By Dr. Dan Tracy, senior director, Industry Research and Statistics, SEMI
With the recent release of Apple’s 6s and the form factors of internet-enabled mobile devices and the emergence of the IoT (Internet of Things), advanced packaging is clearly the enabling technology providing solutions for mobile applications and for… Read More
A moment of IoT silence before we disrupt
As I sat down in the SEMI Arizona Chapter breakfast meeting a few weeks ago, a moment of semiconductor history flew right before my eyes before the IoT sessions started.
We were seated in the cafeteria of Freescale Building 94 on Elliot Road in Tempe, a place I’d been many times before, except this time may have been the last. NXP is consolidating… Read More
Moore’s Law and Silicon Forest
When I first moved to Oregon in 1978 the largest industry was forestry, but then the endangered Spotted Owl was found and that put an end to many forestry companies and decimated the economy of many rural cities. Strangely enough it turns out that the Spotted Owl was found in great numbers across multiple states, so it never should’ve… Read More
SEMI SMC: Atoms Still Don’t Scale
Last Tuesday was the SEMI’s annual Strategic Materials Conference (SMC). The opening keynotes were given by Gary Patton, the CTO of GlobalFoundries, and Mark Thirsk, Managing Partner of Linx Consulting. This year it was held in the Computer History Museum (which always makes the commute interesting since you have to fight… Read More
The Future of Moore’s Law
I’ve lived in Silicon Valley then moved north to the Silicon Forest (aka Portland, Oregon) in 1995, and thankfully we have a lot of high-tech companies here like: Intel, Lam Research (Novellus), Lattice Semi, Qorvo, Synopsys, Mentor, Cadence, Northwest Logic, etc. There’s a global industry organization called… Read More
Strategic Materials
Here on SemiWiki we spend a certain amount of time discussing semiconductor equipment, especially the big sea-change items like EUV and 450mm, where everyone wants to know when (and if) they will happen. But there is another aspect to next generation processes other than equipment and that is materials. When the received wisdom… Read More
Just One Month to SEMICON Taiwan
SEMICON Taiwan is the first week of September in the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center. To be precise it is September 2nd to 4th. Last year there over 26,000 people attended. This year it is the 20th anniversary show. SEMICON Taiwan attracts the world’s leading technology companies who design, develop, manufacture, and supply … Read More
SEMICON West 2015 Recap – Day 1 – Softening Markets, Sub 14nm and 3D NAND
Tuesday morning press briefing
The show started for me Tuesday morning with the SEMI press briefing. SEMI said there are 1,200 booths this year, 629 exhibiting companies and over 180 hours of programming. They also said pre-registration was up from last year and they expect 26,000 visitors.
Dan Tracy then gave an update on the markets.… Read More
SEMICON Day 3: Leti, Intel Keynote, 450mm (Pic!) and Innovation Keynote
Let’s start with yesterday evening, so technically yesterday. It was July 14th, which is the equivalent of Independence Day in France. So the perfect day for Leti, based in Grenoble, to present a lot of the work that they are doing on 3D “more than Moore” type technologies, including photonics. Also, wafer-scale… Read More
SEMICON Day 2: Outlook and Keynote Panel
The second day of SEMICON West opened with a press conference. Since it was at 7.30 in the morning we all needed the coffee that they provided. For those of us that remember the glory days of DAC some of the statistics were depressing:
- 45th year (hey, we got them beat on at least one statistic)
- 692 exhibitors
- 136 new exhibitors (about

