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
Chip side of the Open Interconnect Consortium
Maybe it’s my competitive analysis gene, or too many years spent hanging out with consortium types, but I’m always both curious and skeptical when a new consortium arises – especially in a crowded field of interest. The dynamics of who aligns with a new initiative, and how they plan to go to market compared to other entities, prompts… Read More
Take a drive on the IoT with V2V
What platform has become the most sophisticated and intimate personal electronic environment ever? The car. To paraphrase a famous automotive company’s top executive, car companies are transforming the car into a powerful smartphone that allows drivers to carry around, customize, and interact with their digital world. Automotive… 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
The Grand Folly of India’s Foundry Plans
At the beginning of the year, New Delhi’s outgoing government launched an initiative purported to drive the nation’s technology independence and reduce the current account deficit on electronics imports. The initiative describes a partnership between New Delhi and two industrial consortiums for the building of semiconductor… 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 Great 28nm Debacle!
40nm was a big node while I was Director of Foundries at the IP company Virage Logic which was later acquired by Synopsys. 40nm was big because the top fabless companies multi-sourced designs from one foundry to another with relative ease to get the best wafer prices. It was also the node where some of the big IDMs went fab-lite moving… Read More
GlobalFoundries Goes to Semicon West
Next week it is Semicon West, the big equipment vendor tradeshow. I love to go since EDA and semiconductor and all the stuff we are interested in here at Semiwiki are driven by equipment capabilities, especially lithography. The highest viewed blogs I write tend to be ones on technologies that are just a bit out beyond the stuff people… Read More
Is this thing real? Symmetric authentication will tell you!
The act of authentication is very straightforward. Essentially, it is making sure that something is real.
There are two parts to authentication:
[LIST=1]
Authentication in the “crypto-verse” typically happens on a host and client basis where the host wants to ensure that a client is
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
Rapidus, IBM, and the Billion-Dollar Silicon Sovereignty Bet