TSMC warns soft phone/crypto & flat capex!
Does this impact DRAM?
Can Intel keep Apple?
We love Tesla (Model 3)!… Read More
EUV Continues Roll Out With Lumpy Quarters Ahead
ASML put up good results with revenues of Euro2.285B versus street of Euro2.22B and EPS of Euro1.26 versus street of Euro1.17. Guide is for Euro2.55B versus street of Euro2.46B but EPS of Euro1.16 versus street EPS of Euro1.35 on lower gross margins, slipping from 48% to 43%.
A couple of EUV systems have slipped out. This is not surprising… Read More
Meltdown, Spectre and Formal
Once again Oski delivered in their most recent Decoding Formal session, kicking off with a talk on the infamous Meltdown and Spectre bugs and possible relevance of formal methods in finding these and related problems. So far I haven’t invested much effort in understanding these beyond a hand-waving “cache and speculative execution”… Read More
FlexE at SoC IP Days with Open Silicon
On Thursday April 5th the Design and Reuse SoC IP days continues in Santa Clara at the Hyatt Regency (my favorite hangout). SemiWiki is a co-sponsor and I am Chairman of the IP Security Track. More than 400 people have registered thus far and I expect a big turnout, if you look at the program you will see why. You should also know that registration… Read More
FPGA, Data and CASPA: Spring into AI (2 of 2)
Adding color to the talks, Dr. Jeff Welser, VP and IBM Almaden Research Lab Director showed how AI and recent computing resources could be harnessed to contain data explosion. Unstructured data growth by 2020 would be in the order of 50 Zetta-bytes (with 21 zeros). One example, the Summit supercomputer developed by IBM for use at… Read More
Leading Edge Logic Landscape 2018
The most viewed blogs I write for SemiWiki are consistently blogs comparing the four leading edge logic producers, GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF), Intel, Samsung (SS) and TSMC. Since the last time I compared the leading edge new data has become available and several new processes have been introduced. In this blog I will update the current… Read More
An Advanced-User View of Applied Formal
Thanks to my growing involvement in formal (at least in writing about it), I was happy to accept an invite to this year’s Oski DVCon dinner / Formal Leadership Summit. In addition to Oski folks and Brian Bailey (an esteemed colleague at another blog site, to steal a Frank Schirrmeister line), a lively group of formal users attended… Read More
SPIE Advanced Lithography 2018 – EUV Status
This year the Advanced Lithography Conference felt very different to me than the last couple of years. I think it was Chris Mack who proclaimed it the year of Stochastics. EUV has dominated the conference for the last several years but in the past the conversation has been mostly centered on the systems, system power and uptime.
I … Read More
Semiconductors could be up 12% in 2018
The global semiconductor market grew 21.6% for the year 2017, according to World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS). The market was much stronger than anticipated at the beginning of year. Semiconductor Intelligence tracked publicly available forecasts to determine which was the most accurate. We used forecasts made … Read More
LithoVision 2018 The Evolving Semiconductor Technology Landscape and What it Means for Lithography
I was invited to present at Nikon’s LithoVision event held the day before the SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference in San Jose. The following is a write up of the talk I gave. In this talk I discuss the three main segments in the semiconductor industry, NAND, DRAM and Logic and how technology transitions will affect lithography.… Read More


Intel to Compete with Broadcom and Marvell in the Lucrative ASIC Business