There are some interesting parallels between Intel and Microsoft. Both of them missed mobile. Actually they didn’t completely miss mobile, both of them had programs from early days. But clearly they both regarded mobile as a much lower priority: the PC was where all the money was and where it would continue to be forever.… Read More
The Leading Edge Foundry Landscape
There have been a lot of interesting announcements and presentations lately from the leading edge foundries. Looking at all of this information, a pretty interesting picture begins to emerge.
TSMC
TSMC is far and away the world’s largest foundry. In their 2014-Q2 conference call TSMC outlined their expectations for the balance… Read More
Intel Second Quarter Results
Intel announced their quarterly results earlier this week. Their mainline microprocessor business is doing well, especially the highest performance segments for servers, datacenters and cloud computing. Broken down by segment the numbers come out like this:
- PC Client Group revenue of $8.7 billion, up 9 percent sequentially
Intel 14nm Delayed Yet Again?
This week I’m at SEMICON West with 27,000 of my closest friends. Good information, good networking, and some great rumors this year. Yesterday I heard a juicy rumor in the halls that Intel is still having 14nm yield problems. Remember, we heard a similar rumor last year and it turned out to be true. I Googled around this morning and … Read More
Intel Custom Foundry Explained!
The exciting news is that Intel landed their first big SoC customer with Panasonic’s System LSI Business Division. These 14nm SoCs will be targeted to audio visual equipment markets. The significance here to me is that Intel not only has a big SoC customer, Intel now has a non-Silicon Valley based foundry customer. It is critical… Read More
Fantasy Tech-Ball and the Intel Rumor Wire
Reading Intel analysis lately has been a lot like reading fantasy baseball analysis. Intel should buy Altera. Intel should waive Atom. Intel should fab for Apple. All of those have a near-zero probability of happening IMHO, and yet pundits continue to pitch their version of alternate reality, dealing away product lines and strategies… Read More
The Intel Resurgence?
There is an interesting article on Seeking Alpha about Intel. Interesting because it is written by someone with both fabless semiconductor experience and a talent for strategic thinking. It’s a good read and like most Seeking Aplha semiconductor articles the comments are hilarious. Give the guy a penny and click over HERE, he … Read More
What Seeking Alpha is Telling us about Intel
New Media is a double edged sword for sure. The good news is that you get to read articles by people who actually work in the semiconductor industry. The bad news is that hidden agendas and disinformation abound so let the reader beware, especially if that reader is risking their retirement money!
As I mentioned before, “Understand… Read More
Intel & Ansys Enable 14nm Chip Production
In the semiconductor industry, it feels great to hear about the process technology shrinking to lower nodes along with innovative transistor structures that offer major gains in PPA (Power, Performance and Area). However, it requires huge investment of capital, time and effort from foundries to conceptualize, prototype and… Read More
The Chip Design Game at the End of Moore’s Law
I just came across and interesting video from last year’s Hot Chips conference. Dr. Robert Colwell of DARPA discusses how the processor design industry is likely to change after it becomes too difficult to continue scaling transistors to ever-smaller dimensions. This is likely to occur sometime within the next decade,… Read More