Just Released! Fabless: The Transformation of the Semiconductor Industry

The book “Fabless: The Transformation of the Semiconductor Industry” is now available in the Kindle (mobi) and iBooks (ePub) formats. We are really looking forward to your feedback before we go to print in March. This was truly a Tom Sawyer experience for me. As the story goes Tom made whitewashing a fence seem like fun so his friends would do the work for him.

Paul McLellan was my first friend. Paul and I met during the EDA’s Next Top Blogger Contest at DAC in 2009 and we lost! Paul has since proven them wrong as he is without a doubt EDA’s Top Blogger publishing 279 blogs on SemiWiki in 2013. What I discovered in writing this book is that as a blogger I can only write 500 words at a time so Paul had to fill in the rest. His depth of semiconductor knowledge and willingness to trust me is unparalleled.

My next friends were companies that work with SemiWiki. Since this is a book chronicling the rise of the fabless semiconductor ecosystem, having the companies that actually participated in that rise contribute sub chapters made complete sense. This was much more of a challenge than I imagined. Fortunately, Mentor is a very game company and they contributed first, then came TSMC, Xilinx, Cadence, Synopsys, ARM, Imagination Technologies, VLSI Technology, Chips and Technology, Global Unichip, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, and eSilicon.

Book Preview

The real challenge in writing a book like this is how to end it. “Chapter 8: What’s Next For The Semiconductor Industry?” was simply brilliant if I say so myself. Getting 300 word passages from CEO’s and other executives of the top companies in the fabless semiconductor ecosystem was not easy! But again, Mentor’s CEO Wally Rhines went first. After that it was an avalanche:

Cliff HouVice President Research and Development of TSMC (book Foreword)
Moshe Gavrielov President and CEO of Xilinx, Inc.
Simon Segars CEO of ARM
Aart de GeusChairman and Co-CEO of Synopsys, Inc.
Lip-Bu TanPresident and CEO of Cadence Design Systems
Walden RhinesCEO and Chairman of Mentor Graphics
Subi KengeriVice President Advanced Technology Architecture of GLOBALFOUNDRIES
Ajoy BoseChairman, President, and CEO of Atrenta Inc.
Jack HardingPresident and CEO of eSilicon
Kathryn KranenCEO of Jasper Design Automation
Hossein YassaieCEO of Imagination Technologies
Sanjiv KaulCEO of Calypto Design Systems
Srinath AnantharamanFounder and CEO of Cliosoft
Charlie JanacPresident and CEO of Arteris
David HallidayCEO of Silvaco
John TannerFounder and CEO of Tanner EDA
Xerxes WaniaPresident and CEO of Sidense
Ghislain KaiserCo-founder and CEO of Docea Power
Jodi SheltonCo-founder & president of the Global Semiconductor Alliance
Gideon WertheizerCEO of CEVA, Inc
Grant PierceCEO of Sonics, Inc
Trent McConaghyCo-founder and CTO of Solido Design
Mike JamiolkowskiCEO of Coventor, Inc.
Joe SawickiVice President and General Manager at Mentor Graphics
Martin LundSenior VP of the IP Group at Cadence Design Systems
Rich GoldmanVice President of Corporate Marketing and Strategic Alliances at Synopsys
Raymond LeungVP of SRAM at Synopsys
Richard GoeringVeteran EDA editor and author of the Cadence Industry Insights Blog

There are also passages from the SemiWiki bloggers, myself included, which I think you will find interesting. The book is a very good read, it’s for the greater good of the fabless semiconductor ecosystem, I sincerely hope you enjoy it!