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I have written a book on Nokia’s smartphone problem. The name of the book is Nokia’s Smartphone Problem: The End of an Icon? and it chronicles the Finnish company’s journey from a mobile handset maestro to a smartphone also-ran.
Nokia’s smartphone story began with the launch of the Communicator 900—arguably… Read More
With the increase of transistors per unit area, high density interconnects and manufacturing variability at lower nodes, the electronic devices have become more vulnerable to failures. The devices that operate under extreme conditions such as automotive devices that operate at high temperatures need to be robust enough to… Read More
Almost exactly a year ago I wrote about Silicon Cloud International (SCI). Their mission is to help smaller countries that have targeted semiconductor design as a way to move up the technology ladder from low-cost manufacturing. Last year everything was in the future but SCI now have their first two centers up and running. The first,… Read More
Probably one of the most awaited semiconductor events is coming next week if the Poughkeepsie Journal is correct, which from what I’m told by my Albany friends, they are. The official announcement was made last October using the slide deck which can be found HERE. It was originally thought that the approval process would take a year… Read More
We have been hearing about low power for a long time. Fortunately, low power chip operation has come about through a large number of innovations. Key among these is clock gating, frequency and voltage scaling, managing leakage with lower threshold voltage, HKMG, and many other techniques. But we are entering the age of ultra low… Read More
Although I knew about Crossfire’s capabilities for signing off quality of an IP before its integration into an SoC, there was much more to learn about this tool when I visited Fractal Technologies booth during this DAC. The complexity handled by this tool to qualify any type of IP for its integration into an SoC can be imagined by the… Read More
One announcement that I missed coming up to the Design Automation Conference last week was that SiCAD is hosting a portfolio of IBM’s design automation tools in the cloud. Supposedly these are priced half the cost of similar capability from Cadence, Synopsys and Mentor. So should the big three be worried? Is this an earth-shattering… Read More
Last year at #51DAC we gave away more than a thousand printed versions of our book “Fabless: The Transformation of the Semiconductor industry.” This year we gave away pens with a light and stylus. My friends at Solido Design gave away 600 pens in their booth and we gave away another 400 at our DAC reception on Wednesday night. Solido… Read More
It appears so. Why there is so much rush towards FD-SOI in recent days? Before talking about the game, let me reflect a bit on the FD-SOI technology first. The FD-SOI at 28nm claims to be the most power-efficient and lesser cost technology compared to any other technology available at that node. There are many other advantages from… Read More
Somebody said to me recently that SEMICON West, which takes place in San Francisco July 14-16th, isn’t that big a deal since very little manufacturing goes on in the US any more. In fact 15% of manufacturing capacity is in north america (I think that actually means the US since I don’t think there are any fabs in Canada).… Read More
5 Expectations for the Memory Markets in 2025