Having just completed a cloud evaluation for SemiWiki I can tell you why eSilicon chose Google. Simply put, they are working harder to get cloud business. Google ($4B) is the number five cloud provider behind Microsoft ($21.2B), Amazon ($20.4B), IBM ($10.3B) and Oracle ($6.08B). There is a lot of money in the cloud and a lot more … Read More
Design IP in 2018: Synopsys and Cadence Increase Market Share…
…but ARM, Imagination, MIPS or Ceva have declined and lose market share. Semiconductor design IP market is still doing good in 2018, with 6% growth year over year. It’s half the growth rate seen in 2017, 2016 and 2015 and the growth decline is imputable to bad results from ARM, the market leader, but also from Imagination (#4), MIPS… Read More
The Evolution of the Extension Implant Part III
The problem of traditional FinFET Extension Implant doping concerns the awkward 3-dimensional structure of the fin. Because the Extension Implant defines the conductive electrical pathway between the Source/Drains and the undoped channel portion of the fin, it is essential that the fin be uniformly doped all three of its surfaces… Read More
TSMC and Samsung 5nm Comparison
Samsung and TSMC have both made recent disclosures about their 5nm process and I though it would be a good time to look at what we know about them and compare the two processes.
A lot of what has been announced about 5nm is in comparison to 7nm so we will first review 7nm.
7nm
Figure 1 compares Samsung’s 7LPP process to TSMC’s 7FF and 7FFP… Read More
The Evolution of the Extension Implant Part II
The use of hard masks instead of photoresist for the Extension implant is an effective way to optimize the amount of dopant that is retained along the fin sidewalls for those fins that border along photoresist edges (as discussed in Part 1 of this series).
However, hard masks do nothing to address the dominant problem driving steeper… Read More
The Evolution of the Extension Implant Part I
The 3D character of FinFET transistor structures pose a range of unique fabrication problems that can make it challenging to get these devices to yield. This is especially true for the all-important Extension implant that is put in place just prior to the nitride spacer formation.
The Extension implant is a central component of… Read More
Semiconductor Equipment Revenues To Drop 17% In 2019 On 29% Capex Spend Cuts
The semiconductor equipment market grew 37.3% in 2017 on the heels of capex spend by memory companies in order to increase bit capacity and move to more sophisticated products with smaller nanometer dimensions. Unfortunately these companies overspent resulting in excessive oversupply of memory chips. As memory prices started… Read More
A Tale of Two Semis
It was the best of times (for stocks)
It was the worst of times (for memory chips)
The disconnect between stock & chip prices
The Venn Diagram of Stocks and Chips
Having been involved with semiconductor and tech stocks for a long time there has always been a loose correlation between the fortunes of the industry and the fortunes… Read More
SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference – Imec and Veeco on EUV
At the SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference Imec presented several papers on EUV and Veeco presented about etching for EUV masks. I had the opportunity to see the presentations and speak with some of the authors. In this article I will summarize the key issues around EUV based on this research.
EUV is ramping up into high volume 7nm… Read More
An old IP theft gets a new Chinese label
The Dutch financial newspaper Financieele Dagblad (FD) reported on the past theft of ASML technology after doing some investigative digging. It now appears that a number of Chinese nationals and ASML employees, in ASML’s Santa Clara office stole key technology back in 2015. Though ASML talked about it at the time, little… Read More
Intel High NA Adoption