The trend of AI augmentation into many facets of silicon based hardware applications is on the rise. During the CASPA press conference in Santa Clara last week, Silvaco CEO David Dutton and SiFive VP, GM Christopher Moezzi were present to share their insights.
Silvaco CEO David Dutton mentioned that we are in new era in which many… Read More




SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference 2019 Overall Impressions
Last week I attended the 2019 SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference. I gave two presentations, attended dozens of papers and conducted three interviews. I will be doing some detailed write ups particularly on EUV but I am waiting for the presentations from several of the papers. In the mean time I thought I would put some overall … Read More
GLOBALFOUNDRIES UPDATE 2019
The GLOBALFOUNDRIES story has been one of the more interesting ones inside the fabless semiconductor ecosystem. It started in 2008 when AMD announced a partnership with ATIC of Abu Dhabi to create a new joint venture company to become the world’s first truly global semiconductor foundry. On March 4[SUP]th[/SUP] of 2009 (happy… Read More
Radar is Cheaper but Autonomous Car Needs Lidar!
To replace a human driver, autonomous car will have to “see” and do it in a better way than human being. The available solution, based on camera, radar, lidar, is not perfect and need to be improved. Radar is great for “seeing” in bad weather but has insufficient resolution to distinguish distant objects. Lidar produces high-resolution… Read More
Stemming Mobility Race to the Bottom
Pundits and pontificators are publishing viewpoints on a utopian future of smart cities and optimized transportation options populated with new mobility solutions ranging from automated ride hailing services to sharable bikes and scooters. In this halcyon view, the bikes and scooters and ride-hail cars will deliver passengers… Read More
No Cord Cutting Autonomous Cars
The automotive industry is a world of contradictions. Nowhere is this more evident than in the realm of connected cars. Car makers remain utterly conflicted over connecting cars 21 years after General Motors got the ball rolling with the introduction of OnStar.
Even GM had to famously be goaded into connecting its cars by then executive… Read More
LithoVision 2019 – Semiconductor Technology Trends and their impact on Lithography
I was asked to present at Nikon’s LithoVision event again this year. LithoVision is held the day before the SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference also in San Jose. The following is a write up of my talk.… Read More
Report from SPIE EUV Update 2019
Not as much new – No breakthrough announcements, 300 watts is better than 250 watts – Pellicle Problems, TSMC is EUV king – Third times a charm? We attended this years SPIE Lithography convention in San Jose as we have for many years. Although the show was quite enthusiastic and EUV was the central topic, as it has… Read More
Synopsys GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Automotive IP
IP vendors have always had the inside track on the status of new process nodes and what customers are planning for their next designs. This is even more apparent now that systems companies are successfully doing their own chips by leveraging the massive amounts of commercial IP available today. Proving once again that IP really … Read More
Can I Trust my Hardware Root of Trust?
Hardware Roots of Trust (HRoTs) have become a popular mechanism to provide a foundational level of security in a cell-phone or IoT device or indeed any device that might appear to a hacker to be a juicy target. The concept is simple. In order to offer credible levels of security, any level in the stack has to be able to trust that levels… Read More
Why I Think Intel 3.0 Will Succeed