Mobile World Congress 2014 has already showcased two very different mobile SoC machines in high gear. After watching one big US moment and Canada otherwise dominate everything involving ice and a stick at the Sochi Olympics, I’m reaching into the Wayne Gretzky pile of quotes for a metaphor to examine Intel’s move – and why they are… Read More
ISSCC: Analog-Digital Converter in FD-SOI
The International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) was last week in San Francisco. Stéphane Le Tual, Pratap Narayan Singh, Christophe Curis, Pierre Dautriche, all from STMicroelectronics presented a paper on A 20GHz-BW 6b 10GS/s 32mW Time-Interleaved SAR ADC with Master T&H in 28nm UTBB FDSOI Technology… Read More
Brian Krzanich Does Reddit AMA
Do you know what an AMA is on Reddit? It stands for “ask me anything”. A person, often a famous person like Bill Gates (last week) but sometimes just someone who does an interesting job (like astronaut) or was in an interesting situation (like the hijack from Ethiopia last week).
Today, it is someone who argualble is all… Read More
Dr. Cliff Hou, TSMC VP of R&D, Keynote
This will be my 30[SUP]th[/SUP] Design Automation Conference. I know this because my first DAC was the same year I got married and forgetting how many years you have been married can cost you half your stuff. I have known Cliff Hou for half of that time and he has proven to be one of the most humble and honorable men I have worked with, definitely.… Read More
Intel 14nm Delayed Again?
From the sources in which I confirmed the last Intel 14nm delay, I just confirmed another. Intel 14nm is STILL having yield problems. Remember Intel bragging about 14nm being a full node and deriding TSMC because 16nm is “just” 20nm with FinFETs added? Judging by the graph, clearly FinFETs are not the problem here. … Read More
Designing an SoC with 16nm FinFET
IC designers contemplating the transition to 16nm FinFET technology for their next SoC need to be informed about design flow and IP changes, so TSMC teamed up with Cadence Design Systems today to present a webinar on that topic. I attended the webinar and will summarize my findings.
Shown below is a 3D layout concept of an ideal FinFET… Read More
A Brief History of Atmel
Atmel was founded in 1984. The name stands for “advanced technology for memory and logic” although initially the focus was on memory. George Perlegos the founder had worked in the memory group of Intel back when Intel was a memory company and not a microprocessor company although that didn’t stop Intel suing… Read More
If you still think that FDSOI is for low performance IC only…
…then you should read about this benchmark result showing how digital power varies with process corners, for high-speed data networking chip, not exactly the type of IC targeting mid-performance mobile application. Before discussing the benchmark results, we need to have some background about this kind of ASIC chip. Such a … Read More
TI – The Initial Innovator of Semiconductor ICs
[TI’s China Foundry acquired from SMIC]
During my engineering graduation, electronic design courses and mini-projects, the ICs I used to come across were SN 7400 series from Texas Instrumentsthat covered a large range of devices from basic gates and flip-flops to counters, registers, memories, ALUs, system controllers, and… Read More
Has LinkedIn Jumped the Shark?
LinkedIn is without a doubt the number one social network for semiconductor professionals. Based on my experience, the big LinkedIn boom came with the massive unemployment during the Great Recession of 2009. In my estimate, unemployment was 12%+ at the high point in Silicon Valley and resumes clogged the internet with LinkedIn… Read More
Rapidus, IBM, and the Billion-Dollar Silicon Sovereignty Bet