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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


Sonics’ New NoC

Sonics’ New NoC
by Paul McLellan on 06-23-2015 at 7:00 am

Today Sonics announced the latest version of their network-on-chip (NoC) technology, SonicsGN-3.0. As with any new release there are lots of improvements that are of interest mainly to existing users, but the big area with increased capability is the expanded interleaved memory technology (IMT). This was first introduced … Read More


3 Projections About Nokia’s Smartphone Reboot

3 Projections About Nokia’s Smartphone Reboot
by Majeed Ahmad on 06-22-2015 at 8:00 pm

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


Predicting Lifetime of Analog ICs

Predicting Lifetime of Analog ICs
by Pawan Fangaria on 06-22-2015 at 12:30 pm

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


SEMulator3D on Silicon Cloud International

SEMulator3D on Silicon Cloud International
by Paul McLellan on 06-22-2015 at 7:00 am

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


GlobalFoundries IBM Deal to Close July 1st!

GlobalFoundries IBM Deal to Close July 1st!
by Daniel Nenni on 06-21-2015 at 5:00 am

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