent out updates that causes customer phones to display 5GE when they are still on 4G LTE systems. The truth is that… Read More
What would you do if you were the CEO of Intel?