In the relentless pursuit of ever-increasing data speeds, the 1.6 Terabits per second (Tbps) era looms on the horizon, promising unprecedented levels of connectivity and bandwidth within data centers. As data-intensive applications proliferate and the demand for real-time processing escalates, the need for robust and efficient… Read More




Arm Neoverse Continues to Claim Territory in Infrastructure
After owning general purpose compute in cell phones and IoT devices, it wasn’t clear what Arm’s next act might be. Seemingly the x86 giants dominated in datacenters and auguries suggested a bloody war in smaller platforms between Arm and RISC-V. But Arm knew what they were doing all along, growing upwards into infrastructure:… Read More
Pinning Down an EUV Resist’s Resolution vs. Throughput
The majority of EUV production is on 5nm and 3nm node, implemented by late 2022. Metal oxide resists have not been brought into volume production yet [1,2], meaning that only organic chemically amplified resists (CARs) have been used instead until now. These resists have a typical absorption coefficient of 5/um [3,4], which means
Cadence Debuts Celsius Studio for In-Design Thermal Optimization
Continuing the multiphysics theme, I talked recently with Melika Roshandell (Product Management Director at Cadence) on the continuing convergence between MCAD and ECAD. You should know first that Melika has a PhD in mechanical engineering and an extensive background in thermal engineering at Broadcom and Qualcomm, all very… Read More
Handling Preprocessed Files in a Hardware IDE
For several years now, I’ve been meeting with AMIQ EDA co-founder Cristian Amitroaie every few months to discuss the state of the industry, key trends in design and verification, and the ways that they help facilitate and accelerate chip development. I noticed an interesting new feature mentioned in their latest press release… Read More
Chiplet ecosystems enable multi-vendor designs
Chiplets dominate semiconductor industry conversations right now – and after the recent Chiplet Summit, we expect the intensity to go up a couple of notches. One company name often heard is Blue Cheetah, and we had the opportunity to sit down with them recently to discuss their views and their just-announced design win at Tenstorrent.… Read More
AMAT – Flattish QTR Flattish Guide – Improving 2024 – Memory and Logic up, ICAPs Down
– AMAT slightly better than expected, flat & guides flat but > expected
– Expects better 2024- Systems flat, service up, display down
– China risk remains high at 45%- $200M Sculpta expected in 2024
– HBM 5% of industry but not a lot of tool sales- but high growth
Still bumping along with flattish … Read More
ISS 2024 – Logic 2034 – Technology, Economics, and Sustainability
For the 2024 SEMI International Strategy Symposium I was challenged by members of the organizing committee to look at where logic will be in ten years from a technology, economics, and sustainability perspective. The following is a discussion of my presentation.
To understand logic, I believe it is useful to understand what makes… Read More
Intel should be the Free World’s Plan A Not Plan B, and we need the US Government to step in
There are trillions of dollars at stake with AI and huge geopolitical consequences. However, the weak foundation to American technological power is their dependence on Taiwan and TSMC, which is where most advanced silicon is manufactured. America has also been taking China to the ropes lately in their economic/technology proxy… Read More
Podcast EP208: A Conversation with This Year’s Kaufman Award Recipient, Dr. Lawrence Pileggi
Dan is joined by Dr. Lawrence Pileggi, Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Larry is the 2023 Phil Kaufman Award recipient for distinguished contributions to Electronic System Design. His pioneering contributions include circuit simulation and optimization… Read More
CEO Interview with Ido Bukspan of Pliops