The global semiconductor market in 2021 was $555.9 billion, according to WSTS data released by the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). 2021 increased 26.2% from 2020, the largest annual increase since 31.8% in 2010, eleven years ago. We at Semiconductor Intelligence track publicly available semiconductor market forecasts… Read More


Podcast EP62: Exploring the VSORA architecture
Dan is joined by Jan Pantzar, VP sales and marketing of VSORA, a provider of high-performance silicon intellectual property (IP) and chip solutions for artificial intelligence, digital communications and advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) applications based in France.
Dan and Jan explore the VSORA architecture… Read More
Dynamic Coherence Verification. Innovation in Verification
We know about formal methods for cache coherence state machines. What sorts of tests are possible using dynamic coherence verification? Paul Cunningham (GM, Verification at Cadence), Raúl Camposano (Silicon Catalyst, entrepreneur, former Synopsys CTO) and I continue our series on research ideas. As always, feedback welcome.… Read More
Intel buys Tower – Best way to become foundry is to buy one
-Intel jumpstarts foundry model with Tower semi buy @$54B Gets complementary tech to round out offerings
-Approval based on satisfying China’s needs as well
-Margin concerns overblown- Will it be allowed to flourish?
Intel pays up to get foundry and technology….
Intel announced a $5.4B acquisition of Tower Semiconductor… Read More
The Intel Foundry Ecosystem Explained
Exciting times for the semiconductor industry! Last week Intel announced a billion dollar fund to build a foundry ecosystem and today Intel announced they are acquiring foundry Tower Semiconductor for $5.6 billion dollars, WOW! Some people doubted Intel’s commitment to the foundry market this time. I think we can now put that… Read More
Intel Embraces the RISC-V Ecosystem: Implications as the Other Shoe Drops
On Monday, February 7, 2022, Intel Foundry Services (IFS), made a series of major announcements regarding the RISC-V architecture and ecosystem:
- Intel will be joining the RISC-V International association with a Premier Membership, and Bob Brennan, Vice President of Customer Solutions Engineering for Intel Foundry Services,
The Rising Tide of Semiconductor Cost
It Isn’t Transistory
There’s a quiet upheaval happening in the semiconductor industry. The rules that have always governed the industry are fraying, undoing assumptions that we took for granted, that was pounded into us in school. The irreproachable Moore’s Law, that exponential progress will make things cheaper, better,… Read More
Podcast EP61: A deep dive on Intel and semiconductors with Stacy Rasgon
Dan is again joined by Stacy Rasgon, Managing Director and Senior Analyst, U.S. Semiconductors at Bernstein Research. Stacy is an unusual semiconductor analyst as he holds a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from MIT. His substantial technical knowledge allows for a deep dive on Intel and other semiconductor topics that you will… Read More
Verific Sharpening the Saw
Verific is an unusual company. They are completely dominant in what they do – providing parsers for Verilog/SV, VHDL and UPF. Yet they have no ambition to expand beyond that goal. Instead, per Michiel Ligthart (President and COO), they continue to “sharpen the saw”. This is an expression I learned in sales training, habit #7 from… Read More
S2C’s FPGA Prototyping Solutions
Prototyping solutions have been in the news a lot lately. And FPGA-based prototyping approach is pretty widely used. On a panel session at DAC 2021, Amir Salek, Head of Silicon for Cloud and Infrastructure at Google had the following to say. Prototyping FPGA is a tremendous platform for testing and validation. We are doubling down… Read More
Intel’s Pearl Harbor Moment