AMD has been artificially pumping up their stock of late so the question I have is; why? What is with the short term strategy? The only answer that I deem noteworthy is that AMD is trying to get acquired and there is a strong case emerging to support that. Also note that AMD CEO Lisa Su is currently the largest single AMD stock holder which… Read More
The 2016 Leading Edge Semiconductor Landscape
The leading edge semiconductor logic landscape has in recent years collapsed to just four companies. The following is a summary of what is currently known about each company’s plans and how they compare. ASML has analyzed many logic nodes and developed a formula that normalizes processes to a “standard node”.… Read More
AMD Zen and the Art of Microprocessor Maintenance
AMD is a fantastic company with highly talented people, but for some reason just hasn’t managed to put a winning streak of microprocessor architectures back-to-back. It’s frustrating to watch: they ride like mad to catch up to or even pull slightly ahead of Intel, then fall back in the pack when they have to make an extended pit stop,… Read More
Semi execs look at IoT tradeoffs a bit differently
What happens when you get a panel of four executives together with an industry-leading journalist to discuss tradeoffs in IoT designs? After the obligatory introductions, Ed Sperling took this group into questions on power, performance, and integration.… Read More
SEMICON West – Globalfoundries Update
On Wednesday of SEMICON West I got to sit down with Gary Patton, CTO of GlobalFoundries and get an update on what has been going on with them.
Gary started the interview by pointing out that it has now been a year since the GlobalFoundries purchase of many of IBM’s semiconductor assets and they have hit every commitment they made.… Read More
One transistor for the future of mmWave?
We’ve heard recently from several sources that millimeter wave radios, once the exclusive realm of defense and satellite use, are now finding homes in applications such as automotive radar and 5G networks. Therein lies a significant opportunity for digital design: moving frequency conversion and filtering from the analog … Read More
SEMICON West – Harry Levinson and Mike Lercel Interview
On Tuesday morning at SEMICON I had the opportunity to sit down with Harry Levinson, Sr. Director of Technology Research and Sr. Fellow at Global Foundries and Michael Lercel, Director of Strategic Marketing at ASML to discuss the state of lithography.
I opened the discussion with a question about how we are going to address lithography… Read More
Highlights of the 22nm FD-SOI San Jose Presentations
This is part 2 (of 2) of my coverage of the recent FD-SOI Symposium in San Jose (April 2016), this time looking at the 22nm presentations by GlobalFoundries, ARM (finally!!), VLSI Research Inc and Sigma Designs. (Part 1 looked at the 28nm presentations.) Most are now available on the SOI Consortium website – click here to see the full… Read More
IMEC Technology Forum (ITF) – Moving the Electronics Industry Forward
IMEC is a technology research center located in Belgium that is one of the premier semiconductor research centers in the world today. The IMEC Technology Forum (ITF) is a two-day event attended by approximately 1,000 people to showcase the work done by IMEC and their partners.
Gary Patton is the Chief Technical Officer and Senior… Read More
Body-biasing for ARM big or LITTLE in GF 22FDX
GLOBALFOUNDRIES has been evangelizing their 22FDX FD-SOI process for a few months; readers may have seen Tom Simon’s write-up of their preview at ARM TechCon. Dr. Joerg Winkler recently gave an updated webinar presentation of their approach in an implementation of ARM Cortex-A17 core.
By now, you’ve probably heard that 22FDX… Read More
Facing the Quantum Nature of EUV Lithography