Evolving opportunities call for new and improved solutions to handle data, bandwidth and power. Moving forward, what will be the high-growth applications that drive product and technology innovation? The CAGRs for smartphone and data center continue to be very strong and healthy. … 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
When Talking About IoT, Don’t Forget Memory
Memory is a big enough topic that it has its own conference, Memcon, which recently took place in October. While I was there covering the event for SemiWiki.com I went to the TSMC talk on memory technologies for the IoT market. Tom Quan, Director of the Open Innovation Platform (OIP) at TSMC was giving the talk. IoT definitely has special… Read More
Are FinFETs too Expensive for Mainstream Chips?
One of the most common things I hear now is that the majority of the fabless semiconductor business will stay at 28nm due to the high cost of FinFETs. I wholeheartedly disagree, mainly because I have been hearing that for many years and it has yet to be proven true. The same was said about 40nm since 28nm HKMG was more expensive, which … Read More
Who Will Get the Next Bite of Apple Chip Business?
Recent reports have Intel displacing Qualcomm as the modem supplier and TSMC as the foundry for the next Apple A10 SoC. That is if you call this a credible report: … Read More
Wafer-Level Chip-Scale Packaging Technology Challenges and Solutions
At the recent TSMC OIP symposium, Bill Acito from Cadence and Chin-her Chien from TSMC provided an insightful presentation on their recent collaboration, to support TSMC’s Integrated FanOut (InFO) packaging solution. The chip and package implementation environments remain quite separate. The issues uncovered in bridging… Read More
How to Build an IoT Endpoint in Three Months
It is often said that things go in big cycles. One example of this is the design and manufacturing products. People long ago used to build their own things. Think of villagers or settlers hundreds of years ago, if they needed something they would craft it themselves. Then came the industrial revolution and two things happened. One… Read More
Four Takeaways from the TSMC OIP 2015
Paul M. did an excellent job summarizing the technical information that TSMC presented at the recent Open Innovation Platform symposium. I’d like to also share an impression on four areas that struck me as key to TSMC’s strategy.… Read More
TSMC OIP: What to Do With 20,000 Wafers Per Day
Today it is TSMC’s OIP Ecosystem Innovation forum. This is an annual event but is also a semi-annual update on TSMC’s processes, investment, volume ramps and more. TSMC have changed the rules for the conference this year: they have published all the presentations by their partners/customers. Tom Quan of TSMC told… Read More
SoC and Foundry Update 2H 2015!
Rarely do I fly first class but I did on my recent trip to Asia. It was one of the new planes with pod-like seats that transforms into a bed. The flight left SFO at 1 A.M. so I fell asleep almost immediately missing the first gourmet meal. About half way through the flight I found myself barely awake staring straight up and what do I see? STARS!… Read More