After I published a recent article about Intel, I was contacted by the Irish Development Agency (IDA) where Intel has a large fab presence and asked if I would like to interview them about the Intel site. The interview with Turlough McCormack of the IDA, started with Intel’s presence in Ireland but then went on to paint an interesting… Read More
Lam Research performing like a Lion – Chip equip on steroids
– Business is about as good as it gets- $75B WFE in 2021?
– China remains strong at 32% despite SMIC lack of license
– NAND remains 48% of revs versus 31% foundry
– DRAM steady @ 14% – Service was record $1.3B
Strong results in a strong market
Lam reported revenues of $3.85B and EPS of $7.49 for the March… Read More
ASML early signs of an order Tsunami – Managing the ramp
Taiwan and Korea represented 43% and 44% respectively with China at 15% and Japan and the US in the far distance.
ASML a tidal wave of orders
On the call management talked about logic potentially being up 30% in 2021 and memory being up potentially 50%. While we thing foundry/logic will clearly be on fir we think memory will lag a bit.… Read More
It’s not a Semiconductor Shortage It’s Demand Delirium & Poor Planning
-The semiconductor industry is not to blame its the customers
-How do you fix something that’s not really broken?
-Long taken for granted, semi’s are sexy again
-Pawns in a Political Power Play?
Its not the chip makers that screwed up. It’s the customers that stressed the system beyond breaking
The semiconductor… Read More
How to Spend $100 Billion Dollars in Three Years
TSMC recently announced plans to spend $100 billion dollars over three years on capital. For 2021 they announced $30B in total capital with 80% on advanced nodes (7nm and smaller), 10% on packaging and masks and 10% on “specialty”.
If we take a guess at the capital for each year, we can project something like $30B for 2021 (announced),… Read More
Automakers to Blame for Semiconductor Shortage
Automakers worldwide have scaled back production due to a shortage of semiconductors. Companies which have announced temporary halts on production include Volkswagen, Toyota, General Motors, Ford, Nissan, Honda, Suzuki, Mitsubishi, Daimler (Mercedes) and Stellantis (merger of Fiat-Chrysler and Peugot).
IHS Markit estimates… Read More
Die-to-Die Interface PHY and Controller Subsystem for Next Generation Chiplets
In early April, Gabriele Saucier kicked off Design & Reuse’s IPSoC Silicon Valley 2021 Conference. IPSoC conference as the name suggests is dedicated to semiconductor intellectual property (IP) and IP-based electronic systems. There were a number of excellent presentations at the conference. The presentations had been… Read More
Demystifying Angel Investing
Recently we published the article Semiconductor Startups – Are they back? which went SemiWiki viral with 30k+ views. It’s certainly a sign of the times with M&A activity still running at a brisk rate. During the day I help emerging companies with business development including raising money and sell-side acquisitions… Read More
Why I made the world’s first on-demand formal verification course
Verification Challenge
As chip design complexity continues to grow astronomically with hardware accelerators running riot with the traditional hardware comprising CPUs, GPUs, networking and video and vision hardware, concurrency, control and coherency will dominate the landscape of verification complexity for safe … Read More
Semiconductors, the E-waste Problem, and a Pathway for a Solution
Semiconductors have been central to the information revolution which is reshaping society. The modern world would not exist without this critical resource. Further, semiconductors are central to many sustainability solutions such as the enablement of smart infrastructure, electrification, and virtualization. One of… Read More


Captain America: Can Elon Musk Save America’s Chip Manufacturing Industry?