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At IDF Brian Krzanich gave the keynote. I won’t summarize the whole thing here but just talk about one part that was something they had actually managed to keep secret ahead of time: Quark.
Quark is a synthesizable core. It uses 1/10th power of Atom and is 1/5 size. Now I am writing this, I don’t know if this is a fair comparison… Read More
Ecosystem is everything when it comes to modern semiconductor design, especially if it is mobile. The fabless semiconductor industry has been all about ecosystem since the beginning and that is why we hold supercomputers in our hands today, believe it. After the invention of the transistor in 1947, and the invention of the integrated… Read More
It now appears that Steve Ballmer was suddenly given his walking papers at the urging of an activist investor (ValueAct) and with the concurrence of Bill Gates. Wall Street’s growing impatience tends to coincide when the Innovators Dilemma scenario has taken hold of a company that has been unable to overcome its challengers. Why… Read More
I attended the semi-annual SEMI Silicon Valley Lunch meeting last week. The semiconductor equipment people are the ones that really know what is going on. People can talk about capex numbers on conference calls but it is the equipment vendors who either do or do not get orders for particular types of equipment. In turn, the analysts… Read More
Yes, I will be going to IDF again this year, even though it is the same day as the Apple new product announcement. As a born again Apple Fan that is really saying something but Intel has done a great job of motivating the fabless semiconductor ecosystem and I thank them for that.
Unfortunately, noticeably missing from the IDF presentation… Read More
The presentations from the 450mm sessions at SEMICON West are up now. After talking to equipment manufacturers and the foundries I’m fairly confident 450mm wafers will be under our Christmas trees in 2016, absolutely. TSMC just increased CAPEX again and you can be sure 450mm is part of it. SEMI has a 450mm Central landing page HERE… Read More
Back in May, William Holt, EVP of technology and manufacturing at Intel gave a presentation to analysts entitled Advancing Moore’s Law, Imperatives and Opportunity. A pdf of the presentation is available here. I just saw it for the first time today and I’m not sure how to get my head around it. It starts off with a lot … Read More
One of the more interesting pieces of information I overheard at SEMICON West earlier this month was that Intel 14nm was delayed. This rumor came from the semiconductor equipment manufacturers and they would know. What I was told is that the Intel 14nm process has not left the OR development facility to be replicated in the OR and … Read More
To be fair, cheating on CPU benchmarks is not new, so if you haven’t followed the computer industry for the past 30 years you might be surprised by Intel cheating, but I’m certainly not. Back in the day I worked for Data General and we “creatively” benchmarked against the Digital Equipment VAX all day long. There are different types… Read More
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