The first mention of FinFETs appeared on SemiWiki after the ISSCC conference in 2011. Dr. Jack Sun, TSMC Vice President of R&D and Chief Technology Officer, spoke about the power crisis the semiconductor industry is facing and FinFETs was one of the promising technologies that could help us. Since then, we have posted 100+ … Read More
TSMC to Talk About 10nm at Symposium Next Week
Given the compressed time between 20nm and 16nm, twelve months versus the industry average twenty four months, it is time to start talking about 10nm, absolutely. Next Tuesday is the 19th annual TSMC Technology Symposium keynoted of course by the Chairman, Dr. Morris Chang.
Join the 2013 TSMC Technology Symposium. Get the latest… Read More
TSMC Tapes Out First 64-bit ARM
TSMC announced today that together with ARM they have taped out the first ARM Cortex-A57 64-bit processor on TSMC’s 16nm FinFET technology. The two companies cooperated in the implementation from RTL to tape-out over six months using ARM physical IP, TSMC memory macros, and a commercial 16nm FinFET tool chain enabled by… Read More
GF, Analog and Singapore
The world is analog and despite enormous SoCs in the most leading-edge process node being the most glamorous segment of the semiconductor industry, it turns out that one of the fastest growing segments is actually analog and power chips in older process technologies. Overall, according to Semico, analog and power ICs, including… Read More
Samsung 28nm Still Does Not Yield?
As if Samsung didn’t have enough to worry about with their new neighbor to the North (Korea) declaring war, Samsung 28nm is still NOT yielding. In my previous blog “Can Samsung Deliver as Promised?” I wondered what will power the new Galaxy S4 phones that Samsung has been aggressively marketing. You would think it would be a 28nm version… Read More
Mentor at TSMC Technology Symposium
TSMC will host their annual technology symposium at several locations in the U.S. on April 9th in San Jose, April 16th in Austin, and April 23rd in Boston. TSMC will discuss the market outlook, design enablement, and technology for high-speed computing, mobile communications, connectivity and storage, CIS, embedded flash, … Read More
TSMC on Collaboration: JIT Ecosystem Development
Cliff Hou of TSMC gave the keynote today at SNUG on Collaborate to Innovate: a Foundry’s Perspective. Starting around 45nm the way that a foundry has to work with its ecosystem fundamentally changed. Up until then, each process generation was similar enough to the previous one, apart obviously from size, that it could be … Read More
Apple and Google Turn Towards Enterprise
As a calm settles over the mobile market, post the overhyped Samsung Galaxy S4 launch, many analysts are at a loss as to describe a way forward with Apple that is understandable and positive. The dozens of reports that focus on the summer launches of the iPhone 5S and cheap iphone miss the side of the barn on the true strategy being put… Read More
Can Samsung Deliver As Promised?
Samsung’s aggressive marketing is starting to hit the fabless semiconductor ecosystem so we had all better be prepared. Samsung’s 2012 marketing budget exceeded $400M which probably beats the marketing budget of the entire fabless ecosystem! The question is, will the fabless semiconductor industry be easily swayed by Samsung’s… Read More
Unlocking the Full Potential of Soft IP
EDA vendors, IP suppliers and Foundries provide an eco-system for SoC designers to use in getting their new electronic products to market quicker and at a lower cost. An example of this eco-system are three companies (TSMC, Atrenta, Sonics) that teamed up to produce a webinar earlier in March called: Unlocking the Full Potential… Read More
TSMC OIP Ecosystem Forum Preview 2024