If you google “7 deadly sins of startups” you get lots of hits on mistakes for social networking ventures, only a few of which are relevant to EDA startups. In EDA you have to demonstrate real growth quickly with a very tech-savvy audience in a handful of bluechip accounts. So throw away the research you did on the web because it isn’t… Read More
Kirin 9030 Hints at SMIC's Possible Paths Toward >300 MTr/mm2 Without EUVEarlier this month, TechInsights did a teardown of…Read More
Why TSMC is Known as the Trusted FoundryTaiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is widely regarded…Read More
Journey Back to 1981: David Patterson Recounts the Birth of RISC and Its Legacy in RISC-VIn a warmly received keynote at the RISC-V…Read More
Assertion-First Hardware Design and Formal Verification ServicesGenerative AI has transformed software development, enabling entire…Read More
TSMC's Customized Technical Documentation Platform Enhances Customer ExperienceTaiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world's leading dedicated…Read MoreFour Takeaways from the TSMC OIP 2015
Paul M. did an excellent job summarizing the technical information that TSMC presented at the recent Open Innovation Platform symposium. I’d like to also share an impression on four areas that struck me as key to TSMC’s strategy.… Read More
We’re Number Two, We Try Harder
One of the big surprises I got at Synopsys’ ARC conference is that ARC is #2 in terms of share of licensed microprocessor shipments. I think most readers of Semiwiki would know ARM is #1 but would guess that MIPS (now owned by Imagination Technologies) is #2. But you’d be wrong, ARC is over twice as big.
Last week Synopsys… Read More
TSMC OIP: What to Do With 20,000 Wafers Per Day
Today it is TSMC’s OIP Ecosystem Innovation forum. This is an annual event but is also a semi-annual update on TSMC’s processes, investment, volume ramps and more. TSMC have changed the rules for the conference this year: they have published all the presentations by their partners/customers. Tom Quan of TSMC told… Read More
The Future of Moore’s Law
I’ve lived in Silicon Valley then moved north to the Silicon Forest (aka Portland, Oregon) in 1995, and thankfully we have a lot of high-tech companies here like: Intel, Lam Research (Novellus), Lattice Semi, Qorvo, Synopsys, Mentor, Cadence, Northwest Logic, etc. There’s a global industry organization called… Read More
The Internet of Sensors
The internet of things (IoT) has a number of key attributes: low power, security, connectivity. But almost every IoT application involves sensors of one sort or another. The visual sensors are built using CCD arrays, they are basically low-resolution cameras, but the mechanical ones are typically built using MEMS technology.… Read More
IoT does NOT lack tools!
Rarely does a month go by without acquisitions in the fabless semiconductor ecosystem. Not surprisingly one of the most read pages on SemiWiki is the EDA Merger and Acquisitions Wiki with more than fifty seven thousand views. It really is a nice family tree, one which we (Daniel Payne) are diligent on keeping current. One of the most… Read More
Re-Thinking Server Design
The demand for information is growing at an unprecedented rate. Our insatiable appetite for communication, computing and downloading, is driving this demand. With emerging technologies, such as cloud computing and the internet of things, not to mention the 300 hours of video being loaded to YouTube every minute, this trend … Read More
FPGA Prototyping: From Homebrew to Integrated Solutions
Years ago, when FPGA prototyping started, there were no solutions that you could go out and buy and everything was created as a one-off: buy some FPGAs or an FPGA-based board, and put it all together. It was a lot of effort, nobody really knew in advance how long it would take, there was very limited visibility for debug and the whole … Read More
3D Xpoint and the Future of Memory
Recently Intel and Micron announced a new three dimensional cross point (3D Xpoint) memory. The 3D Xpoint announcement has generated a lot of questions and interest in what this new memory is and where it may fit in the semiconductor market. … Read More


Quantum Computing Technologies and Challenges