Ceva webinar AI Arch SEMI 800X100 250625

ARM and TSMC Beat Revenue Expectations Signaling Strength in a Weakening Economy?

ARM and TSMC Beat Revenue Expectations Signaling Strength in a Weakening Economy?
by Daniel Nenni on 07-25-2012 at 11:00 am

Fabless semiconductor ecosystem bellwethers, TSMC and ARM, buck the trend reporting solid second quarters. Following “TSMC Reports Second Highest Quarterly Profit“, the British ARM Holdings “Outperforms Industry to Beat Forecasts“. Clearly the tabloid press death of the fabless ecosystem claims… Read More


MemCon Returns

MemCon Returns
by Paul McLellan on 07-25-2012 at 9:44 am

Back before Denali was acquired by Cadence they used to run an annual conference called MemCon. Since Denali was the Switzerland of EDA, friend of everyone and enemy of none, there would be presentations from other memory IP companies and from major EDA companies. For example, in 2010, Bruggeman, then CMO of Cadence, gave the opening… Read More


The Future of Lithography and the End of Moore’s Law!

The Future of Lithography and the End of Moore’s Law!
by Paul McLellan on 07-24-2012 at 10:35 pm

Thisblog with a chart showing that the cost of given functionality on a chip is no longer going to fall is, I think, one of the most-read I’ve ever written on Semiwiki. It is actually derived from data nVidia presented about TSMC, so at some level perhaps it is two alpha males circling each other preparing for a fight. Or, in this… Read More


The Total ARM Platform!

The Total ARM Platform!
by Daniel Nenni on 07-24-2012 at 7:30 pm

In the embedded world that drives much of today’s ASIC innovation, there is no bigger name than ARM. Not to enter the ARM vs. Intel fray, but it’s no exaggeration to say that ARM’s impact on SoCs is as great as Intel’s on the PC. Few cutting edge SoCs are coming to market that do not include some sort of embedded… Read More


Media Tablet Strategy from Google and Microsoft: illusion about the effective protection of NDAs…

Media Tablet Strategy from Google and Microsoft: illusion about the effective protection of NDAs…
by Eric Esteve on 07-24-2012 at 10:26 am

Extracted from an interesting article from Jeff Orr from ABI research, “We have all heard about leaked company roadmaps that detail a vendor’s product or service plans for the next year or two. Typically, putting one’s plans down in advance of public announcement has two intended audiences: customers who rely on Read More


How Many Licenses Do You Buy?

How Many Licenses Do You Buy?
by Paul McLellan on 07-23-2012 at 6:16 pm

An informal survey of RTDA customers reveals that larger companies tend to buy licenses based on peak usage while smaller companies do not have that luxury and have to settle for fewer licenses than they would ideally have and optimize the mix of licenses that they can afford given their budget. Larger companies get better prices… Read More


Libraries Make a Power Difference in SoC Design

Libraries Make a Power Difference in SoC Design
by Daniel Payne on 07-23-2012 at 4:37 pm

ken brock

At Intel we used to hand-craft every single transistor size to eek out the ultimate in IC performance for DRAM and graphic chips. Today, there are many libraries that you can choose from for an SoC design in order to reach your power, speed and area trade-offs. I’m going to attend a Synopsys webinar on August 2nd to learn more Read More


EUV: No Pellicle

EUV: No Pellicle
by Paul McLellan on 07-22-2012 at 10:00 pm

There’s a dirty secret problem about EUV that people don’t seem to to be talking about. There’s no pellicle on a EUV mask. OK, probably you have no idea what that means, a lot of jargon words, nor why it would be important, but it seems to me it could be the killer problem for EUV.

In refractive masks, you print a pattern… Read More


Re-defining Semiconductor Collaboration!

Re-defining Semiconductor Collaboration!
by Daniel Nenni on 07-22-2012 at 7:00 pm

GlobalFoundries did a nice response to my “How has 20nm Changed the Semiconductor Ecosystem?” and redefined the word collaboration. Our industry is plagued with sound bites and acronyms so let us agree on a semiconductor ecosystem definition of collaboration.

Mojy Chianis senior vice president, design enablement at… Read More


Directed Self Assembly

Directed Self Assembly
by Paul McLellan on 07-19-2012 at 9:00 pm

At Semicon, Ben Rathsack of Tokyo Electron America talked about directed self assembly (DSA) at the standing-room only lithography morning. So what is it? Self assembly involves taking two monomers that don’t mix and letting them polymerise (so like styrene forming polystyrene). Since they won’t mix they will … Read More