Although there has been always a strong relationship between Kilopass and Chartered Semiconductor, this relationship has been even enhanced after the acquisition of Chartered by GLOBALFOUNDRIES, allowing Kilopass’s customers to integrate NVM IP on advanced technology nodes, down to 40nm or even 28nm in the near future.
Before… Read More
TSMC Conference Call is a 6.5 on the Richter Scale
TSMC continues to drive the economic recovery with impressive Q1 numbers and an even more impressive Q2 and Q3 outlook. TSMC is my economic bellwether due to its diverse customer base and shear volume of consumer electronics silicon. The big surprise in the 1 hour Q1 conference call is a new Giga Fab (#15) ground breaking this year… Read More
Intel Buys an ARMy. Maybe
Is Intel in trouble? Since it is the #1 semiconductor company and, shipping 22nm in Q4 this year with 14nm in 2013, it is two process generations ahead of everyone else it is hard to see why it would be. Intel, of course, continues to dominate the market for chips for notebooks, desktops and servers. But therein lies the problem. Pads… Read More
AMD and GlobalFoundries / TI and UMC
There have been some significant foundry announcements recently that if collated will give you a glimpse into the future of the semiconductor industry. So let me do that for you here.
First the candid EETimes article about TI dumping Samsung as a foundry:
Taiwan’s UMC will take the ”lead role’’ in making the OMAP 5 device on… Read More
Samsung is NOT a Foundry!
Samsung is the #1 electronics company, the #2 semiconductor company, and for 20+ years the world’s largest memory chip maker. Analysts expect Samsung to catch Intel by the year 2014. In the foundry business however Samsung is a distant #9 after more than a five year investment and here’s why:
Foundry 2010 Revenue:
(1) TSMC $13B
(2)… Read More
ARM and GlobalFoundries
Although there has been always a strong relationship between ARM and GlobalFoundries, it is interesting to notice that Intel has helped to boost it and make it even stronger. Indeed when AMD renegotiated its x86 licensing deal with Intel in 2009, one of the most significant long-term changes was a marked reduction in how much of … Read More
Process Design Kits: PDKs, iPDKs, openPDKs
One of the first things that needs to be created when bringing up a new process is the Process Design Kit, or PDK. Years ago, back when I was running the custom IC business line at Cadence, we had a dominant position with the Virtuoso layout editor and so creating a PDK really meant creating a Virtuoso PDK, and it was a fairly straightforward… Read More
ARM vs Intel…Performance? Power? OS support? Or ubiquity?
This blog was posted 10 months ago, and the comments have made it much more interesting! Don’t miss the various comments at the back. Also feel free to let us know if you think the status, in this ARM vs Intel “war” has changed a lot since March 2011. Do you really think Intel has catch up with ARM in the mobile industry?… Read More
Moore’s Law and Semiconductor Design and Manufacturing
The semiconductor design and manufacturing challenges at 40nm and 28nm are a direct result ofMoore’s Law, the climbing transistor count and shrinking geometries. It’s a process AND design issue and the interaction is at the transistor level. Transistors may be shrinking, but atoms aren’t. So now it actually matters when even… Read More
TSMC 2011 Technology Symposium Theme Explained
The 17[SUP]th[/SUP] Annual TSMC Technology Symposium will be held in San Jose California on April 5[SUP]th[/SUP], 2011. Dr. Morris Chang will again be the keynote speaker. The theme this year is “Trusted Technology and Capacity Provider”and I think it’s important to not only hear what people are saying but also understand why… Read More
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