It’s time to break with conventional thinking. For decades, the measure of success for semiconductors has been OEM design wins. Most consumers haven’t known, or cared, about what is inside their electronic gadgets, as long as they work. That may be about to change, because a new intermediary is finding its voice – and being… Read More
What is Authentication and Why Should You Care?
Authentication means making sure that something is real, just like it sounds.In the real world, authentication has many uses. One of the most recognizable is anti-counterfeiting, which means validating the authenticity of a removable, replaceable, or consumable client. Examples include system accessories, electronic … Read More
TSMC (TSM) is Having Another SoC Year!
TSMC’s stock has more than doubled in the last five years. Coincidentally that is when I started blogging about TSMC. QCOM stock has experienced a similar doubling during this time as have other TSMC customers. The question is: What is next for TSMC? As I have mentioned before, you would be better off taking stock tips from your dog… Read More
SEMICON West 2014 Event Calendar
SEMICON West is the flagship annual event for the global microelectronics industry. It is the premier event for the display of new products and technologies for microelectronics design and manufacturing, featuring technologies from across the microelectronics supply chain, from electronic design automation, to device … Read More
GDS II Online for TSMC
I just watched an interesting video of a demonstration at DAC of the eSilicon GDS II online quote for TSMC. Actually, it wasn’t so much as a demonstration as an interactive use of the quote tool using data supplied by a member of the audience.
The quote system works for TSMC processes from 28nm up to 350nm. The design the audience… Read More
Atmel SMART
I talked last week about the internet of things (IoT) panel I attended at DAC. One thing that is clear is that IoT is not really a market on its own, but nonetheless the fact that billions of edge-node devices are going to be connected to the internet is a real trend. One company that takes IoT very seriously is Atmel, since they have an … Read More
A Re-look at TI’s Businesses, Strategies & Future
In recent days I’ve seen several long discussions about Texas Instrumentslosing its grip in semiconductor industry when it came out of a business it was strong in, i.e. wireless business. It seems the semiconductor community has not digested the fact that TI, very rightly, came out of the OMAP business at the right time. The smartphone… Read More
TSMC vs Intel vs Samsung FinFETs
By definition the pure-play foundry business model separates the design and manufacturing of a semiconductor device. TSMC was the first dedicated (pure-play) foundry which enabled the incredible fabless semiconductor ecosystem we have today. If not for the fabless business model we would not have the supercomputer class … Read More
Impressions of #51DAC
So what was the overall theme of DAC this year? Usually there seems to be some trend that is hot. A few years ago it was power, then more recently all the stuff associated with 20nm and 16nm such as FinFETs and double patterning. Those things are still around, of course, and there are new generations of tools.
One theme is that more design… Read More
TSMC: Keynote, OIP, 20nm, 16nm, panels, and more #51DAC
What is TSMC doing at DAC?
The biggest event is presumably Cliff Hou’s DAC keynote on Monday at 3.25pm Industry Opportunities in the Sub-10nm Era. And he also wrote the foreword to Fabless, the book that Dan Nenni and I have written and where you can get a signed copy on Tuesday evening at the reception.
There is an IP workshop … Read More
Flynn Was Right: How a 2003 Warning Foretold Today’s Architectural Pivot