IBM and Leti each presented several papers at IEDM including a joint nanosheet paper. I had the opportunity to sit down with Huiming Bu, director of advanced logic & memory tech and Veeraraghavan Basker, senior engineer from IBM and then in a separate interview Francois Andrieu, head of advanced CMOS laboratory and Shay Reboh,… Read More
China’s chip making impact hits DRAM first
The Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence- (Nietzsche..) Deja’ Vu all over again…
The semiconductor industry has seen this movie before, several times….new entrant into the memory chip industry, disrupts the status quo and goes on to dominate the industry (until the next new entrant…)
The Japanese did it… Read More
IEDM 2019 – Applied Materials panel EUV Recap
On Tuesday night of IEDM, Applied Materials held a panel discussion “The Future of Logic: EUV is Here, Now What?”. The panelists were: Regina Freed, managing director at Applied Materials as the moderator, Geoffrey Yeap, senior director of advanced technology at TSMC, Bala Haran, director of silicon process research at IBM, … Read More
The Tech Week that was December 16-20 2019
As we approach the end of 2019 I wish everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. This will be my last update for a few weeks as I will also take a little break over the holiday season.
Despite a lot of people winding down for the year, there was still lots of interesting news from last week with lots of data points pointing to an even
The Tech Week that was December 9th 2019
In a week that finally saw some good news in the trade war between US & China, here is a summary of all the key semiconductor and technical news from around the world that you may have missed.
On Friday, US and China announced agreement on the so called phase one agreement, as a result the extra tariffs due to be imposed on S180billion… Read More
The ESD Alliance Honors Mary Jane Irwin
The Phil Kaufman Award has been given annually since 1994 to individuals who have had a significant impact on Electronic System Design. I have attended several of the award dinners during that time. Most of the time (roughly 70%), the award recipients were either people I knew or people whose textbooks I had read. The award goes to… Read More
As 2019 comes to an end everyone is starting to look at what 2020 holds
At the moment there are many encouraging signs based on the latest data. Let’s hope this trend continues into 2002 and 2020 is the year of recovery of the semiconductor market. However much depends on how the US China trade war pans out. Last week Trump blew hot and cold saying everything from the negotiations were going very well to… Read More
ASML Will Take Semiconductor Equipment Lead from Applied Materials in 2019
For the first time since 1990, Applied Materials is poised to lose its lead in the semiconductor equipment market, according to my recently published report “The Global Semiconductor Equipment: Markets, Market Shares, Market Forecasts.”
Applied Materials, which has been losing market share in the wafer front end (WFE) equipment… Read More
Where has the ASIC Business Gone?
As the traditional ASIC business disappears before our eyes with the recent divestitures and acquisitions, I have been asking questions amongst the fabless semiconductor ecosystem and am getting few answers.
Who or what is going to step in to enable start-ups and new to silicon systems companies with application specific chips?… Read More
Could TSMC’s spend be part of the seasonal pattern?
Is there more downside than upside in stocks?
Entering a seasonally weak period, then what?
Does China trade come back to haunt industry?
Cycle is past the bottom-But what kind of up cycle?
The most recent up cycle in the industry was a huge one, driven by a huge spend on NAND as SSD’s sucked up infinite number of devices. DRAM … Read More
Huawei’s and SMIC’s Requirement for 5nm Production: Improving Multipatterning Productivity