Welcome to the 2012 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC). This will be the 59th anniversary of ISSCC. ISSCC is the flagship conference of the Solid-State Circuits Society, and is the premier forum for the presentation of advances in solid-state circuits and systems-on-a-chip. The Conference offers a unique opportunity to network with leading experts in the field. For 2012, the Conference theme is "Silicon Systems for Sustainability."
View attachment 2950
My trip to ISSCC started with a ride on BART. Not just because I’m too cheap to pay the exorbitant toll and parking, but my first licensed drive over the Bay Bridge cost 50 cents and now it is $6.00. There used to be baskets that we tossed two quarters in so there was a bit of a challenge depending on your speed. Now the $6 toll appears on my credit card before my car is over the water. I’m also trying to avoid the exorbitant gas prices! A gallon of gas cost 70 cents and now it is over $4.00. Yes I’m that old.
View attachment 2951
I was packing my trusty iPad2 so the BART ride went by very quickly. Not a lot of friendly conversation on BART. Everybody had earphones in, including me. I'm not always listening to Pandora, mostly I just use earphones as an excuse to ignore people. Given it was President's Day it was much more crowded than I had expected. All the better to people watch. BART parking was free though so it worked for me. I really like free.
View attachment 2952
I really like visiting San Francisco, I have worked here a few times over my life, always interesting. Lots of shoppers and street performers since it was a holiday. Unfortunately, I was trying to finish a Words with Friends game with my wife and bumped into an angry homeless guy. Very bad idea walking and Words with Friend-ing! As a rule I never fight guys uglier than I am since they have less to lose, so I ducked, apologized profusely, and retreated. Now I have a YouTube rule of public conduct, if you don't want it to be on YouTube then don't do it.
View attachment 2953
ISSCC is at the Marriott downtown SF near the convention center. It’s a $4.50 BART trip and a two block walk, kind of refreshing really. The guy out front of the hotel charges for pictures so I couldn’t get a front view. Gotta love SFO! Great weather, no rain but I kept the free ISSCC umbrella just in case.
View attachment 2954
I limit my picture taking to the public areas of the conference. I do not take photos in the sessions because for one, you are not supposed to, and for two I think it is rude. As a presenter myself it bothers me so I don't want to bother others. And for whatever reason, if you put a video camera in my face I will probably vomit on you. It almost happened at the last seminar I did so be warned.
View attachment 2955
My guess is that the ISSCC crowd swelled this year. Great papers! Here are the last two blogs I did on ISSCC. It is definitely worth the free media pass I, better than a free lunch! (I blog for conference passes!):
ISSCC 2012: Silicon Systems for Sustainability!
SemiWiki - ISSCC Semiconductors for healthy living!
View attachment 2956
The conference proceedings this year are well worth the read. I just traded mine this morning at Mimi's Cafe for a front row seat to George Thorogood this Friday night at the Fox Theater in Redwood City. How cool is that! There is also a CD version but for some reason I did not get one. Maybe all media people did not get a CD, I do not know.
View attachment 2957
This is Mimi's Cafe, my office on the weekends. Great muffins, oh yeah, it's all about the muffins. Specialty's Cafe during the week, Mimi's on the weekend, a muffin a day will keep the doctor away. They should charge me rent.
Okay this is the part where I share my opinions, observations, and other blogger stuff:
View attachment 2949
The most interesting session was on the new Samsung Exynos processor. Mike Demler did a better blog than I could ever do on it:
Samsung at ISSCC: Quad-core Exynos apps processor relies on skillful analog IC design
The big takeaway I had was that it was designed at 45nm and migrated to 32nm, so where is Samsung 28nm? Why is this part not in 28nm yet? Better yet why aren't all of the so called semiconductor journalists and analysts questioning Samsung 28nm yield? I have a blog on "process versus design yield" queued up for next week that you won't want to miss! It will probably go viral! The other interesting part is when a line queued up for questions from Broadcom, Nvidia, and TI. Samsung definitely has everyone's attention with this one! Samsung is yet again competing with their customers! I really do not see this ending well. Can you imagine Intel manufacturing AMD parts? Not gonna happen. Given a choice, companies like Qualcomm will not reward behavior like this. Nor will enlightened consumers, Samsung products are not allowed in my ecosystem. SAMSUNG WILL NEVER BE RELEVANT AS A MERCHANT FOUNDRY!
EETimes did a follow-up article to this suggesting that Samsung 32nm is going to challenge TSMC 28nm in foundry business which was complete nonsense. I can't seem to find the article now. EETimes is so advertisement laden and has poor search ability it was not worth looking for. I also read on another site that the iPad3 will have Samsung 32nm silicon instead of 28nm. So where is the non TSMC 28nm silicon? I will continue the search......
View attachment 2948The most disappointing session was by Intel on Ivy Bridge, which was deja vu of the IDF presentation last fall. One of the reasons ISSCC is such a great conference is that they absolutely do not allow previous presented materials, unless of course you are Intel? I call foul on this one! And I'm not the only one, quite a few comments were made in the hallway after the presentation. I'm probably the only one to print it though.
Just to review: There are four different 22nm Ivy Bridge models, two or four cores, two different DX11 graphics units, as well 2 to 8 MB L3 cache. Ivy Bridge has 1.4 billion transistors, which is about 26 percent smaller die than the comparable Sandy Bridge with 1.16 billion transistors. Unfortunately, Ivy Bridge production has been pushed out to Q3. Again, why aren't all of the so called semiconductor journalists and analysts questioning Intel 22nm yield? So, in summary, I learned nothing new from this session. Mike blogged on this one as well:
Intel at ISSCC 2012: David Perlmutter keynote, details on 22nm tri-gate design and Ivy Bridge demo
View attachment 2960
Intel also presented on a new Atom based SoC chip, another standing room only session. Standing room mostly because I was late as usual. I really was expecting a 22nm talk but again it was a 45nm core scaled to 32nm. Mike did a detailed blog on this one as well:
Intel describes PC On-Chip with Dual-Core Atom Processor and WiFi Transceiver at ISSCC
My take on this is that Intel is very serious about the mobile business. They are a generation or two behind the industry but Intel will catch up. I saw Intel based smart phones at CES and I have no doubt that Intel/ARM Windows phones will be #3 behind Android and iOS. I will never own one but I'm sure other Windows biased people will.
View attachment 2961
The World Mobile Congress is this week. They graciously gave me a media badge and I did intend to go but it overlapped with DVCon. I'm still on the MWC press list and i'm still getting press releases and invites to parties and press meetings. Lots of interesting stuff going on, new products coming, so on and so on. Maybe next year, my wife really wants to go to Spain. The most interesting announcement thus far is Intel Atom SoC based (mentioned above) Android phones. ARM is in every Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Nvidia, Apple, Samsung, Broadcom and ST-Ericsson mobile processors so Intel has a big challenge ahead. Unfortunately the Intel 32nm Atom mobile SoC will compete with TSMC 28nm silicon which is not a fair fight. Same thing for the Samsung Exynos 32nm mobile SoC.
To be continued.............
View attachment 2950
My trip to ISSCC started with a ride on BART. Not just because I’m too cheap to pay the exorbitant toll and parking, but my first licensed drive over the Bay Bridge cost 50 cents and now it is $6.00. There used to be baskets that we tossed two quarters in so there was a bit of a challenge depending on your speed. Now the $6 toll appears on my credit card before my car is over the water. I’m also trying to avoid the exorbitant gas prices! A gallon of gas cost 70 cents and now it is over $4.00. Yes I’m that old.
View attachment 2951
I was packing my trusty iPad2 so the BART ride went by very quickly. Not a lot of friendly conversation on BART. Everybody had earphones in, including me. I'm not always listening to Pandora, mostly I just use earphones as an excuse to ignore people. Given it was President's Day it was much more crowded than I had expected. All the better to people watch. BART parking was free though so it worked for me. I really like free.
View attachment 2952
I really like visiting San Francisco, I have worked here a few times over my life, always interesting. Lots of shoppers and street performers since it was a holiday. Unfortunately, I was trying to finish a Words with Friends game with my wife and bumped into an angry homeless guy. Very bad idea walking and Words with Friend-ing! As a rule I never fight guys uglier than I am since they have less to lose, so I ducked, apologized profusely, and retreated. Now I have a YouTube rule of public conduct, if you don't want it to be on YouTube then don't do it.
View attachment 2953
ISSCC is at the Marriott downtown SF near the convention center. It’s a $4.50 BART trip and a two block walk, kind of refreshing really. The guy out front of the hotel charges for pictures so I couldn’t get a front view. Gotta love SFO! Great weather, no rain but I kept the free ISSCC umbrella just in case.
View attachment 2954
I limit my picture taking to the public areas of the conference. I do not take photos in the sessions because for one, you are not supposed to, and for two I think it is rude. As a presenter myself it bothers me so I don't want to bother others. And for whatever reason, if you put a video camera in my face I will probably vomit on you. It almost happened at the last seminar I did so be warned.
View attachment 2955
My guess is that the ISSCC crowd swelled this year. Great papers! Here are the last two blogs I did on ISSCC. It is definitely worth the free media pass I, better than a free lunch! (I blog for conference passes!):
ISSCC 2012: Silicon Systems for Sustainability!
SemiWiki - ISSCC Semiconductors for healthy living!
View attachment 2956
The conference proceedings this year are well worth the read. I just traded mine this morning at Mimi's Cafe for a front row seat to George Thorogood this Friday night at the Fox Theater in Redwood City. How cool is that! There is also a CD version but for some reason I did not get one. Maybe all media people did not get a CD, I do not know.
View attachment 2957
This is Mimi's Cafe, my office on the weekends. Great muffins, oh yeah, it's all about the muffins. Specialty's Cafe during the week, Mimi's on the weekend, a muffin a day will keep the doctor away. They should charge me rent.
Okay this is the part where I share my opinions, observations, and other blogger stuff:
View attachment 2949
The most interesting session was on the new Samsung Exynos processor. Mike Demler did a better blog than I could ever do on it:
Samsung at ISSCC: Quad-core Exynos apps processor relies on skillful analog IC design
The big takeaway I had was that it was designed at 45nm and migrated to 32nm, so where is Samsung 28nm? Why is this part not in 28nm yet? Better yet why aren't all of the so called semiconductor journalists and analysts questioning Samsung 28nm yield? I have a blog on "process versus design yield" queued up for next week that you won't want to miss! It will probably go viral! The other interesting part is when a line queued up for questions from Broadcom, Nvidia, and TI. Samsung definitely has everyone's attention with this one! Samsung is yet again competing with their customers! I really do not see this ending well. Can you imagine Intel manufacturing AMD parts? Not gonna happen. Given a choice, companies like Qualcomm will not reward behavior like this. Nor will enlightened consumers, Samsung products are not allowed in my ecosystem. SAMSUNG WILL NEVER BE RELEVANT AS A MERCHANT FOUNDRY!
EETimes did a follow-up article to this suggesting that Samsung 32nm is going to challenge TSMC 28nm in foundry business which was complete nonsense. I can't seem to find the article now. EETimes is so advertisement laden and has poor search ability it was not worth looking for. I also read on another site that the iPad3 will have Samsung 32nm silicon instead of 28nm. So where is the non TSMC 28nm silicon? I will continue the search......
View attachment 2948The most disappointing session was by Intel on Ivy Bridge, which was deja vu of the IDF presentation last fall. One of the reasons ISSCC is such a great conference is that they absolutely do not allow previous presented materials, unless of course you are Intel? I call foul on this one! And I'm not the only one, quite a few comments were made in the hallway after the presentation. I'm probably the only one to print it though.
Just to review: There are four different 22nm Ivy Bridge models, two or four cores, two different DX11 graphics units, as well 2 to 8 MB L3 cache. Ivy Bridge has 1.4 billion transistors, which is about 26 percent smaller die than the comparable Sandy Bridge with 1.16 billion transistors. Unfortunately, Ivy Bridge production has been pushed out to Q3. Again, why aren't all of the so called semiconductor journalists and analysts questioning Intel 22nm yield? So, in summary, I learned nothing new from this session. Mike blogged on this one as well:
Intel at ISSCC 2012: David Perlmutter keynote, details on 22nm tri-gate design and Ivy Bridge demo
View attachment 2960
Intel also presented on a new Atom based SoC chip, another standing room only session. Standing room mostly because I was late as usual. I really was expecting a 22nm talk but again it was a 45nm core scaled to 32nm. Mike did a detailed blog on this one as well:
Intel describes PC On-Chip with Dual-Core Atom Processor and WiFi Transceiver at ISSCC
My take on this is that Intel is very serious about the mobile business. They are a generation or two behind the industry but Intel will catch up. I saw Intel based smart phones at CES and I have no doubt that Intel/ARM Windows phones will be #3 behind Android and iOS. I will never own one but I'm sure other Windows biased people will.
View attachment 2961
The World Mobile Congress is this week. They graciously gave me a media badge and I did intend to go but it overlapped with DVCon. I'm still on the MWC press list and i'm still getting press releases and invites to parties and press meetings. Lots of interesting stuff going on, new products coming, so on and so on. Maybe next year, my wife really wants to go to Spain. The most interesting announcement thus far is Intel Atom SoC based (mentioned above) Android phones. ARM is in every Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Nvidia, Apple, Samsung, Broadcom and ST-Ericsson mobile processors so Intel has a big challenge ahead. Unfortunately the Intel 32nm Atom mobile SoC will compete with TSMC 28nm silicon which is not a fair fight. Same thing for the Samsung Exynos 32nm mobile SoC.
To be continued.............
Last edited: