Back in May, William Holt, EVP of technology and manufacturing at Intel gave a presentation to analysts entitled Advancing Moore’s Law, Imperatives and Opportunity. A pdf of the presentation is available here. I just saw it for the first time today and I’m not sure how to get my head around it. It starts off with a lot … Read More
TSMC is a more profitable semiconductor company than Intel
There is an interesting article on Seeking Alpha, “A More Profitable Semiconductor Company Than Intel”, and for a change the author does not PRETEND to know semiconductor technology. Refreshing! Personally I think the stock market is a racket where insiders profit at the expense of the masses. But if you are going to gamble you … Read More
Intel 14nm Delayed?
One of the more interesting pieces of information I overheard at SEMICON West earlier this month was that Intel 14nm was delayed. This rumor came from the semiconductor equipment manufacturers and they would know. What I was told is that the Intel 14nm process has not left the OR development facility to be replicated in the OR and … Read More
TSMC Q2 Results: Up 17%; 20nm and 16nm on track
TSMC announced their Q2 financial results yesterday. Revenue was $5.2B (at the high end of guidance) with net income of $1.6B. This is up 17.4% on Q1 and up 21.6% year-to-year. Gross margin is up too, at 49% which is up 3.2 points on Q1 and 0.3 points year-to-year. As usual the financial results are not directly that interesting since… Read More
A Brief History of VLSI Technology, part 2
VLSI’s business grew healthily but it never threw off enough cash to fund all the investment required for process technology development and capital investment for a next generation fab. They made a strategic partnership with Hitachi covering both 1um process technology and a significant investment, which meant that … Read More
Intel’s Q2 Conference Call
Yesterday was Intel’s Q2 conference call. I think that there are some interesting little pieces of information. The financials were what analysts expected although they did take down their guidance for the rest of the year. But that is never the interesting point of Intel conference calls (they almost always hit guidance).… Read More
Ajit’s Semicon Keynote
The opening keynote to this year’s Semicon West was by Ajit Manocha, the CEO of GlobalFoundries entitled Foundry-driven Innovation In the Mobility Era. It is no secret that mobile applications, especially smartphones and tablets, are the most significant semiconductor market today. It is not just large, it is disruptive.… Read More
Where will Apple Manufacture the next iPhone Brain?
There still seems to be a lot of confusion here so let me set the record straight. In regards to the Apple Ax SoC, the Apple iPhone 5s will have Samsung 28nm Silicon. Samsung 28nm is still ramping but Samsung can make enough wafers and eat the yield issues no problem. The Apple iPhone 6 in 2014 will have TSMC 20nm as I reported previously.… Read More
Intel Benchmark Hoax!
To be fair, cheating on CPU benchmarks is not new, so if you haven’t followed the computer industry for the past 30 years you might be surprised by Intel cheating, but I’m certainly not. Back in the day I worked for Data General and we “creatively” benchmarked against the Digital Equipment VAX all day long. There are different types… Read More
The Semiconductor IDM Business Model is Dead!
While this was not specifically stated, it was certainly implied during the sessions I attended at SEMICON West this week: The traditional semiconductor business model (IDM) is coming to an end. Starting with the keynote: Foundry-driven Innovation in the Mobility Era,cost was the common theme in any discussion involving mobile… Read More


The Risk of Not Optimizing Clock Power