The following is a brief summery of an article co authored by SemiWiki member Apek Mulay.It is definitely worth a read when you get a chance:
Globalization of Semiconductor Manufacturing Industry: From Deception to Reformation Towards Recovering US Macro-Micro Economic Losses
During the recent recession (since 2007), many… Read More




A Brief History of VLSI Technology, part 1
VLSI Technology was founded in 1981 by Dan Floyd, Jack Baletto and Gunnar Wetlesen who had worked together at Signetics. The initial investments were by Hambrecht and Quist, a cross between a VC and a bank, and by Evans and Sutherland, the simulation/graphics company.
The fourth person to join the company was Doug Fairbairn. He … Read More
Smartphone Shipment Explosion Sustained by $50-$75 devices, Mostly in China
Until recently, talking about smartphone incredible shipment growth was understood as shipments of A5 iPhone or Galaxy Note, and this was true. Devices priced at $500 or more are shipping like baguette in Paris, but this fact is only true in Europe, Korea, Japan or USA. Does that means that people living populated countries like… Read More
When Atrenta celebrates with STM and CEA-Leti in Grenoble
Grenoble is French city well-known within the Semiconductor industry to be one of the last location counting wafer fabs, not only in France but in fact in Europe. Back in the 70’s, under French government impulse, through the Commisariat à l’Energie Atomique (CEA) and the LETI subsidiary in charge of Electronic related research,… Read More
Workload-tuned cores seeing greater interest
Is it possible to design a processor with very high performance and low power consumption? To answer that, embedded illuminati are now focusing on designs tuned to specific workloads – creating a tailored processor that does a few things very efficiently, with nothing extra.… Read More
The Future of Mobile Semiconductor Devices
During my trip to Taiwan I hopped on over to Hong Kong for a speaking engagement. One of the things I do as an “Internationally Recognized Industry Expert” is help the financial world understand the semiconductor landscape as it pertains to SoCs and mobile devices. Usually I do this over the phone or in writing but I prefer to do it in… Read More
Today’s Program is Brought To You by the Letter A
What do nVidia, Freescale and GlobalFoundries have in common? They are semiconductor companies? They are ARM licensees? They are doing 28nm chips? They all have the letter ‘a’ in their names?
All true, but that’s not what I was thinking of. But the letter ‘a’ is a clue since Apache (and Ansys) begin with ‘a’. All three companies have… Read More
SoC Constraints, Design & Verification at DAC
I hadn’t followed EDA start-up company Ausdiamuch before, so at DAC I met with Sam Appleton, CEO to find out what they are all about.
Sanjay Lall, Sam Appleton – Ausdia
… Read More
Design Test and Regression Management of SoCs
Eric Peersfounded Missing Link tools in 2008 and his company was acquiredby Methodics in 2012, so I met with him at DAC to understand how their EDA tools for Design, Test and Regression Management are used in an SoC design.
Eric Peers, Methodics… Read More
Speeding Design Closure at DAC
At DAC you can measure buzz by how many people are crowded into your booth. I saw a crowd at the Oasys booth, so stopped to take in their 10 minute overview presentation. Here’s what I learned.… Read More
TSMC N3 Process Technology Wiki