TSMC responded to Intel’s 14nm density advantage claim in the most recent conference call. It is something I have been following closely and have written about extensively both publicly and privately. Please remember that the fabless semiconductor ecosystem is all about crowd sourcing and it is very hard to fool a crowd of semiconductor… Read More
Intel is NOT Transparent Again!
Recent headlines suggest that Intel was not transparent about some of the products they showed at the CES keynote. Intel confirmed on Friday that they used ARM-based chips for some of the products but would not say which ones. When your company’s tag line is “Intel Inside” and you hold up a product during your keynote wouldn’t… Read More
Is Intel the Concorde of Semiconductor Companies?
An Intel executive recently told me that my Intel articles on SemiWiki are used to motivate employees to work hard and prove me wrong. The converse is also true. The senseless Intel fabless ecosystem bashing motivates me to continue to write so it is a win-win scenario, absolutely. In fact, I should credit Intel’s Mark Bohr… Read More
Technology Challenges: Intel, IBM, Xilinx, GlobalFoundries, IMEC
I spent the day at the SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium in Half Moon Bay. The early part of the day was devoted to technology challenges. Obviously everyone did not say exactly the same things, and had a little bit of a different spin depending on what business they are in. But there was a lot of commonality between Intel, IBM, Xilinx… Read More
The Future of Intel
There have been a lot of articles and discussion on SemiWiki about Intel. These articles have all been written from the perspective of an outsider commenting on what Intel is doing, or should or shouldn’t be doing. I thought it would be interesting to take a look at how Intel got to where they currently are, what their current strengths… Read More
Intel Wafer Pricing Exposed!
One of the big questions on Intel’s foundry strategy is: Can they compete on wafer pricing? Fortunately there are now detailed reports that support what most of us fabless folks already know. The simple answer is no, Intel cannot compete with TSMC or Samsung on wafer pricing at 28nm, 20nm, and 14nm.
In fact, recent reports have shown… Read More
Should Intel Offer Foundry Services?
This has been a heated topic since Intel announced that it would open its manufacturing facilities to the fabless ecosystem more than a year ago. I for one think it is a colossal mistake and I’m not surprised that many others share this view. IDM’s offering of excess manufacturing capacity to semiconductor design companies… Read More
Intel Comes Clean on 14nm Yield!
Hopefully this blog will result in a meaningful discussion on truth and transparency, and how Intel can do better in regards to both. Take a close look at the manufacturing slides presented by William Holt, Executive Vice President General Manager, Intel Technology and Manufacturing Group. You can see the slide deck HERE. Slide… Read More
Intel’s Tale of Two Cities
It was a year ago that Paul Otellini made his surprise announcement that he was stepping down as CEO of Intel. Soon after, I wrote an article asserting that the only correct choice for his replacement was Nvidia’s CEO Jen Hsun Huang. I went beck to reread what I wroteand I can scarcely say I would change anything I put in the article assuming… Read More
Intel Bay Trail Fail II
To follow up my Bay Trail Fail blog which predicted that the leading edge Intel 22nm mobile SoC offering would fail, I must admit I was wrong. I did not think Bay Trail would see any traction in the tablet market but, as it turns out, Intel will ship 40M of those parts in 2014. Did you notice I said ship and not sell? Read on……… … Read More