As I originally reported a few weeks ago, the Jim Hogan fireside chat with Methodic’s CEO and founder Simon Butler was moved to a virtual event on May 1. The event was produced by the Electronic System Design (ESD) Alliance, a SEMI Strategic Technology Community. Bob Smith, executive director of ESDA, moderated the event. I am happy… Read More
Our US chip foundry comments confirmed by WSJ
-Could GloFo come back?
-TSMC or Intel or both or neither?
-Samsung would be a long shot?
-Perhaps Apple could convince TSMC?
The Wall Street Journal put out an article that detailed what we had indicated in our newsletter 10 days ago, that the US government is looking at getting a US based foundry to protect our interests given our … Read More
KLA – Keep Looking Ahead because we don’t know the future of China & Covid
-Great quarter & execution with minimal Covid impact
-Wide guide is better than no guide as future is very fuzzy
-Feels like slightly down H2 W/ unknown embargo impact
KLA is virtually unscathed by Covid for now at least
KLA put up a very solid quarter with revenues of $1.424B and Non GAAP EPS of $2.47 versus street of $1.39B and … Read More
High-Level Synthesis and Open Source Software Algorithms
The DVCon conference and exhibition finished up in California just as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was ramping up in March, but at least they finished the conference by altering the schedule a bit. Umesh Sisodia, CEO at CircuitSutra Technologies presented at DVCON on the topic, Using High-Level Synthesis to Migrate Open… Read More
Accellera Tackles Functional Safety, Mixed-Signal
I managed a few meetings at DVCon this year in spite of the Coronavirus problems. One of these was with Lu Dai Chairman of Accellera. I generally meet with Lu each year to get an update on where they are headed, and he had some interesting new topics to share.
Membership and headcount remain pretty stable. Any changes (at the associate… Read More
Is Chip Embargo aimed at China, Huawei, TSMC or all three?
Is TSMC the real target, not just collateral damage?
Is equipment embargo threat to bring TSMC to heel?
Is an embargo a “Trifecta” of US strategic goals?
Maybe TSMC is a real target of chip equipment embargo not just potential collateral damage
It occurs to us when we talk about TSMC being caught in the middle between … Read More
Covid Created Collateral China Crisis
Economic damage-
China relationship damage will far outlast direct Covid19 logistics impact-
Economic damage could be huge but trade damage could be larger with more specific impact on chips-
A long build up to a China trade nuclear winter, the “drum-beat of war”
When we started talking about a potential chip trade… Read More
Can TSMC Maintain Their Process Technology Lead
Recently Seeking Alpha published an article “Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Losing Its Process Leadership To Intel” and Dan Nenni (SemiWiki founder) asked me to take a look at the article and do my own analysis. This is a subject I have followed and published on for many years.
Before I dig into specific process density… Read More
Starting a Chip Company? Silicon Catalyst and Arm Are Ready to Help
Anyone who has started a company knows that landing the seed round of investment is just the beginning. There are many decisions to face. When to start building a sales team? What parts of the company’s infrastructure to outsource? How to price and promote your product? These are just a few of the questions to be answered. If your… Read More
LRCX Supply constrained by Covid Crisis
Lam Q1 revenue soft by roughly 15% due to supply side
Demand remains solid for Q2 but beyond that, dubious
No guide but Q2 could be => Q1 revenues
NAND solid, China big @ 32%, Foundry remains great
Lam reported a solid quarter but light on revenues…
It was no surprise that Lam reported revenues of $2.5B versus their original… Read More


Website Developers May Have Most to Fear From AI