At the SEMI International Strategy Symposium last month, one of the keynotes was by Jim Elliot, the CVP of Memory Marketing for Samsung. Unfortunately, due to some personal emergency, he wasn’t able to make it. But he did allow the slides of the presentation he would have given to be put up on the SEMI website. So here, for the… Read More
Open Forum for Semiconductor Professionals!
The semiconductor industry has never been more exciting than it is today, at least not in my 30 years of experience. Things are moving faster than ever before making collaboration at all levels a requirement. At SemiWiki we are afforded the privilege of passes to semiconductor conferences around the world. We also have access to… Read More
IP Market at Your Desk!
Semiconductors have played very important role in making internet successful and that has unleashed the potential of e-commerce. Today, we see names like Alibaba, whose primary focus is on commodity trade. I couldn’t imagine an e-commerce type of web portal for semiconductor services until I looked at the eSilicon website. … Read More
ASE and Brewer Science Win SEMI Award
Tuesday night was the SEMI awards banquet at ISS in Half Moon Bay. The SEMI Award was established in 1979 to recognize outstanding technical achievement and meritorious contribution in the areas of Semiconductor Materials, Wafer Fabrication, Assembly and Packaging, Process Control, Test and Inspection, Robotics and Automation,… Read More
eSilicon Try IP Before You Buy
I’ve written before about eSilicon’s IP Marketplace. This is the latest in several steps to automate more and more of the interface between eSilicon and its customers: MPW quotes, production quotes, tracking orders through manufacturing, and now IP quotes. There is a phrase in software development called “eating… Read More
Which Foundry will be First to FinFET?
The final session of the SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium (The CxO Panel) was the most interesting for me because executives from three of the four most influential semiconductor companies were on the panel: Dr. Goeff Yeap of Qualcomm, Dr. Jack Sun from TSMC, and Mr. Mark Bohr of Intel. Who is fourth you ask? That would be Apple of … Read More
SEMI ISS: The Outlook
I spent Monday at the SEMI ISS meeting in Half Moon Bay. There is a lot of stuff to choose from, the entire day was interesting throughout. The day started with a keynote from Scott McGregor, the CEO of Broadcom. I’ll cover that in a separate posting.
Next up was Andrea Lati of VLSI Research on The Cycle: Is It Different This Time?… Read More
The Dynamics of the China Semiconductor Industry
Paul McClellan and I are at the SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium this week in Half Moon Bay. Honestly there is too much to blog about here so I will have to pick the topics most interesting to me. The full capacity audience is also impressive. SEMI provides a list of attendees on their website which reads like “Who’s Who” of the semiconductor… Read More
Wanna Buy a Used Stepper? Only One Owner, Mint Condition…
Back in the early 90s there used to be a billboard alongside 237 advertising second-hand fab equipment: steppers, ion implanters, diffusion ovens. It used to amuse me as an “only in silicon valley” thing; after all, even in silicon valley the number of individuals who were likely to be in a position to buy used fab equipment… Read More
Riding the Wave of Silicon Magic in 2015!
2014 was a busy year for SemiWiki. We attended dozens of events, met hundreds of people (if not thousands), and published 810 blogs and a book that reached more than half of a million people. We collaborated throughout the fabless semiconductor ecosystem all year long and let me tell you it has been an amazing mind expanding experience,… Read More
CHIPS Act dies because employees are fired – NIST CHIPS people are probationary