TSMC has had an incredible run since its founding in 1987 which spans most of my 36 year semiconductor career. Even in these troubled times TSMC is a shining bellwether with double digit growth expectations while the semiconductor industry will be flat or slightly down. Let’s take a close look at the TSMC Q1 2020 conference call and… Read More
TSMC 32Mb Embedded STT-MRAM at ISSCC2020
32Mb Embedded STT-MRAM in ULL 22nm CMOS Achieves 10ns Read Speed, 1M Cycle Write Endurance, 10 Years Retention at 150C and High Immunity to Magnetic Field Interference presented at ISSCC2020
1. Motivation for STT-MRAM in Ultra-Low-Leakage 22nm Process
TSMC’s embedded Spin-Torque Transfer Magnetic Random Access Memory (STT-MRAM)… Read More
TSMC’s 5nm 0.021um2 SRAM Cell Using EUV and High Mobility Channel with Write Assist at ISSCC2020
Technological leadership has long been key to TSMC’s success and they are following up their leadership development of 5nm with the world’s smallest SRAM cell at 0.021um 2 with circuit design details of their write assist techniques necessary to achieve the full potential of this revolutionary technology. In addition to their… Read More
TSMC Unveils Details of 5nm CMOS Production Technology Platform Featuring EUV and High Mobility Channel FinFETs at IEDM2019
Back in April, 2019, TSMC announced that they were introducing their 5 nm technology in risk production and now at IEDM 2019 they brought forth a detailed description of the process which has passed 1000 hour HTOL and will be in high volume production in 1H 2020. This 5nm technology is a full node scaling from 7nm using smart scaling… Read More
ASML “A Swing to Memory Looms” Nice performance while awaiting Memory bounce
- Good Q4 & 2019 despite weak memory
- 2020 will be up year but memory an unknown
- EUV ramp is on track – no China or memory impact
ASML reported sales of 4B Euros and a nice gross margin of 48% resulting in 2.70 Euros per share in earnings. Orders came in at 2.4B
TSMC Q4 2019 “2020 Bellwether” Conference Call Summary
After returning from a week in Southern China I found the TSMC Q4 2019 conference call even more interesting. In China they are preparing for the New Year’s Celebration so everything is very festive but what struck me hardest was the massive investment in infrastructure and security. Semiconductors are of course a big part… Read More
The Tech Week that was January 13-17 2020
In a week where the “phase 1” trade deal between US and China was finally signed, here is all the key news from the semiconductor and technology sector around the world.
After 2 years of an ever increasing trade war, the US and China have signed the so called Phase 1 deal aimed at reducing trade frictions.
Just as important as what is … Read More
Samsung spend is up but can it offest TSMC slowing?
Samsung is warming up and spending again
Samsung gave its preliminary report for Q4 and it was well better than prior muted expectations. It doesn’t take long for Samsung’s business units to respond to business trends in either direction and we have already heard of increased spending plans on the part of Samsung.… Read More
The Tech Week that was January 6-10 2020
Happy New Year to everyone.. lets hope 2020 is a great year.. The indicators are all pointing in the right direction but it will not take much to derail it if external factors change. Here is my weekly summary of all the important news from the semiconductor industry around the world.
2020 is starting very differently from 2019 with… Read More
Semiconductor Review 2019 into 2020!
Semiconductors continue to surge and lead technology sectors all over the world. TSMC has always been my economic bellwether and 2019 was another great year as the TSM share price almost doubled. But it looks like the best is yet to come with TSMC significantly increasing CAPEX to cover 7nm and 5nm demand.
TSMC CEO C.C. Wei increased… Read More