EDA needs more CEOs like Amit Gupta. Solido, which is now profitable, is his second AMS EDA company. The first, Analog Design Automation (ADA), was purchased by Synopsys for a hefty multiplier. Prior to becoming an EDA entrepreneur, Amit was product manager for the wireless group at Nortel and a hardware engineer for the RF communications… Read More
TSMC ♥ Solido
Process variation has been a top trending term since SemiWiki began as a result of the articles, wikis, and white papers posted on the Solido landing page. Last year Solido and TSMC did a webinar together, an article in EETimes, and Solido released a book on the subject. Process variation is a challenge today at 28nm and it gets worse… Read More
Morris Chang on Altera and Intel
If you want to know why I have written so much about TSMC in the past five years here it is: TSMC executives are approachable, personable, answer questions straight on, and have yet to lead me astray. If you want an example of this read the Chairman’s comments on the TSMC Q1 2013 earnings call transcript.
“On 16-nanometer FinFET, we … Read More
Cadence ♥ TSMC
TSMC has been investing in the fabless semiconductor ecosystem for 25+ years and that is why they are the #1 foundry and lead this industry (my opinion). I’m a big fan of joint webinars. Not only is it collaboration open to the masses, it is a close collaboration between the two sponsoring companies. Having worked on the TSMC… Read More
Altera, Intel, TSMC, ARM: the Plot Thickens
Vince Hu of Altera presented us her at the GlobalPress Electronics Summit on their process roadmap. Since just a month or two ago they announced that Intel would be their foundry at 14nm, everyone wanted to get a better idea of what was really going on.
At 28nm, Altera use 2 processes, TSMC 28HP (for high end Stratix-5 devices) and TSMC… Read More
Two New TSMC-Cadence Webinars for Advanced Node Design
Foundries and EDA vendors are cooperating at increasing levels of technical intimacy as we head to the 20nm and lower nodes. Cadence has a strong position in the EDA tools used for IC design and layout of custom and AMS (Analog Mixed-Signal) designs. They have created a series of webinars to highlight the design challenges and new… Read More
Adam Osborne Pays Wintel a Visit
The news this week that PC sales dropped by double digit percentages and to a level not seen since 2006 sent shudders down the halls of OEMs and chip suppliers. Are we entering a final death spiral as opposed to the gradual decline that most expected? Perhaps there is another explanation. From a distance, it appears that the mobile … Read More
TSMC Responds to Samsung!
This was the 19[SUP]th[/SUP] annual TSMC Symposium and by far the best I have attended. Finally tired of the misinformation that plagues our industry, TSMC set the record straight with wafer and silicon correlated data. TSMC shipped more than 88 MILLION logic wafers in 2012, more than any other semiconductor company, that gives… Read More
GlobalFoundries in Singapore
I hosted a webinar today for GlobalFoundries. Yes, I know that today was TSMC’s Technology Symposium, we weren’t that smart when we picked the date. It was basically a “fireside chat” with me as the moderator asking the questions and Paul Colestock and Aabid Husain as my guests. We actually did it at Cadence… Read More
How Long Does it Take to Go From a Muddy Field to Full 28nm Capacity?
TSMC has a lot of capacity. Not just that, it has a lot more under construction. It currently has 3 300mm Gigafabs, fabs 12,14 and 15 (there doesn’t seem to be a 13). This morning, Dr Wang, who is TSMC’s VP of 300mm operations told us about the expansion plans. Currently fab 15 phase 3 and 4, and fab 12 phase 3 are to be ramped… Read More
Bluetooth 6.0 Channel Sounding is Here