At the SPIE Advanced Lithography conference I sat down with Mike Lercel, Director of Strategic Marketing for ASML for an update. ASML also presented several papers at the conference and I attended many of these. In this article, I will discuss my interview with Mike and summarize the ASML presentations.… Read More
Live from the TSMC Earnings Call!
Last week I was invited to attend the TSMC earnings call at the Shangri-la Hotel in Taipei which was QUITE the experience. I generally listen in on the calls and/or read the transcripts but this was the first one I attended live. I didn’t really know what to expect but I certainly did NOT expect something out of Hollywood. Seriously,… Read More
SPIE 2017: Irresistible Materials EUV Photoresist
Irresistible Materials (IM) is a spin-out of the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom that has been doing research on Photoresist and Spin-On Carbon hard masks for 10 years, most recently with Nano-C on chemistry development. IM has developed a unique EUV photoresist and they are now looking for partners to help bring… Read More
TSMC Design Enablement Update
A couple of recent semiwiki articles reviewed highlights of the annual TSMC Technical Symposium recently held in Santa Clara (links here, here, and here). One of the captivating sessions at every symposium is the status of the Design Enablement for emerging technologies, presented at this year’s event by Suk Lee, Senior… Read More
14nm 16nm 10nm and 7nm – What we know now
Last week Intel held a manufacturing day where they revealed a lot of information about their 10nm process for the first time and information on competitor processes continues to slowly come out as well. I thought it would be useful to summarize what we know now, especially since some of what Intel announced was different than what… Read More
Integrated Photonics Accelerates with Entrance of TSMC and TowerJazz Foundries
I’m writing this from the Boston airport on my way home from four straight weeks of PIC (photonic integrated circuit) related travel. It’s been a grueling but very rewarding four weeks and the big take away from this month is that there are now many more signs in the market that integrated photonics is reaching a real tipping point.… Read More
Shootout at 22nm!
For an industry that drives improvement at an exponential rate it is funny how often something old is new again. Intel went into high volume production on 22nm in 2011, and TSMC and Samsung have both had 20nm technologies in production for several years. And yet, recently we have seen renewed interest in 22nm. GLOBALFOUNDRIES has… Read More
Intel Manufacturing Day: Nodes must die, but Moore’s Law lives!
Yesterday I attended Intel’s manufacturing day. This was the first manufacturing day Intel has held in three years and according to Intel their most in depth ever.
Nodes must die
I have written several articles comparing process technologies across the leading-edge logic producers – GLOBALFOUNDRIES, Intel, Samsung… Read More
Top 10 Updates from the TSMC Technology Symposium, Part II
An earlier article described some of the technical and business highlights from the recent TSMC Symposium in Santa Clara (link). This article continues that discussion, with the top five updates.… Read More
Samsung Should Just Buy eSilicon Already!
As you all know I’m a big fan of the ASIC business dating back to the start of the fabless semiconductor transformation where anybody could send a design spec to an ASIC company and get a chip back. The ASIC business model also started the smart phone revolution when Samsung built the first Apple SoCs for the iPhones and iPads.
Today … Read More
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