I have written multiple articles about this year’s SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference describing all of the progress EUV has made in the last year. Source power is improving, photoresists are getting faster, prototype pellicles are in testing, multiple sites around the world are exposing wafers by the thousands and more. … Read More
In the Valley & thinking about FD-SOI for your next chip design? Epic (and free) symposium 13 April
If you’re in the chip biz in Silicon Valley, check out the SOI Consortium FD-SOI Symposium on April 13th in San Jose. They’ve been running these things since 2009, and I have to say that this one is the most comprehensive to date. Headliners include Cisco, Sony, NXP, SigmaDesigns, ARM, Ciena plus the big FD-SOI foundries,… Read More
My morning with Andy Grove
I worked briefly at Intel in 1991-2. At the time, the corporate culture was based on the theory of ‘constructive confrontation.’ For most, that meant that in the clash of good ideas, the best one would prevail. For some at Intel, however, constructive confrontation was a blood sport. (I trust things have improved in the past quarter… Read More
The time Andy Grove came to Fortune and refused to meet with the editors
In my nearly thirty year career at FORTUNE magazine, I got to know a host of larger than life characters. But few loom larger in memory than the diminutive dynamo who sadly passed away last night, Andy Grove.
Amid the stream of obits and reminiscences rightly hailing Andy’s extraordinary career as CEO of Intel, his major contributions… Read More
Reflections on a Trade Show, and a Turning Point for Silicon
This past week over 5,000 people converged on the AppliedPower Electronics Conference (APEC) in Long Beach California to understand the state-of-the-art and the future of the electronics that powers things such as servers, electric cars, white goods, factories, medical implants, as well as drones. The conference, which is… Read More
Who will provide data center Soc of the future, Intel or Qualcomm ?
Intel has been incredibly successful by designing high performance server SoC to address the data center market segment, and the chance to see the company loosing large market share is pretty low, at least in the short term. Now, if we look at the really long term, 2030 or even 2040, like did the Semiconductor Industry Association… Read More
Andy Grove’s Less Remembered Intel
The following paragraphs present another one of those articles that I wrote for a Cyber Media publication, probably in the year 2000. It’s been almost fifteen years since then. When I read Sunit Rikhi’s glowing tribute to Andy Grove, a few grey cells stirred in my brain and I recalled that I had written something about the Intel that… Read More
TSMC and Flex Logix?
There was a lot to learn at the TSMC Technical Symposium last week, in the keynotes for sure but also in the halls and exhibits. Tom Dillinger did a nice job covering the keynotes in his posts Key Take aways from the TSMC Technology Symposium Part 1 and Part 2 but there was something interesting that many people may have missed in the exhibit… Read More
10nm SRAM Projections – Who will lead
At ISSCC this year Samsung published a paper entitled “A 10nm FinFET 128Mb SRAM with Assist Adjustment System for Power, Performance, and Area Optimization. In the paper Samsung disclosed a high density 6T SRAM cell size of 0.040µm[SUP]2[/SUP]. I thought it would be interesting to take a look at how this cell size stacks … Read More
Good bye and thank you, Andy Grove!
You are gone. And with you, gone is one of the greatest leaders of our times.
In the coming days many voices will speak about the ways in which you touched countless lives, inspired a generation of engineers to create and fuel the digital revolution, and demonstrated your own brand of leadership traits in pursuit of excellence. My … Read More
Bluetooth 6.0 Channel Sounding is Here