Apologies for the slightly hyperbolic title of this post. Webster defines Juggernaut as “a massive inexorable force, campaign, movement, or object that crushes whatever is in its path.” Marvel Comic fans will recall the term also refers to a superhero nemesis. But I digress. The ESD Alliance recently announced its Q4 2020 Electronic… Read More
Design IP Sales Grew 16.7% in 2020, Best Growth Rate Ever!
Design IP Sales Grew 16.7% in 2020, to reach $4.6B and this is the best growth since year 2000!
The main trends shaking the Design IP in 2020 are very positive for the Top 3 IP vendors, each of them growing more than the market and confirm the importance of the wired interface IP market, aligned with the data-centric application, hyperscalar,… Read More
SPIE 2021 – Applied Materials – DRAM Scaling
At the SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference in February 2021, Regina Freed of Applied Materials gave a paper: “Module-Level Material Engineering for Continued DRAM Scaling”. Applied Materials provided me with the presentation and was kind enough to set up an interview for me with Regina Freed.
I also spoke to Regina Freed last… Read More
Is E-Waste Declining ? The rest of the story
Recently, there have been a number of articles with titles such as “Study shows residential electronic scrap generation is declining” or “E-scrap generation on the decline, study finds.” or “E-Waste Is Declining, Government Needs To Change Laws To Keep Up – And Get Out Of The Recycling Business.”
As a veteran of … Read More
Kioxia and Western Digital and the current Kioxia IPO/Sale rumors
There are a lot of articles out right now discussing a possible IPO for Kioxia or sale of the company with Western Digital (WD) and Micron Technology (MT) mentioned as possible acquirers. Kioxia and WD have a partnership for Flash Memory and on March 18th WD gave a presentation on the state of their partnership and what they see as their… Read More
RISC-V is Building Momentum
The semiconductor intellectual property (SIP) market is an integral part of the semiconductor industry. Third-party IP has propelled the industry, opening the door for many new products from start-ups to established IDMs. Enabling increasingly complex devices, reducing the cost of product development and reducing the time… Read More
Webinar: Rapid Exploration of Advanced Materials (for Ferroelectric Memory)
There are many unsung heroes in our industry – companies that provide unique services and expertise that enable the rapid advances in fabrication process development that we’ve come to rely upon. Some of these companies offer “back-end” services, assisting semiconductor fabs with yield diagnostic engineering and failure… Read More
Foundry Fantasy- Deja Vu or IDM 2?
– Intel announced 2 new fabs & New Foundry Services
– Not only do they want to catch TSMC they want to beat them
– It’s a very, very tall order for a company that hasn’t executed
– It will require more than a makeover to get to IDM 2.0
Intel not only wants to catch TSMC but beat them at their own … Read More
Micron- Optane runs out of Octane- Bye Bye Lehi- US chip effort takes a hit
– Micron shuts down once promising XPoint
– Lehi Utah fab to be sold off- Had been a $400M drain
– Unique memory couldn’t follow flash down cost/yield curve
– Savings helps Micron but its now just another memory maker
XPoint “Coulda been a contender”
XPoint should have amounted to more… Read More
Electronics Back Strongly in 2021
Electronics production has recovered strongly from slowdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Most major Asian electronic producers reported double-digit increases in early 2021. The chart below shows three-month-average change versus a year ago for electronics production. The data is from each country’s official statistics… Read More


AI Bubble?