Throughout the debate on fab incentives and the Chips Act I keep seeing comments like; TSMC makes >90% of all advanced silicon, or sometimes Taiwan make >90% of all advanced silicon. This kind of ill-defined and grossly inaccurate statement drives me crazy. I just saw someone make that same claim in the SemiWiki forums and… Read More
Intel and TSMC IDM 2024 Discussions
In December 2023, we published the Intel Revenue forecast for external wafer sales, gave a breakdown on how customers plan to ramp the foundry. The forecast is still valid (it assumes Intel executes on all plans) but since then we have a better understanding of Intel’s strategy and scenarios that could unfold.
The scenarios… Read More
Intel Direct Connect Event
On Wednesday, February 21st Intel held their first Foundry Direct Connect event. The event had both public and NDA sessions, and I was in both. In this article I will summarize what I learned (that is not covered by NDA) about Intel’s business, process, and wafer fab plans (my focus is process technology and wafer fabs).
Business
… Read MorePodcast EP209: Putting Soitec’s Innovative Substrates to Work in Mainstream Products with Dr. Christophe Maleville
Dan is joined by Dr. Christophe Maleville, chief technology officer of Soitec’s Innovation. He joined Soitec in 1993 and was a driving force behind the company’s joint research activities with CEA-Leti. For several years, he led new SOI process development, oversaw SOI technology transfer from R&D to production and managed… Read More
ISS 2024 – Logic 2034 – Technology, Economics, and Sustainability
For the 2024 SEMI International Strategy Symposium I was challenged by members of the organizing committee to look at where logic will be in ten years from a technology, economics, and sustainability perspective. The following is a discussion of my presentation.
To understand logic, I believe it is useful to understand what makes… Read More
Intel should be the Free World’s Plan A Not Plan B, and we need the US Government to step in
There are trillions of dollars at stake with AI and huge geopolitical consequences. However, the weak foundation to American technological power is their dependence on Taiwan and TSMC, which is where most advanced silicon is manufactured. America has also been taking China to the ropes lately in their economic/technology proxy… Read More
Sustainable Development: Connected Devices and the Role of Flexible Semiconductors
The ambitious United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), from reducing food waste to enhancing global healthcare access, hinge on a connected world where every object whispers valuable data. As technology strives to address environmental challenges, healthcare needs, and promote responsible consumption, traditional… Read More
SOITEC Pushes Substrate Advantages for Edge Inference
You might not immediately see a connection between semiconductor substrate choices and inference at the edge. These technology layers seem worlds apart and yet SOITEC have a point. Edge AI has rapidly evolved from simple CNNs to now complex reinforcement learning systems and transformer based LLMs. Even when shrunk to edge footprints,… Read More
How Disruptive will Chiplets be for Intel and TSMC?
Chiplets (die stacking) is not new. The origins are deeply rooted in the semiconductor industry and represent a modular approach to designing and manufacturing integrated circuits. The concept of chiplets has been energized as a response to the recent challenges posed by the increasing complexity of semiconductor design. … Read More
IEDM: What Comes After Silicon?
The annual International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) took place last month. One of the presentations on the short course was by Matthew Metz of Intel titled New Materials Systems for Moore’s Law Continuation. In essence this was a look at some of the possibilities for what comes after silicon runs out of steam.
Matthew started… Read More


AI Bubble?