At the 2021 VLSI Technology Symposium, Imec presented on Ruthenium (Ru) and Molybdenum (Mo) as alternate Word Line (WL) materials for 3D NAND Flash “First Demonstration of Ruthenium and Molybdenum Word lines Integrated into 40nm Pitch 3D NAND Memory Devices”. I had an opportunity to interview one of the authors: Maarten Rosmeulen.… Read More





Wireless Transportation Disruption
One of the toughest tech tasks is adopting a new emerging technology that is fundamentally incompatible with the old. In the realm of connected cars, car makers and their suppliers labored for more than two decades on a wireless standard – called dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) – that was intended to enable intervehicle
GloFo inside Intel? Foundry Foothold and Fixerupper- Good Synergies
Intel reportedly talking to Abu Dhabi to buy GloFo for $30B
Would jumpstart Intel Foundry but require investment & repair
Avoids IPO risk – Allows Abu Dhabi escape- NY benefits
Doesn’t impact near term shortage or market share
Reported by WSJ- Intel in talks to buy GloFo
The Wall Street Journal reported that Intel… Read More
Podcast EP29: An exploration of Minima’s energy optimized design technology
Dan is joined by Lauri Koskinen, CTO and co-founder of Minima Technology. Dan explores the unique near-threshold design and operation of Minima’s energy optimized technology.
The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in these podcasts belong solely to the speaker, and not to the speaker’s employer, organization,… Read More
CEO Interview: Pete Rodriguez of Silicon Catalyst
Pete Rodriguez has over 35 years of experience in the Semiconductor industry. Pete is currently CEO of Silicon Catalyst and on the board of Hysai, advisory board of Harvest Management Partners and an observer on the boards of Mentium Technologies, Espre Technologies and Owl AI. Pete was formerly VP & GM of Interface and Power… Read More
Cadence Tensilica FloatingPoint DSPs
Being engrossed in the digital information world, it is easy to forget that the real world is comprised of mostly analog signals and data. Digital Signal Processors (DSP) take digitized forms of these worldly signals and manipulate them mathematically. Although floating-point is a more relevant and accurate way of representing… Read More
Is EDA Growth Unstoppable?
SemiWiki has covered the Q2, Q3 and Q4 ESD Alliance quarterly revenue reports previously. The Q2 2020 report suggested that EDA had COVID immunity. The Q3 2020 report inspired an Up and to the Right comment. The Q4 2020 report demanded a Juggernaut label. And now the Q1 2021 report posts yet more record-breaking growth. This is … Read More
Fully Modeling the Semiconductor Manufacturing Process
A lot of folks in the semiconductor business are familiar with Dassault Systèmes because of their product life cycle management (PLM) products for IC design. They are, of course well known in other industries as well for their 3D modeling and simulation software. Over the years they have added capabilities and intelligence to … Read More
Get a Jump-Start on Your Next IoT Design with Sondrel’s SFA 100
The concept of platform-based design has been around a long time. I can recall Nokia’s early cell phone products used the strategy very effectively. They were able to turn out new phones quickly by leveraging their existing chip design as a baseline on which to add features. This is commonplace today but was innovative at that time.… Read More
StarFive Surpasses Development Goal with the Prodigy Rapid Prototyping System from S2C
Faced with the challenge of developing a high-performance hardware platform with critical software components, what choices do companies have in rapidly moving their development forward with modest budgets and resources?
That was the challenge faced by StarFive Technology, a leading IP and semiconductor SoC platform solution… Read More
Weebit Nano Moves into the Mainstream with Customer Adoption