Time to pack up for the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, I will be driving down with my beautiful wife Shushana because she does not like to fly. The drive takes the better part of a day so we will leave early and see the sunrise over the desert. She is great company, the time will fly by. We will be 2 of the more than 150,000 people… Read More
Tech Forum, February 5, features 32/28-, 20-, 14-, and 10-nanometer processes
The Common Platform Alliance — IBM, Samsung Electronics, Co., Ltd., and GLOBALFOUNDRIES — continues to redefine the landscape of the semiconductor industry with its groundbreaking collaboration. Join us at our 2013 Common Platform Technology Forumon Tuesday, February 5, 2013 at the Santa Clara Convention Center as we showcase… Read More
The Semiconductor Landscape – II
It has been a year since my article Semiconductor Landscape in Jan 2012 I wanted to look back into the major events over the year and then anticipate what’s in store going forward. What has happened over the year is much more than what I could foresee. Major consolidation in EDA space – Synopsys acquired Magma, SpringSoft, Ciranova,… Read More
Wafer Costs: Out of Control or Not?
I didn’t attend the International Electronic Device Meeting (IEDM) earlier this month, but there have been a lot of reports on the inter webs especially about 20nm and 14nm processes. Some of this is really geeky stuff but I think that perhaps the most interesting thing I’ve read about is summarized in this chart:
This… Read More
Intel 22nm SoC Process Exposed!
The biggest surprise embedded in the Intel 22nm SoC disclosure is that they still do NOT use Double Patterning which is a big fat hairy deal if you are serious about the SoC foundry business. The other NOT so surprising thing I noticed in reviewing the blogosphere response is that the industry term FinFET was dominant while the Intel… Read More
IP Scoring Using TSMC DFM Kits
Design For Manufacturing (DFM) is the art and science of making an IC design yield better in order to receive a higher ROI. Ian Smith, an AE from Mentor in the Calibre group presented a pertinent webinar, IP Scoring Using TSMC DFM Kits. I’ll provide an overview of what I learned at this webinar.… Read More
Intel’s New Tablet Strategy Brings Ivy Bridge to the Forefront
In an article published this week in microprocessor report and highlighted in Barron’s, Linley Gwennap makes the argument that Intel should stay the course and fix the PC instead of trying to offset its declines with sales into the Smartphone and Tablet space. He cites that lower PC sales growth was due to a dramatic slowdown in processor… Read More
Cortex-A9 speed limits and PPA optimization
We know by now that clock speeds aren’t everything when it comes to measuring the goodness of a processor. Performance has direct ties to pipeline and interconnect details, power factors into considerations of usability, and the unspoken terms of yield drive cost.
My curiosity kicked in when I looked at the recent press release… Read More
Intel not interested by NVELO? Samsung was…
Short news came during last week-end and Linkedin was the most efficient media to learn that NVELO has been acquired. Probably very few people out of the SSD ecosystem knew about NVELO. Based in Santa Clara, the company was a spin off from Denali, privately owned and if you look at the top management, you will recognize a few name, like… Read More
TSMC 28nm and 20nm Update Q4 2012
The big news in Taiwan last week was another increase in TSMC capital expenditures to $9B in 2013. That number could grow however. Last year TSMC CAPEX was set at $6B and ended up at $8.3B due to rapid 28nm capacity expansion and an accelerated 20nm program. 2013 will be all about FinFETs and manufacturing Apple SoCs so $9B may not cover… Read More
Achieving Seamless 1.6 Tbps Interoperability for High BW HPC AI/ML SoCs: A Technical Webinar with Samtec and Synopsys