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                    [post_date] => 2010-02-22 00:30:00
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                    [post_content] => One may ask why in the semiconductor world would GlobalFoundries(GFI) exhibit at the Mobile World Congress  last week, the world’s largest exhibition for the mobile industry. And  not just exhibit, GFI turned out at en force with meeting rooms and  bright orange signage declaring a mobile revolution. Why? Here is your  first clue:



2010 will usher in a new generation of consumer electronic devices.  These devices will enable mobile internet access to an ever increasing  amount of high speed data, real time audio, high definition video, and  mobile television. Driven by smartphones, mobile internet devices are in  hyper growth mode and represent the single largest consumer electronics  market segment known to man. Remember, there are 6,795,200,000 people  in the world that will need mobile internet devices. There are only  about 1,000,000,000 smartphones in use today and they have a much  shorter life cycle than a radio, TV, desktop, or even a laptop personal  computer.



As consumer electronic devices go mobile, the lines between  televisions, computers, phones, cameras, browsers and operating systems  disappear. Nowhere is this more illustrated than in the rapid rise of  mobile consumption of the internet. According to the Quantcast 2009 Mobile Trends Report,  the North American mobile web share is up 110% in 2009 (Dec ’09 vs. Dec  ’08) and the global mobile web consumption share up 148% in 2009.  Beginning with the iPhone in 2007, the Android in 2009, and the tablet  PC onslaught in 2010, it’s a safe bet that the number of mobile internet  devices will grow in numbers exponentially in the coming decade. The  next question is: How can we simplify the design and implementation of  mobile internet device hardware and software?



 The semiconductor industry has done an excellent job with technical  standards in this regard. Inside mobile internet devices (smartphones)  MIPI Specifications establish standards for hardware and software  interfaces which allow consumers a choice of vendors for leading edge  products. The MIPIAlliance,  established in July 2003 by ARM, Nokia, STMicroelectronics and Texas  Instruments, is an open membership organization for leading companies in  the mobile industry that promote open interface specifications. The  IEEE Industry Standards and Technology Organization (ISTO) administers  the Alliance.



Before MIPI was established designers faced multiple competing and  proprietary physical-layer interfaces for any given system function.  MIPI has reduced that to two-to-four physical-layer standards, with  multiple protocols layered on top to cover various functions, all designed to last for multiple generations. A standards organization  that actually works, how refreshing!



 A next generation MIPI physical layer, the M-PHY,  was rolled out at MWC last week.  The M comes from the Roman numeral 1000 to signify the 1000M-5GBit  communication speed. The M-PHY is a serial interface technology with  high bandwidth capabilities, targeted for mobile applications designed  for good power efficiency and for a wide range of application protocols.  The M-PHY provides higher bandwidths and uses fewer signal wires than  the current D-PHY technology that it replaces.



In the end, the central communications module will not necessarily be  large but will include the user’s basic identity and some communications  capabilities. The more challenging aspects will be supplying  high-definition streaming video, loading of gigabyte wide movies (from  the Internet) and “everyone, everywhere, seamless wireless connection to  surrounding devices and services”. These future use model requirements  point directly to the MIPI M-PHY.
                    [post_title] => GlobalFoundries and the Mobile World Congress
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                    [post_content] => When AMD sought to shed its costly manufacturing unit Ibrahim Ajami saw an interesting opportunity, one that will eventually bring semiconductor manufacturing to Abu Dhabi. Let’s start with the recent interview published with Ajami, the 34 year old Chief Executive Officer of Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC), which is owned by the Government of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, and is the controlling shareholder of GlobalFoundries (GFI).



GlobalFoundries wants 30% of the made-to-order chip market within three  years. “Am I setting very aggressive targets? Yes,” Ajami said in a Jan  28 interview in Abu Dhabi. “We need to be a $5 billion company in the  next two to three years.”  A 30% share would take GlobalFoundries well  past United Microelectronics Corp (UMC), making it the world’s second-largest contract manufacturer of chips after Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC).



Mr. Ajami also dispelled recent rumors: “ATIC won’t buy the rest of GlobalFoundries (AMD owns 34%)  and the company has no interest in acquiring either United Micro or  South Korea’s Hynix Semiconductor Inc.”, Ajami said. “It doesn’t fit  with our strategy right now,” he said. “UMC is another foundry in Taiwan  and we’re not looking to go there right now and Hynix is a memory  company. Memory is not what we’re focused on right now”.



 Ajami earned his BS degree from Northeastern  University in Boston in  1998 and his MBA from the University of Southern California in 2004.  His semiconductor experience comes from the creation of a Silicon Valley  startup called ViralSounds Inc., and he worked for Packard Bell/NEC.  Ajami, associate director of the acquisitions unit of Mubadala,  was tapped to become CEO of ATIC and led the $7.5 billion acquisitions  of AMD manufacturing and Chartered Semiconductor that we now call  GlobalFoundries.







As I mentioned in TSMC versus GlobalFoundries Part I and Part II,  GFI will compete head-to-head with TSMC in the first source  semiconductor market, while UMC and SMIC are content to be second and  third source semiconductor manufacturers. GFI has not been shy about  their challenge to TSMC’s wafer supremacy and TSMC has responded in kind  by increasing capital expenditures, increasing R&D expenses, and  hiring thousands of engineers.

 

During my January visit to Taiwan there was definitely excitement in  the air at TSMC. The Fab lobbies were filled with job applicants, the  Fab cafeterias and coffee shops were abuzz, and meetings were much  harder to coordinate, a very big change from a few months ago. On a side  note, the food in Fab 12 is by far the tastiest and EVA Airlines is the  absolute best carrier from the US to Taiwan, but I digress.



 Whether or not GFI is a serious threat to TSMC’s foundry supremacy,  TSMC is certainly using GFI’s public relations activities to motivate  employees.  Déjà vu when the deep pockets of the Chinese government  funded SMIC.  Unfortunately, as it turned out, SMIC was a sheep in wolf’s clothing.  GFI on the other hand looks more like a wolf in an Armani suit.
                    [post_title] => The GlobalFoundries Enigma
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                    [post_content] => Transistors may be shrinking but atoms are not. Transistors are now  just a handful of atoms so it matters even more when a couple of those  atoms are out of place.  Process variations, whether they are  statistical, proximity, or otherwise, have got to be thoughtfully  accounted for if we are to achieve the low-power, high-performance, and  high yield design goals at 28nm.



 A recent seminar byTSMC and Synopsys  entitled “32/28nm Challenges – The EDA Vendor and Foundry Perspective”  brought perspective to the coming design challenges. The TSMC section  presented by Tom Quan is well worth seeing. Tom Quan  has 30 years design and product development experience in the AMS  market space. You won’t find a more engaging speaker on process  variation than Tom Quan.



TSMC’s value proposition for moving to the 28nm process supports Moore’s  Law with a better than 2X gate density at 28nm versus 40nm, a  significant speed gain, plus reduced power leakage and an overall cost  reduction. Target applications for 28nm include high performance  computing and peripherals, low power devices such as HD video cameras,  mobile internet and mobile computing, home and portable entertainment.  TSMC’s Advanced Technology Roadmap is on track for the low power 28nm  process in Q210 and high performance-high K metal gate 28nm process in  Q310.



Tom Quan’s emphasis on the importance of “Variation-Aware Design” is  justified. To start with, a smaller manufacturing window with much less  margin to begin with equals more variation. Add to that the fact that  global variation is constant, but local variation increases  significantly as channel width and length decreases, and you will have a  requirement for variation-aware design tools prior to GDS.

 The overall TSMC design ecosystem emphasis is on collaboration  between design and process. Tom divided this responsibility into  Foundry: better SPICE accuracy, DFM rules, providing variation aware  reference design kits (RDKs), and restricted design rules (RDRs).  Designers: must be aware of layout effects, analyze-fix variation-aware  methodologies will be required for area-yield tradeoffs, and pre- vs.  post-layout simulation accuracy. The clear implication is that designers  need to change their mindset in adopting a variation-aware design  methodology as a requirement versus a luxury.



The conclusions are obvious. Partnerships between the foundry, EDA  and SemIP providers, and customers will be required to eliminate silicon  waste at 28nm. Partnerships that are friendly and cost effective, with  shared responsibility will result in productive and innovative solutions  to even the most technologically advanced challenges.



 I’ve covered semiconductor process variation in my blogs on TSMC Process Variation, TSMC 40nm Yield Explained, Moore’s Law and 40nm Yield, and most recently Moore’s Law and 28nm Yield. I also work on process variation with the foundries and top semiconductor companies through strategic relationships with Solido Design Automation.  Device sensitivity and process variability is something you will have  to carefully model and design to at 28nm so be sure and look for  variation aware methodologies before you start.
                    [post_title] => TSMC 28nm Design Advisory
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                    [post_content] => This blog is a follow-up to my second most viewed page Moore’s Law and 40nm Yield,  with a strong recommendation of how to design for yield at the advanced  nodes (32/28/22nm) with Verify High-Sigma design technology.







Case in point: Circuit blocks such as complex  standard cells or memory bit cells are repeated thousands or even  millions of times on a die.  For the overall chip to have good yield,  the repeated block must have extremely high yield. Calculating yield in  this context is very important due to increasing process variations at  each new technology node.



 One approach would be to use Monte Carlo sampling.  Unfortunately,  this would require far too many simulations: a circuit with 99.9999%  yield would need, on average, 1 million samples from the true  distribution just to observe a single failure against circuit  specifications.







Compared to a plain Monte  Carlo simulation, Verify High-Sigma design  is orders of magnitude faster for estimating yields of high sigma  circuits.



 With a normal Monte Carlo run, process points are drawn directly  from the process variation distribution.  The problem, as noted  earlier, is that far too many samples are needed in order to get  failures in the design.  Verify High-Sigma Design changes this by  sampling from a different distribution, in which a greater proportion of  samples are failures.  This approach is a variant of importance  sampling. Verify High-Sigma Design estimates the yield of high-sigma  circuits by:



 

[LIST=1]

Creating a new sampling distribution such that a greater proportion of samples are failures. 

Drawing samples from the new distribution, simulating them, and seeing if they meet specifications. 

Estimating yield by mathematically unbiasing the samples, according to importance sampling formula. 

Computing yield accuracy, using a statistical technique called bootstrapping. 


 

To illustrate that Verify High-Sigma (VHS) design returns yield  estimates as accurate as a standard Monte Carlo (MC) run, the following  table compares MC and VHS yield estimation results across 6 different  circuits on moderate-yield circuits (moderate yield so that MC only  needs a moderate number of samples to make a good yield estimate).  For  all 6 cases, the yield estimates for VHS and MC agree because their  yield confidence bounds overlap.



[TABLE]  style="width: 528px"

|- 

|  style="width: 107px" | Circuit

|  style="width: 209px" | MC   Yield (up to 10K samples)

|  style="width: 213px" | VHS   Yield  (250 samples)

|- 

|  style="width: 107px" | Current   mirror

|  style="width: 209px" | 99.580%   (99.433% – 99.689%)

|  style="width: 213px" | 99.709%   (99.569% – 99.808%)

|- 

|  style="width: 107px" | GMC

|  width="209" | 99.836%   (99.519% – 99.944%)

|  width="213" | 99.831%   (99.752% – 99.885%)

|- 

|  width="107" | LNA

|  width="209" | 99.950%   (99.883% – 99.979%)

|  width="213" | 99.888%   (99.760% – 99.9662%)

|- 

|  width="107" | Folded   opamp

|  width="209" | 99.221%   (98.027% – 99.699%)

|  width="213" | 99.490%   (98.639% – 99.370%)

|- 

|  width="107" | CP

|  width="209" | 99.597%   (99.410% – 99.725%)

|  width="213" | 99.522%   (99.291% – 99.682%)

|-











When design teams and managers consider which advanced technologies  to incorporate in their flows, their metrics include quality of results  (QoR), use model, ease of adoption, and cost. Verify High-Sigma design  technology addresses each of these metrics. Designers can improve the  quality of their results by changing their designs using High-Sigma  extracted corners.  They can statistically verify their designs with  SPICE accuracy in a relatively short amount of time.










                    [post_title] => Moore’s Law and 28nm Yield
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                    [post_content] => The foundry business is a tough one. The golden age of semiconductors  is clearly over and what remains is a highly competitive marketplace.  This blog follows up my original TSMC vs Global Foundries which is the single most viewed page on my site.



 Case in point #1: Founded in 2000, SMIC  Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation is billed as one  of the leading semiconductor foundries in the world and the largest and  most advanced foundry in Mainland China. Harvard Business School even  wrote a case study on SMIC’s business model, characterized as a Reverse Build-Operate-Transfer  (BOT). Unfortunately cheap labor does not a foundry make. It takes  highly experienced workers, advanced manufacturing technology, strategic  marketing, and an ultra competitive business model. The semiconductor  foundry business is a marathon, not a sprint. Also see TSMC vs SMIC.



Case in point #2: Chartered Semiconductor was  created in 1987 as one of the world’s dedicated semiconductor foundries.  Chartered Semiconductor continued a string of losing quarters until the  Abu   Dhabi government-owned Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC)  acquisition was passed by investors in a majority vote. Shareholders  bought Chartered shares at the 1999 initial public offering (IPO) price  of S$3.34, the shares were later consolidated at 10 for 1, so they effectively cost S$33.40 each. ATIC paid S$2.68 a share. Chartered had experienced workers and strategic marketing (Common Platform), but lacked the advanced manufacturing technology and competitive business model to be successful.

 2010 brings us a truly global foundry with the ATIC acquisitions of  the manufacturing arm of AMD and Chartered Semiconductor. Global  Foundries now employs 10,000+ people spanning 3 continents and 12  locations with manufacturing operations in Singapore, Dresden, Germany,  and a new leading-edge fab under construction in Saratoga   County, New  York. Global Foundries was founded with $4.5 billion in cash, with  future backing going up to $7B. The New York fab alone will cost an  estimated $4.5B.



GFI now has about $3B in revenues from more than 150 customers that  include many of the world’s top fabless and fab-lite companies, such as  AMD, Qualcomm, STMicro, IBM, and Toshiba.  Process geometries in  production are: .5um, .35um, .25um, .13um, .18um, 90nm, 65nm, and  45/40nm. Process geometries in planning are: 32/28nm and 22/20nm.  Planned capacity is 1.6 million 300mm wafers annually by 2014,  supplemented by 2.2 million 200mm wafers a year. Global Foundries has  highly experienced workers from Chartered Semiconductor and AMD, cutting  edge manufacturing technology from AMD and IBM, strategic marketing  from Common Platform, add in a competitive business model and you will  have the #2 foundry in the world.



 In comparison TSMC has 23,000+ employees and will add 3,000 more in  2010. With $10B+ in annual revenues, TSMC accounts for 50% of the  foundry market revenue and 80% of the profits. TSMC is considered a  first source for semiconductor manufacture, meaning that leading fabless  semiconductor companies work with TSMC first, then replicate  manufacturing at the other foundries for redundancy and cost reductions.  Global Foundries will challenge TSMC for first sourcing with AMD  manufacturing technology and a manufacturing process partnership with  IBM. In fact the first production 28nm wafers by a foundry were  displayed by GFI at the Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas this  month. At least one of the wafers contained AMD/ATI GPUs.



Unfortunately the semiconductor foundry market is a maturing industry  and likely to experience single digit annual growth in coming years. To  diversify, TSMC is investing heavily in solar power and light-emitting  diodes. Both are fast growing markets, have technological overlap with  chip production, and offer far better margins and upside potential.  There is a reason why TSMC is the #1 foundry in the world and I don’t  see that changing anytime soon. But competition breeds innovation so the  foundry business will be much more interesting to watch with GFI  challenging TSMC.
                    [post_title] => TSMC versus Global Foundries Part II
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                    [post_content] => 

Any questions? Christmas was good for electronics and the start of a  prosperous semiconductor New Year. Semiconductor inventories are low and  demand is increasing around the world. Remember, there are  1,338,612,968 people in China that will need mobile internet devices and  the stimulus money is gushing over there. There are a total of  6,795,200,000 people in the world that will need mobile internet devices  and today there are only about 1,000,000,000 smartphones in use.   Considering that you will purchase a new smartphone every 2-3 years, if  you believe 2010 will be a good year for semiconductors, 2011 will be  even better.



As consumer electronic devices go mobile, the lines between  televisions, computers, phones, cameras, video games, browsers and  operating systems will disappear. An electronics bubble has begun and  I’m thrilled to be part of it. The Consumer Electronics Show  (CES) in Las Vegas last week was certainly an excellent start. CES is  an industry recognized barometer as 100,000+ gadget geeks ogle 2,500+  exhibitors with an estimated 20k+ new products.

 What I look for personally is technology that will change my life.  Porsche changed my life in the 70’s, personal computers in the 80’s,  laptops in the 90’s, and the smartphone in the 2000′s. For the next  decade it is too soon to tell but certainly nothing at CES this year  will change my life. Tablet PCs? 3D TV? E-Readers? YAWN. My prediction  is that social media and mobile internet devices will continue to drive  semiconductor revenue in the 2010′s.









Speaking of audio, be sure and check out the Virage/ARC Sonic Focus  demo. Audiofile or not, the sound quality will amaze you. The embedded  processor companies were at CES in force, Nvidia even announced their  own Tegra mobile  embedded processor. But the most impressive demo is the Sonic Focus  audio enrichment software which brings realism back to digitally  compressed audio.  Speaker size and placement will always be a problem  for mobile internet, data will always be compressed, devices will get  thinner and lighter. Using technology created by artisans and  engineers founded in the music industry, Sonic Focus IP technologies  deliver audio performance of today’s consumer devices and enable an  immersive, engaging and compelling experience. Hearing is believing so check it out.



 My award for best gadget goes to Samsung’s 14-inch transparent display.  Not that it would change my life but it definitely has the cool factor!  Also, if you missed the CEO keynotes, as I did, they are all on the CES front page.  Very polished, very Las   Vegas, somewhat informative, definitely worth  streaming on your mobile internet device while you drive or wait in  line for a $5 cup of coffee.
                    [post_title] => 2010 Semiconductor Recovery
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                    [post_content] => 

It was an interesting week in Taiwan for sure. Typhoon Fanapi,  lightning storms, the first 28nm production silicon, foundry re-orgs,  and most importantly Moon Cake pastries! Wednesday was the Chinese Moon (Zhongqiu)Festival,  in Taiwan it is a National holiday commonly celebrated by people  barbecuing various meats outdoors. I just love those moon cakes!



 The biggest news is that Altera demonstrated  production silicon @ TSMC 28nm for the Stratix V FPGA family,  originally unveiled in April of this year. Altera is using the HP (high  performance) version of TSMC 28nm, the same process that the GPU vendors  use, so expect TSMC 28nm production silicon announcements from Nvidia  and AMD/ATI in the next quarter or so. Altera was the first to yield on  TSMC 40nm so they clearly know what they are doing. Xilinx will also use  TSMC 28nm, expect an announcement this week.



Speaking of Nvidia, CEO Jen-Hsun Huang did a candid interview on the technical difficulties of the TSMC 40nm Fermi chip:



 “The parasitic characterization from our foundries and  the tools and reality are simply not related, at all. We found a major  breakdown between the models, the tools, and reality.”



 You can interpret this different ways and the press certainly will.  Enlightened semiconductor people know however that process models evolve  while processes ramp. Early access companies such as Nvidia, Altera,  AMD/ATI, Qualcomm, etc… start designs with pre production process  models. The amount of changes to the models varies but 40nm broke  revision records for sure. I have seen this many times while working  with early access IP companies.



As I blogged in:





Moore's Law and 40nm Yield

TSMC 40nm Yield Explained

EDA Marketing Fail TSMC Process Variation


  Process variation really kicked in at 40nm and those that prepared  yielded, those that didn’t, didn’t, simple as that. The process models  had variation built into them but the main stream EDA tools did not. So  Jen-Hsun was right, there was a major breakdown between the models and  the tools. The reality breakdown however was a design management issue  within Nvidia, which Jen-Hsun acknowledged in the interview.

 The other news from Taiwan is the departures of Fu-Cheih Hsu and S.T.  Juang from the TSMC Design and Technology Platform unit, founders of  the TSMC Open Innovation Platform (OIP). EETimes broke the story on 9/20/2010 with “TSMC’s Design Guru Resigns”.  Fu-Cheih actually left in August (typical mainstream media lag) with S.T. Juang following him in September.



I’ve received a lot of emails on this from vendors and customers  alike. The big question is: will the TSMC OIP initiative continue? The  answer of course is: YES it will. Fu-Cheih’s replacement is Cliff Hou  who is even more qualified to advance the OIP agenda. Cliff is much more  approachable, easy to work with, and has more “hands-on” semiconductor  design enablement experience.



 Cliff joined TSMC in Dec 1997 as a section manager responsible for  process design kit (PDK) and reference flow development from 0.35m to  65nm. In 2007 Cliff became senior director of TSMC in-house IP  development. TSMC IP includes: standard cells, IO’s, embedded memory  compilers, analog blocks, and high-speed interface modules. He has a  B.S. degree from National Chiao-Tung  University, and a Ph.D. from  Syracuse University,  New York. He is also a member of the board of  directors of Global Unichip Corp. Cliff knows semiconductor design enablement, absolutely.
                    [post_title] => TSMC Yields @ 28nm!
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                    [post_content] => By definition:

 Invention is a new composition, device, or process.

 Innovation is a new way of doing something or “new stuff that is made useful”.



Even better:



 Invention is the conversion of cash into ideas.



 Innovation is the conversion of ideas into cash.



 In an industry bound by technical standards and the law of physics,  innovation is the absolute key to semiconductor IP success. One of the  most recent examples of Semiconductor IP innovation is the unified  MIPI/MDDI PHY Solution-

 

Mixel first to market with Unified MIPI/MDDI PHY IP solution



-which leads to the interesting topic of interface standards.

 

Smartphones and the ever growing features list are driving this  technology hard. As smartphones replace your cell phone, camera, GPS,  iPod, game console, video player, etc… an incredible amount of data must  pass between this pocket-sized device and your face.



The first such interface standard was developed by semiconductor giant Qualcomm:



 Mobile Display Digital Interface (MDDI)  is a high-speed digital interface  developed to interconnect the upper  and lower clamshell in a flip phone. The MDDI solution, A Video  Electronics Standards Association (VESA)  approved standard, supports variable data rates of up to 3.2 Gbit/s,  and decreases the number of signals that connect the digital baseband  controller with the LCD display and camera. The integration of MDDI is  said to enable the adoption of advanced features, such as  high-definition (QVGA) LCDs and high-resolution megapixel cameras for  wireless devices, and supports capabilities such as driving an external  display or a video projector from a handset.



 Not to be out done, a consortium of giant semiconductor companies  including Nokia, STMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments developed an  overlapping interface standard:



 The Mobile Industry Processor Interface (MIPI)  Alliance is an open membership organization that includes leading  companies in the mobile industry that share the objective of defining  and promoting open specifications for interfaces inside mobile terminals  MIPI aims to shave complexity and costs while boosting flexibility for  cell phones and the chips that drive them.



No, wait, it gets even more interesting. In regards to smartphone  connectivity there are two standards: Global System for Mobile  Communications (GSM) and Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA).  GSM is a European standard a` la Nokia and STMicro while CDMA is an  American standard a` la Qualcomm. ATT-Wireless and T-Mobile use GSM  while Sprint and Verizon use CDMA, so now you know who’s really to blame  when your phone can’t even get one bar! It stands to reason that GSM  phones use MIPI and CDMA phones use MIDDI. According toiSuppli:



 “The trend is clear. MIPI standard is gaining momentum. In the  last couple of years, the number of MIPI alliance members nearly doubled  to 180 members.” said Randy Lawson, Senior Analyst of iSuppli  Corporation. “As a leader in the embedded IP space for these new high  performance interface standards, Mixel is well positioned to take  advantage of the growing adoption of MIPI support within portable  communications products.” He added.



The Video Electronics Standards Association and Qualcomm may disagree.  The $1B question is: Is there room inside your smartphone for both MIDDI  and MIPI interfaces? The answer of course is yes, especially with a  unified PHY. A much more eloquent explanation can be found in this  excellent article authored by two of my LinkedIn connections Tim Saxe and Ashraf Takla entitled: Can MDDI and MIPI Coexist? A must read for mobile internet device (MID) developers and users.





 lang: en_US




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                    [post_content] => This Blog is a follow-up to my ever popular declaration that EDA is DEAD.  I know comparing Google to Synopsys is apples and oranges, or more  appropriately comparing apples and prunes, but the business model  contrast is relevant. Googled: The End of the World As We Know It is absolutely the best book on Google to date. I also read Planet Google with much less interest.



Chapter #1 of Googled says it all with the visit of traditional media mogul Mel Karmazin  to Google HQ in June of 2003.  As CEO of Viacom, he was by his own  admission paranoid of the competition. When Time Warner and AOL merged  creating the largest media outlet, Karmazin went in search of online  business partners. After spending a day with Google founders Larry Page,  Sergey Brin, and CEO Eric Schmidt, and understanding the Google  engineering approach to advertising, Karmazin uttered the now infamous  phrase” You’re f***ing with the magic!”



At the time, Viacom was responsible for $25 billion worth of  advertising sold the traditional way which is best understood via  Karmazin quotes:



 “I know half of my advertising works, I just don’t know which half.”



 “You buy a commercial in the Super Bowl, you’re going to pay  $2.5M for the spot. I have no idea if it’s going to work, you pay your  money, you take your chances.”



 “I want a sales person in the process, taking that buyer out to drinks, taking an order they shouldn’t have gotten.”

 “

That’s the worst kind of business model in the world (Google’s),  you don’t want people to know what works. When you know what works, or  not, you tend to charge less money than when you have this aura and you  are selling this mystique.”



 “Advertisers don’t know what works and what doesn’t. That’s a great business model.”



Which is a stark contrast to Google’s customer centric advertising  business model. Instead of charging up-front licensing fees with no  accountability for the performance of the product, Google takes a  success based approach with the Adwords and Adsense advertising business model.



 Pay per click (PPC)  is an Internet advertising model used on websites, in which advertisers  pay their host only when their ad is clicked. With search engines,  advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target  market.



 Business in general is highly measurable if you have the right tools.  It’s simple math, if a business invests X dollars in a product, they  will get Y return on that investment, the result being a documented  value proposition for that product. Google has a literal data mine for  advertisers and provides free tools (Google Analytics) to measure success. So yes, the advertising business magic got GOOGLED, by making it more efficient and accountable.



Now contrast that with the Electronic Design Automation Industry and you  will see a similar opportunity. Up front licensing fees will be  replaced by customer centric, success based models with documented value  propositions. Companies that lead this transition will flourish,  followers and/or late adopters will get GOOGLED. Either way EDA as we  once knew it is DEAD.  Believe it.
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                    [post_content] => TSMC Versus Global Foundries and TSMC versus SMIC  clearly indicate that TSMC is the number one foundry in the world and  it will be that way for the foreseeable future. The question now is who  will be number two? Who will seriously challenge TSMC?



 UMC has 10 fabs, 8 in Taiwan, 1 in Japan, and 1 in Singapore. Global Foundries  will have Chartered’s 6 fabs in Singapore, AMD’s fab in Dresden with 1  more fab under construction in Dresden and another under construction in  upstate New York, so 9 fabs in total. UMC just made a key fab  acquisition in China (He Jian Technology Co. Ltd.) which has an interesting story to it.



The Chinese semiconductor total addressable market (TAM)  is a staggering  1.33B+ people with a median age of 34 years. Fueled by  the internet, consumerism is running rampant in China, Western culture  is flooding in, allowing the Chinese people to make technology leaps and  bounds like no others. Unfortunately, the Chinese government funded  semiconductor manufacturing initiatives are struggling due to some  serious miscalculations: underestimating the cost and experience  required to be successful, underestimating the demand curve of the  Chinese consumer, underestimating rapid technological advances, and what  it takes to be a competitive semiconductor manufacturer.



Fortunately the political tensions between Taiwan and China are  easing, so technology has begun to flow freely between the two  countries. The Political Status of Taiwan  Wikipedia page is very detailed in case you are interested. If not,  here it is in a nutshell, recent Taiwan elections tossed out the DPP (Democratic Progressive Party) and brought in a pro China political party KMT  (Chinese Nationalist Party). Also tossed out are the strict Taiwanese  laws designed to prevent flight of technology to mainland China, which  the DPP controlled Taiwan viewed as a potential military enemy.



 This brings us to the UMC acquisition of the Chinese foundry He Jian Technology Co. Ltd.  UMC paid $285m for the 85% it did not already own, which had full new  KMT Taiwan government approval. Unfortunately the previous 15% UMC  purchased  did NOT have DPP Taiwan government approval which resulted in  the resignation of UMC executives.  On January 9[SUP]th[/SUP] 2006, just hours before being indicted in Taiwan for allegedly making illegal investments in He Jian, UMC chairman Robert Tsao and vice chairman John Hsuan  resigned their posts. If convicted, the executives may face jail time  of between six months and five years, which is highly unlikely under the  new Taiwan KMT government.



TSMC already has manufacturing in China, UMC now has manufacturing in  China. TSMC and UMC are both process independent, meaning that they own  all of their process technologies outright. SMIC is the largest foundry  in China but does not own the process technologies, earlier versions  were derivatives of TSMC processes, newer versions will be licensed from  IBM. Global Foundries and Chartered Semiconductor do not have China  based manufacturing (yet) and also license newer process technologies  from IBM.



 If you believe, like I do, that manufacturing process technology  differentiation is key to semiconductor foundry success. If you believe,  as most people do, that the emerging Chinese consumer electronics  market is key to semiconductor industry growth, UMC will continue to be a  strong #2 contender. Otherwise competitive pricing will rule, generic  semiconductor manufacturing processes will dominate, and the foundry  consolidation cycle will repeat itself indefinitely.
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            [post_content] => One may ask why in the semiconductor world would GlobalFoundries(GFI) exhibit at the Mobile World Congress  last week, the world’s largest exhibition for the mobile industry. And  not just exhibit, GFI turned out at en force with meeting rooms and  bright orange signage declaring a mobile revolution. Why? Here is your  first clue:



2010 will usher in a new generation of consumer electronic devices.  These devices will enable mobile internet access to an ever increasing  amount of high speed data, real time audio, high definition video, and  mobile television. Driven by smartphones, mobile internet devices are in  hyper growth mode and represent the single largest consumer electronics  market segment known to man. Remember, there are 6,795,200,000 people  in the world that will need mobile internet devices. There are only  about 1,000,000,000 smartphones in use today and they have a much  shorter life cycle than a radio, TV, desktop, or even a laptop personal  computer.



As consumer electronic devices go mobile, the lines between  televisions, computers, phones, cameras, browsers and operating systems  disappear. Nowhere is this more illustrated than in the rapid rise of  mobile consumption of the internet. According to the Quantcast 2009 Mobile Trends Report,  the North American mobile web share is up 110% in 2009 (Dec ’09 vs. Dec  ’08) and the global mobile web consumption share up 148% in 2009.  Beginning with the iPhone in 2007, the Android in 2009, and the tablet  PC onslaught in 2010, it’s a safe bet that the number of mobile internet  devices will grow in numbers exponentially in the coming decade. The  next question is: How can we simplify the design and implementation of  mobile internet device hardware and software?



 The semiconductor industry has done an excellent job with technical  standards in this regard. Inside mobile internet devices (smartphones)  MIPI Specifications establish standards for hardware and software  interfaces which allow consumers a choice of vendors for leading edge  products. The MIPIAlliance,  established in July 2003 by ARM, Nokia, STMicroelectronics and Texas  Instruments, is an open membership organization for leading companies in  the mobile industry that promote open interface specifications. The  IEEE Industry Standards and Technology Organization (ISTO) administers  the Alliance.



Before MIPI was established designers faced multiple competing and  proprietary physical-layer interfaces for any given system function.  MIPI has reduced that to two-to-four physical-layer standards, with  multiple protocols layered on top to cover various functions, all designed to last for multiple generations. A standards organization  that actually works, how refreshing!



 A next generation MIPI physical layer, the M-PHY,  was rolled out at MWC last week.  The M comes from the Roman numeral 1000 to signify the 1000M-5GBit  communication speed. The M-PHY is a serial interface technology with  high bandwidth capabilities, targeted for mobile applications designed  for good power efficiency and for a wide range of application protocols.  The M-PHY provides higher bandwidths and uses fewer signal wires than  the current D-PHY technology that it replaces.



In the end, the central communications module will not necessarily be  large but will include the user’s basic identity and some communications  capabilities. The more challenging aspects will be supplying  high-definition streaming video, loading of gigabyte wide movies (from  the Internet) and “everyone, everywhere, seamless wireless connection to  surrounding devices and services”. These future use model requirements  point directly to the MIPI M-PHY.
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Posted on February 22, 2010June 14, 2019

GlobalFoundries and the Mobile World Congress

GlobalFoundries and the Mobile World Congress
by Daniel Nenni on 02-22-2010 at 12:30 am

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One may ask why in the semiconductor world would GlobalFoundries(GFI) exhibit at the Mobile World Congress last week, the world’s largest exhibition for the mobile industry. And not just exhibit, GFI turned out at en force with meeting rooms and bright orange signage declaring a mobile revolution. Why? Here is your first clue:… Read More

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Posted on February 9, 2010June 14, 2019

The GlobalFoundries Enigma

The GlobalFoundries Enigma
by Daniel Nenni on 02-09-2010 at 9:31 pm

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Categories: Foundries, GLOBALFOUNDRIES

When AMD sought to shed its costly manufacturing unit Ibrahim Ajami saw an interesting opportunity, one that will eventually bring semiconductor manufacturing to Abu Dhabi. Let’s start with the recent interview published with Ajami, the 34 year old Chief Executive Officer of Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC),… Read More

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Posted on January 31, 2010June 14, 2019

TSMC 28nm Design Advisory

TSMC 28nm Design Advisory
by Daniel Nenni on 01-31-2010 at 11:49 pm

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Transistors may be shrinking but atoms are not. Transistors are now just a handful of atoms so it matters even more when a couple of those atoms are out of place. Process variations, whether they are statistical, proximity, or otherwise, have got to be thoughtfully accounted for if we are to achieve the low-power, high-performance,… Read More

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Posted on January 24, 2010June 14, 2019

Moore’s Law and 28nm Yield

Moore’s Law and 28nm Yield
by Daniel Nenni on 01-24-2010 at 10:44 pm

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This blog is a follow-up to my second most viewed page Moore’s Law and 40nm Yield, with a strong recommendation of how to design for yield at the advanced nodes (32/28/22nm) with Verify High-Sigma design technology.

Case in point: Circuit blocks such as complex standard cells or memory bit cells are repeated thousands or even millions… Read More

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Posted on January 17, 2010June 14, 2019

TSMC versus Global Foundries Part II

TSMC versus Global Foundries Part II
by Daniel Nenni on 01-17-2010 at 11:52 am

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The foundry business is a tough one. The golden age of semiconductors is clearly over and what remains is a highly competitive marketplace. This blog follows up my original TSMC vs Global Foundries which is the single most viewed page on my site.

Case in point #1: Founded in 2000, SMIC Semiconductor Manufacturing International … Read More

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Posted on December 31, 2009June 14, 2019

2010 Semiconductor Recovery

2010 Semiconductor Recovery
by Daniel Nenni on 12-31-2009 at 8:00 pm

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Any questions? Christmas was good for electronics and the start of a prosperous semiconductor New Year. Semiconductor inventories are low and demand is increasing around the world. Remember, there are 1,338,612,968 people in China that will need mobile internet devices and the stimulus money is gushing over there. There are… Read More

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Posted on December 31, 2009June 14, 2019

TSMC Yields @ 28nm!

TSMC Yields @ 28nm!
by Daniel Nenni on 12-31-2009 at 8:00 pm

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It was an interesting week in Taiwan for sure. Typhoon Fanapi, lightning storms, the first 28nm production silicon, foundry re-orgs, and most importantly Moon Cake pastries! Wednesday was the Chinese Moon (Zhongqiu)Festival, in Taiwan it is a National holiday commonly celebrated by people barbecuing various meats outdoors.… Read More

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Posted on December 14, 2009June 14, 2019

Semiconductor IP Innovation

Semiconductor IP Innovation
by Daniel Nenni on 12-14-2009 at 11:23 pm

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By definition:
Invention is a new composition, device, or process.
Innovation is a new way of doing something or “new stuff that is made useful”.

Even better:

Invention is the conversion of cash into ideas.

Innovation is the conversion of ideas into cash.

In an industry bound by technical standards and the law of physics, innovation… Read More

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Posted on December 7, 2009June 14, 2019

Google versus Synopsys (EDA)

Google versus Synopsys (EDA)
by Daniel Nenni on 12-07-2009 at 11:04 pm

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This Blog is a follow-up to my ever popular declaration that EDA is DEAD. I know comparing Google to Synopsys is apples and oranges, or more appropriately comparing apples and prunes, but the business model contrast is relevant. Googled: The End of the World As We Know It is absolutely the best book on Google to date. I also read Planet… Read More

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Posted on November 11, 2009June 14, 2019

UMC vs GLOBALFOUNDRIES

UMC vs GLOBALFOUNDRIES
by Daniel Nenni on 11-11-2009 at 11:31 pm

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TSMC Versus Global Foundries and TSMC versus SMIC clearly indicate that TSMC is the number one foundry in the world and it will be that way for the foreseeable future. The question now is who will be number two? Who will seriously challenge TSMC?

UMC has 10 fabs, 8 in Taiwan, 1 in Japan, and 1 in Singapore. Global Foundries will have Chartered’s… Read More

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