The Chinese stock market (as measured by the Hang Seng Index) dropped 11% from August 14 to August 24 over concerns of a slowing economy. In reaction, the U.S. stock market (as measured by the S&P 500) dropped 11% from August 17 to August 25. The China market has since rebounded 2% while the U.S. market rebounded 5%. Will a slowing… Read More
Strategic Materials
Here on SemiWiki we spend a certain amount of time discussing semiconductor equipment, especially the big sea-change items like EUV and 450mm, where everyone wants to know when (and if) they will happen. But there is another aspect to next generation processes other than equipment and that is materials. When the received wisdom… Read More
Just One Month to SEMICON Taiwan
SEMICON Taiwan is the first week of September in the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center. To be precise it is September 2nd to 4th. Last year there over 26,000 people attended. This year it is the 20th anniversary show. SEMICON Taiwan attracts the world’s leading technology companies who design, develop, manufacture, and supply … Read More
Good Morning Vietnam
This morning I went to a presentation in Palo Alto about outsourcing in Vietnam. You have probably heard that Vietnam is the new China for manufacturing, as wages have increased in the Shenzhen area then companies like Foxconn have opened plants in Vietnam. But this meeting was mostly about services, software and design. In this… Read More
Ultra-low Power IP for Wearables
Wearables and the Internet of Things (IoT) in general are all about low power. Everyone must have read (or even experienced) the phenomenon of putting something like a Fitbit on and then after a short period leaving it in a drawer or putting it to recharge and forgetting about it for weeks. The longer devices can last the more likely… Read More
SEMICON West 2015 Recap – Day 1 – Softening Markets, Sub 14nm and 3D NAND
Tuesday morning press briefing
The show started for me Tuesday morning with the SEMI press briefing. SEMI said there are 1,200 booths this year, 629 exhibiting companies and over 180 hours of programming. They also said pre-registration was up from last year and they expect 26,000 visitors.
Dan Tracy then gave an update on the markets.… Read More
Cost Modeling as a Decision Making Tool
The use of simulation is well established in the semiconductor industry. Virtually all circuit designs are run through a Spice simulation, layouts are analyzed for timing issues and even process development employs process simulation tools. What I believe is less widely used but just as useful is cost modeling.
The semiconductor… Read More
SEMICON Day 3: Leti, Intel Keynote, 450mm (Pic!) and Innovation Keynote
Let’s start with yesterday evening, so technically yesterday. It was July 14th, which is the equivalent of Independence Day in France. So the perfect day for Leti, based in Grenoble, to present a lot of the work that they are doing on 3D “more than Moore” type technologies, including photonics. Also, wafer-scale… Read More
SEMICON Day 2: Outlook and Keynote Panel
The second day of SEMICON West opened with a press conference. Since it was at 7.30 in the morning we all needed the coffee that they provided. For those of us that remember the glory days of DAC some of the statistics were depressing:
- 45th year (hey, we got them beat on at least one statistic)
- 692 exhibitors
- 136 new exhibitors (about
SEMICON Day 1: IoT Everywhere…and China
The first day of SEMICON West for me is usually imec day. They have a full day of presentations. But I saw the most interesting ones in Brussels recently so I decided to go to the SEMI/Gartner day instead. They run in parallel ballrooms in the Marriot on 4th street.
To me there were two big themes. One was the unavoidable internet of things… Read More
Real men have fabs!