The bleeding edge of SoC design was on full display last month at DAC in Austin as I listened to a panel session where members talked about their specific experiences so far designing with the 7nm process node. Jim Hogan was the moderator and the panel quickly got into what their respective companies are doing with 7nm technology already.… Read More
Exclusive – GLOBALFOUNDRIES discloses 7nm process detail
In a SemiWiki EXCLUSIVE – GLOBALFOUNDRIES has now disclosed the key metrics for their 7nm process. As I previously discussed in my 14nm, 16nm, 10nm and 7nm – What we know now blog GLOBALFOUNDRIES licensed their 14nm process from Samsung and decided to skip 10nm because they thought it would be a short-lived node. At … Read More
LETI Days 2017: FD-SOI, Sensors and Power to Sustain Auto and IoT
I have attended last week to the LETI Days in Grenoble, lasting two days to mark the 50[SUP]th[/SUP] anniversary of the CEA subsidiary. Attending to the LETI Days is always a rich experience: LETI is a research center counting about 3000 research engineers, but LETI is also a start-up nursery. The presentations are ranging from … Read More
3D NAND Myths and Realities
For many year 2D NAND drove lithography for the semiconductor industry with the smallest printed dimensions and yearly shrinks. As 2D NAND shrunk down to the mid-teens nodes, 16nm, 15nm and even 14nm, the cells became so small that there were only a few electrons in each cell and cross-talk issues made further shrinks very difficult… Read More
TSMC Unveils More Details of Automotive Design Enablement Platform
At this year’s Design Automation Conference (DAC), TSMC unveiled more details about the design enablement platforms that were introduced at their 23[SUP]rd[/SUP] annual TSMC Technology Symposium earlier this year. I attended a presentation on TSMC’s Automotive Enablement Platform held at the Cadence Theater where TSMC’s… Read More
TSMC @ #54DAC!
TSMC has been an ardent supporter of DAC for the last 18 years which has brought in the other foundries because, as the industry leader, wherever TSMC goes the other foundries naturally follow. The exception of course is Intel Custom Foundry because they march to the beat of a different drummer, if you know what I mean. The CoFluent… Read More
GlobalFoundries 7nm and EUV Update!
Scott Jones and I had the opportunity to talk again with Gary Patton, GlobalFoundries CTO and SVP of R&D for a quick update on 7nm and EUV. Gary has been at GF for two years now with more than 500 other technologists from the IBM semiconductor acquisition. 7nm is the first IBM based process from GF (14nm was licensed from Samsung),… Read More
Samsung Details Foundry Roadmap
Samsung recently held a meeting where they laid out a detailed roadmap for their foundry business. On Tuesday June 1st, Daniel Nenni and myself had an interview with Kelvin Low, senior director of foundry marketing and business development to discuss the details of Samsung’s plans.… Read More
Memory drives semiconductor boom in 2017
The semiconductor market was down 0.4% in first quarter 2017 from 4Q 2016 and up 18.1% from a year ago, according to World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS). The 0.4% decline in 1Q 2017 versus 4Q 2016 is strong compared to an average 4% decline from 4Q to 1Q over the previous five years. The relative strength in 1Q 2017 was driven… Read More
$100M China Investment for FD-SOI Ecosystem!
When GlobalFoundries first briefed me on 22FDX during a trip to Dresden in 2015, China was one of the first things that came to mind. The China semiconductor market was still on 28nm and FinFETs seemed far away for the majority of the Chinese fabless companies. A low cost, low power, low complexity 22nm process with a path to 12nm (12FDX)… Read More
Flynn Was Right: How a 2003 Warning Foretold Today’s Architectural Pivot