Each year the Sunday before IEDM two short courses are offered. This year I attended Memory Technologies for Future Systems held on Sunday, December 6[SUP]th[/SUP]. I have been to several of these short courses over the years and they are a great way to keep up to date on the latest technology.… Read More
Tis the Season to be kWh Wasteful!
As the world gears up for the upcoming holiday shopping season, the technology needed by online retailers to meet demands will bring with it many unintended negative byproducts: increased inefficiency, waste and pollution, to name a few. Online sales are expected to grow by 12 percent in the holiday season, on top of an already … Read More
Why Connect to the Cloud with Atmel SMART SAM W25?
Atmel SMART SAM W25 is in fact a module, Atmel names it “SmartConnect Module”. As far as I am concerned I like SmartConnect designation and I think it could be used to describe any IoT edge device. The device is “smart” as it includes a processing unit, in this case ARM Cortex M0 based SAMD21G, and “connect” remind the Internet part of… Read More
Freescale Semiconductor: The End of a Long Journey
“You don’t argue with success,” said Paul Galvin back in 1949 at the creation of a new venture that would eventually become known as Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector. He was referring to how Daniel E. Noble, one of Motorola’s top managers, had persuaded him to set up a small electronics research… Read More
Semiconductor capital spending consolidating
Shipments of semiconductor wafer fab equipment are expected to grow 2.5% in 2016 after 0.5% growth in 2015 according to the December forecast from Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI). Gartner is more pessimistic, with its October forecast calling for fab equipment to decline 0.5% in 2015 and drop 2.5%… Read More
My Life at Fairchild – 1979 Part 2
To pick up on my last post, I wanted to expand a bit on my duties and experiences back in 1979 in the 3″ Diffusion area of fab.
I am a morning person so I was usually at work between 6am – 7am. I would immediately go into fab to check on my engineering hold table and speak with the production operators to get a sense of the problems… Read More
IEDM 2015 Blogs – Part 1 – Overview
The International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) is one of, if not the premier conference for semiconductor process technology. The 2015 meeting just finished up on Wednesday, December 9th.
This year’s meeting was held from Saturday, December 5[SUP]th[/SUP] through Wednesday, December 9[SUP]th[/SUP] in Washington DC.… Read More
The Mobility Imperative and the Untethered Consumer
Consumers want to be able to go where they want, when they want. They want televisions to be seamlessly synchronized with tablets, phones, laptops, and automobiles. They want all their communication, information, and entertainment to be available immediately, with high resolution, all the time. Recently the automobile industry… Read More
IDMs are Much Ahead of Fabless Semicon Companies
In a balancing global economy, it’s a common phenomenon that at certain times a few sectors or segments within the sectors grow much faster compared to others. And a few companies within the growing sectors lead those sectors. Both the growing sectors and the leading companies in those sectors become the centers of attraction. … Read More
Double Digit Growth and 10nm for TSMC in 2016!
Exciting times in Taiwan last week… I met with people from the Taiwanese version of Wall Street. They mostly cover the local semiconductor scene but since that includes TSMC and Mediatek they are interested in the global semiconductor market as well. They also have an insider’s view of the China semiconductor industry which is … Read More
Flynn Was Right: How a 2003 Warning Foretold Today’s Architectural Pivot