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Intel Quarterly Report: Needs to Do Better

Intel Quarterly Report: Needs to Do Better
by Paul McLellan on 10-19-2012 at 11:51 am

Intel announced its quarterly results a couple of days ago. They had previously downgraded 3rd quarter sales estimates but they managed to beat the downgraded numbers. If you look at the transcript of the call (I didn’t listen live) you’ll see very little mention of mobile and Atom. This is bad news for Intel. Its core… Read More


TSMC dilemma: Cadence, Mentor or Synopsys?

TSMC dilemma: Cadence, Mentor or Synopsys?
by Eric Esteve on 10-18-2012 at 4:49 am

Looking at the Press Release (PR) flow, it was interesting to see how TSMC has solved a communication dilemma. At first, let’s precise that #1 Silicon foundry has to work with each of the big three EDA companies. As a foundry, you don’t want to lose any customer, and then you support every major design flow. Choosing another strategy… Read More


Apple and The Road Ahead to Building an x86 Processor

Apple and The Road Ahead to Building an x86 Processor
by Ed McKernan on 10-15-2012 at 9:00 am


A small blurb last week announced that Apple had hired Jim Mergard away from Samsung after just 15 months on the job. Previously to that he was a 16-year AMD veteran who headed up their low power x86 Brazos processor team. In near synchronicity, AMD hired Famed Apple Designer Jim Keller to be its chief microprocessor architect. When… Read More


Soft IP Quality Standards

Soft IP Quality Standards
by Paul McLellan on 10-09-2012 at 1:08 pm

As SoC design has transformed from being about writing RTL and more towards IP assembly, the issue of IP quality has become increasingly important. In 2011 TSMC and Atrenta launched the soft IP qualification program. Since then, 13 partners have joined the program.

IP quality is multi-faceted but at the most basic level, an IP block… Read More


TSMC OIP Ecosystem Forum 2012

TSMC OIP Ecosystem Forum 2012
by Daniel Nenni on 10-07-2012 at 7:11 pm

The TSMC Open Innovation Platform® (OIP) Ecosystem Forum brings TSMC’s design ecosystem member companies together to share with our customers real-case solutions for customers’ design challenges and success stories of best practice in TSMC’s design ecosystem.


More than 90% of the attendees last year said “this… Read More


Exclusive Sneak Peek: Cadence at TSMC OIP Ecosystem Forum 2012

Exclusive Sneak Peek: Cadence at TSMC OIP Ecosystem Forum 2012
by Daniel Nenni on 10-05-2012 at 8:37 am

The TSMC Open Innovation Platform® (OIP) Ecosystem Forum brings TSMC’s design ecosystem member companies together to share with our customers real-case solutions for customers’ design challenges and success stories of best practice in TSMC’s design ecosystem. More than 90% of the attendees last year said “this… Read More


GLOBALFOUNDRIES and ARM!

GLOBALFOUNDRIES and ARM!
by Daniel Nenni on 10-02-2012 at 8:30 pm


Clearly the key to success in the foundry business is partnerships. Easy to say, harder to do, here is an excellent example of one that works: GLOBALFOUNDRIES and ARM announced in August 2012 a multi-year agreement to jointly deliver optimized system-on-chip (SoC) solutions for ARM® processor designs on GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ 20-nanometer… Read More


Variation at 28-nm with Solido and GLOBALFOUNDRIES

Variation at 28-nm with Solido and GLOBALFOUNDRIES
by Kris Breen on 09-27-2012 at 9:00 pm

At DAC 2012 GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Solido presented a user track poster titled “Understanding and Designing for Variation in GLOBALFOUNDRIES 28-nm Technology” (as was previously announced here). This post describes the work that we presented.

We set out to better understand the effects of variation on design at 28-nm. In particular,… Read More


Will Paul Otellini Convince Tim Cook to Fill Intel’s Fabs?

Will Paul Otellini Convince Tim Cook to Fill Intel’s Fabs?
by Ed McKernan on 09-27-2012 at 8:30 pm

An empty Fab is a terrible thing to waste, especially when it is leading edge. By the end of the year Intel will, by my back of the envelope calculation, be sitting with the equivalent of one idle 22nm Fab (cost $5B). What would you do if you were Paul Otellini?

Across the valley, in Cupertino, you have Tim Cook, whose modus operandi is … Read More


Samsung going vertical Qualcomm cry CEVA laugh

Samsung going vertical Qualcomm cry CEVA laugh
by Eric Esteve on 09-27-2012 at 11:09 am

These last days have been full of Apple related stories; maybe it’s time to discuss a new topic? Like for example Samsung, direct competitor for Apple in the smartphone market, and take a look at the company move toward more vertical integration. Everybody working in the SC industry knows that Samsung is ranked #2 behind Intel, even… Read More