Everyone is talking about 5G deployment. The promises and the hype are finally turning into reality and products. While excitement is appropriate, victory is not yet in hand. There are still technical hurdles to conquer before the full potential of 5G is realized. In this post, I’ll explore one such challenge – the reliable use … Read More
Its all about the Transistors- 57 Billion reasons why Apple/TSMC are crushing it
The Apple event today was essentially a reveal of the latest and greatest silicon coming out of the Apple/TSMC partnership and how far ahead of everything else it is. The Mac was simply an aluminum container for the new silicon.
More importantly the event and specs of the TWO new chips, the M1 Pro and the M1 Max demonstrate that the M1… Read More
Silicon Startups, Arm Yourself and Catalyze Your Success…. Spotlight: Semiconductor Conferences
The arrival of fall seems to typically raise the number of conferences hosted by semiconductor ecosystem companies. The conferences may go by different names. But whether called a forum, summit, conference, or by some other creative name, the purpose is the same. It is to bring together technologists and business people together… Read More
Chiplet: Are You Ready For Next Semiconductor Revolution?
During the 2010-decade, the benefits of Moore’s law began to fall apart. Moore’s law stated transistor density doubled every two years, the cost of compute would shrink by a corresponding 50%. The change in Moore’s law is due to increased in design complexity the evolution of transistor structure from planar devices, to Finfets.… Read More
TSMC Arizona Fab Cost Revisited
Back in May of 2020 I published some comparisons of the cost to run a TSMC fab in Arizona versus their fabs in Taiwan. I found the fab operating cost based on the country-to-country difference to only be 3.4% higher in the US and then I found an additional 3.8% because of the smaller fab scale. Since that time, I have continued to encounter… Read More
ESD Alliance Reports Double-Digit Growth – The Hits Just Keep Coming
The latest Electronic Design Market Data report was just published. The headline announces continued substantial growth for the sector: Electronic System Design Industry Logs Double-Digit Q2 2021 Year-Over-Year Revenue Growth, ESD Alliance Reports. While not quite the record-breaking growth reported last quarter, the… Read More
Hardware Data Acceleration for Semiconductor Design
This blog is a follow-on piece to an earlier one titled NetApp’s ONTAP Enables Engineering Productivity Boost. If you have not had an opportunity to read that blog, please do so for context. Using real life examples, it showcases how customers could improve real-world design engineering productivity as much as 10%.
For the … Read More
CEO Interview: Mike Wishart of Efabless
Mike Wishart has a storied career in investment banking and technology. His resume includes stints at Smith Barney, Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs after his Stanford MBA. He has served as a director at Brooktree, Spansion, Cypress and now Knowles. Mike is also a venture partner at Tyche Partners, a venture capital firm focused… Read More
Semiconductors – Limiting Factors; Supply Chain & Talent- Will Limit Stock Upside
– If chips are “as good as it gets” so are the stock prices
– Are we at a near term ceiling that stocks have bounced off of?
– If growth slows do valuations also slow?
– Are we in a holding pattern waiting for a down cycle?
Second order derivative investing
As we have said many times in the past, investors… Read More
The Semiconductor Shortage False Narrative!
The semiconductor shortage has really caught the world’s attention. Friends and family who don’t really know what a semiconductor is now ask me to explain it. This is great news for the semiconductor industry for different reasons which I will discuss here. We can also discuss the downside risks.
First, let’s look at a bit of semiconductor… Read More
Selling the Forges of the Future: U.S. Report Exposes China’s Reliance on Western Chip Tools