I am at ARM TechCon today. One interesting presentation was made jointly between Samsung, Cadence and ARM themselves about developing physical libraries (ARM), a tool flow (Cadence) and test chips (Samsung). It was titled Samsung ARM and Cadence collaborate on the silicon-proven world first 14-nm FinFET Cortex-A7 ARM CPU and… Read More
The Alternative to FinFET: FD-SOI
Everywhere you turn these days you find FinFETs. Intel has had them since 22nm (they use the word Tri-gate but it is the same as what the world calls FinFET) and TSMC will have them at 16nm. So why FinFET? And is there an alternative?
The reason that regular bulk planar transistors have run out of steam is that the channel area underneath… Read More
Pigs Fly. Altera Goes with ARM on Intel 14nm
Altera announced in February that they would be using Intel as a foundry at 14nm. Historically they have used TSMC. Then in June they announced the Stratix 10 family of FPGAs that they would build on the Intel process. At the Globalpress summit in May I asked Vince Hu about their processor strategy. Here is what I wrote about itat the… Read More
TSMC Continues To Fire On All Cylinders
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation is the world’s leading semiconductor foundry by revenue and, by extension, profitability. While I am deeply saddened that current CEO Morris Chang will be retiring (again) shortly, I am hopeful that his successor will be able to continue the legacy of foundry industry leadership… Read More
Yes, Intel 14nm Really is Delayed…And They Lost $600M on Mobile
Intel server profits are growing, which isn’t a big suprise. But mobile losses are high. Although the amount lost by the Other Intel Architecture Group had a loss of $606M, that is actually down slightly from Q2 but up a lot from last year when they lost “only” $235M. This group includes Atom, the Infineon Wireless… Read More
The TSMC CEO Succession Plan!
The foundry executive shuffle continues at Samsung, GlobalFoundries, and TSMC. Some expected, some not, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. As I have mentioned before I have no inside knowledge as to who will be named as Dr. Morris Chang’s successor but here is my candidate for the next TSMC CEO.
First, the executive… Read More
What do Intel and Congress Have in Common?
The war of words continues, when will it end? I consider myself a reasonably educated and informed person, certainly above average by U.S. standards, yet I have no idea why the U.S. Government continues to write checks they cannot cash and I don’t know who to believe in the resulting media blasts. I truly miss the days of Ross… Read More
TSMC OIP 2013 Trip Report!
The 5[SUP]th[/SUP] annual TSMC OIP Forum was last week and thankfully there were no surprises with the exception of how many people asked me who I think will be the next TSMC CEO. Certainly I have no idea but I would be happy to use my incredible powers of deductive reasoning to determine who it will be.
The TSMC Open Innovation Platform®… Read More
TSMC Open Innovation Platform Forum, October 1st
One of TSMC’s two big Silicon Valley events each year is the Open Innovation Platform (OIP) Forum. This year it is on Tuesday October 1st. It is in the San Jose Convention Center and starts at 9am (registration opens at 8am). Pre-registration to attend is now open here or click on the image to the right.
From 9.10 to 9.40 is the … Read More
Hybrid Memory Cube Shipping
Today Micron announced that it is shipping 2GB Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC) samples. The HMC is actually 5 stacked die connected with through-silicon-vias (TSVs). The bottom die is a logic chip and is actually manufactured for Micron in an IBM 32nm process (and doesn’t have any TSVs). The other 4 die are 4Gb DRAM die manufactured… Read More
Flynn Was Right: How a 2003 Warning Foretold Today’s Architectural Pivot