Samsung’s profits fell to $3.8B which is 60% down on where they were a year ago. They said this is primarily due to a shortfall in smartphone sales. Samsung’s problem is not that it competes with Apple, their phones seem close enough that the Galaxy line has been doing very well in places like the US. It’s problem… Read More
ASML- Soft revenues & Orders - But...China 49% - Memory ImprovingASML- better EPS but weaker revenues- 2024 recovery…Read More
Semi Market Decreased by 8% in 2023… When Design IP Sales Grew by 6%!Design IP revenues had achieved $7.04B in 2023,…Read More
Cadence Debuts Dynamic Duo III with a Basket of GoodiesI am a fan of product releases which…Read More
CEO Interview: Khaled Maalej, VSORA Founder and CEOKhaled Maalej is founder and CEO of VSORA,…Read More
Intel Invades China Mobile Market!
As you may have heard, Intel is making some interesting moves into the China mobile market. At first it had me a bit puzzled but I had some lengthy discussions about it during ARM TechCon last week so I’m ready to start writing. Spoiler alert: This will be pro Intel so please sit down and take some deep breaths before reading.
The first… Read More
Silicon Does NOT Lie!
In the 30+ years that I have worked in Silicon Valley I have seen many great products fail and even more mediocre products succeed, the difference being how the companies communicate to the outside world. In the semiconductor industry, presenting the value proposition of your company or product is under even more scrutiny now that… Read More
10nm, the View from IBM
On the Cadence booth at DAC, Lars Liebmann of IBM presented on the challenges of 10nm. As he put it, how the lithography folks are keeping things very interesting for the EDA tool development engineers. Although 14nm/16nm hasn’t yet ramped into HVM, the advanced work for tools and IP has all moved to 10nm. Although Lars gave… Read More
The Apple Samsung TSMC Intel 14nm Mashup!
One of the strengths of the fabless semiconductor ecosystem is competition since it keeps innovation high and prices low. One of the challenges of fostering competition is that you have to make good on a threat of using a competing product during a pricing negotiation. Well, in my opinion, for the next version of the iPhone, Apple… Read More
Key Collaboration to Enable Designs at Advanced Nodes
In the semiconductor ecosystem, several partners (or better to say stakeholders) join together in the overall value chain to finally output the most coveted chip, err I should say SoC these days. It becomes really interesting when we start analyzing the real value added by each of them, none appears to be less. Well, then to whom … Read More
GlobalFoundries and Samsung at ARM
It was back in April that GlobalFoundries and Samsung announced that GF would license Samsung’s 14nm process to run in their Fab8 in upstate New York. Since then there has not really been any news and of course those of us that follow the foundry industry wondered to what extent there was real substance to the agreement or if … Read More
A de-parallel universe for Windows 10
It was CES 2011 when Steve Ballmer sweatered up and pitched the coming universe according to Microsoft, where the same Windows base would run on everything – PC, phone, tablet, and game console. Getting from that visionary statement to Windows 10 hasn’t been a smooth ride.… Read More
ARM ♥ TSMC!
This week is the 10[SUP]th[/SUP] annual ARM Technical Conference in Silicon Valley. In regards to size, content, and relevance, I believe ARM TechCon is the #1 event for the fabless semiconductor ecosystem for sure. I attended keynotes, sessions, and walked the hallways on Wednesday and Thursday. I wish I could write about everything… Read More
What’s Behind Carbon System Exchange – How Will it Scale?
Earlier this year, when I was looking at Carbon’spast year performance which provided record breaking revenue with whopping jump in bookings, one thing was certain that Carbon Performance Analysis Kits (CPAKs) would drive major growth in future, not only for Carbon, but also for the semiconductor industry. It will initiate … Read More
Real men have fabs!