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Imec’s An Steegen Talks Future Process Technology

Imec’s An Steegen Talks Future Process Technology
by Paul McLellan on 06-27-2015 at 7:00 am

I’m an An Steegen groupie. Once or twice a year I see a presentation by her and it is a great summary in a ridiculously short period of time of all the potential upcoming semiconductor technologies. Yesterday was my annual fix at the imec Technology Forum (ITF). Today I got to sit down with her at the conference center.

An is different… Read More


Synopsys Vision on Custom Automation with FinFET

Synopsys Vision on Custom Automation with FinFET
by Pawan Fangaria on 06-26-2015 at 7:00 am

In an overwhelmingly digital world, there is a constant cry about the analog design process being slow, not automated, going at its own pace in the same old fashion, and so on. And, the analog world is not happy with the way it’s getting dragged into imperfect automation so it can be more like the digital world. True, the analog world… Read More


Heard on the Street at ITF

Heard on the Street at ITF
by Paul McLellan on 06-25-2015 at 7:00 pm

As I said yesterday, I’m at the imec Technology Forum (ITF) in Brussels. So what have I learned from all the people that I’ve interacted with.

There were two press releases announced at a press conference yesterday. The first was that imec was expanding its relationship with Toshiba and Sandisk. This covers bringing… Read More


3 Design Hooks of Atmel MCUs for Connected Cars

3 Design Hooks of Atmel MCUs for Connected Cars
by Majeed Ahmad on 06-25-2015 at 7:00 am

In February 2015, BMW reported that it has patched the security flaw which could allow hackers to remotely unlock the doors of more than 2 million BMW, Mini and Rolls-Royce vehicles. Earlier, researchers at ADAC, a German motorist association, had demonstrated how they could intercept communications with BMW’s ConnectedDrive… Read More


Samsung: the Journey to 14nm and 10nm

Samsung: the Journey to 14nm and 10nm
by Paul McLellan on 06-24-2015 at 7:00 pm

At the Samsung theatre (cutely named the Samsung Open Collaboration (SoC) theater) I watched a presentation by KK Lin on using DFM to bring up their 14nm and 10nm processes. And yes, they are real. Here is a picture I took of a 14nm wafer and a 10nm wafer. Samsung announced that they would ramp 10n to volume production by the end of next… Read More


A Closer Look at Fab Closures Around the World

A Closer Look at Fab Closures Around the World
by Pawan Fangaria on 06-24-2015 at 12:00 pm

Electronics is unusually an evergreen industry where companies make profit, yet end-product prices go down significantly after a brief period of price skimming. A product phases out quite fast (in case of smartphones every 1.5 to 2 years), but still yields big bucks for successful companies in its value-chain. How does this happen?… Read More


Bijan Kiani Talks Synopsys Custom Layout and More

Bijan Kiani Talks Synopsys Custom Layout and More
by Paul McLellan on 06-24-2015 at 7:00 am

Last week I sat down and talked to Bijan Kiani of Synopsys. He has marketing responsibility for design implementation products at Synopsys spanning digital, custom and analog mixed signal (AMS).

He was born in Iran and after high school he moved to the UK. He got his PhD degree from University of Edinburgh. It turns out that I was doing… Read More


Growth drivers shifting to emerging economies

Growth drivers shifting to emerging economies
by Bill Jewell on 06-24-2015 at 4:00 am

Global real gross domestic product (GDP) growth in 2015 is expected to be 3.5%, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) April 2015 report. 2015 is a slight acceleration of 0.1 percentage points from 3.4% growth in 2014. The IMF projects 2016 global growth of 3.8%, an acceleration of 0.3 percentage points from 2015. The… Read More


UMC and SMIC 14nm, Too Little Too Late?

UMC and SMIC 14nm, Too Little Too Late?
by Daniel Nenni on 06-24-2015 at 1:00 am

Pretty much out of nowhere UMC let fly a press release about taping out a 14nm test chip with ARM and Synopsys IP which was quickly followed by an SMIC 14nm press release about a joint venture with Huawei, Qualcomm, and imec. It caught me a bit by surprise since I spent time with both UMC and SMIC at #52DAC and nothing was mentioned. Of course… Read More


EUV: the view from imec

EUV: the view from imec
by Paul McLellan on 06-23-2015 at 7:00 pm

I’m at the 2015 imec technology forum (ITF) in Brussels the next few days. One of the presentations today was by Peter Wennink, the CEO of ASML. The thing that most interested me in his presentation is what the status of EUV is today. ASML is the only company developing EUV steppers so what they think is important. On the other … Read More