The overwhelming theme of the SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium in Half Moon Bay this week was China. On day number two Sunny Hui, SVP of SMIC, did one of the best overviews of the China market I have seen, absolutely. While I’m not allowed to post the presentation in its entirety I can post up to three slides (the prettiest ones) and summarize… Read More
FinFET will finally arrive for GPU’s in 2016
It used to be that GPU chips moved to new process nodes pretty frequently, previously as often as annually. That is up until 2011. That was the year that 28nm GPU’s were unveiled. Since then there has been a long pause. Now in the wake of the 2016 CES both Nvidia, with its previously announced Pascal, and AMD, with the just announced Polaris,… Read More
Freescale: The End of a Long Journey – Part II
There is a famous story about Bill Gates’ mother, Mary Maxwell Gates, asking guests on a dinner table about the single biggest factor that contributed to their success. The answer of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet was the same: Focus.… Read More
Atmel Wireless Connectivity supports Industrial IoT revolution
The Consumer Electronic Show is about to close, some of the gadgets unveiled during the show will find a market and go to production and some won’t (I am skeptic about the Smartshoe offering self-fastening mechanism…) and during the week, IoT revolution has silently progressed in industrial automation. You will be surprised if… Read More
Are AI Powered Robot Soldiers Coming?
2016 will be another defining year for semiconductors and it all starts with the Industry Strategy Symposium in Half Moon Bay next week. If you have not attended one of these you should definitely put it on your bucket list. Not only do you get to hang out in a five star cliff side resort, you get to mingle with semiconductor royalty and… Read More
IEDM Blogs – Part 7 – IMEC Technology Forum – Part 2
On Sunday evening December 6[SUP]th[/SUP] before IEDM, IMEC held the IMEC Technology Forum (ITF). In part 1 of this blog I discussed the introduction and the first two presentations given by An Steegen and Mark Rodder. In this blog I will discuss the final two presentations. Part 1 can be accessed here.… Read More
Seven Predictions for 2016
Wireless Power Will Become Mainstream:
Wireless power will continue to gain traction with increased consumer demand charged by new products and applications. There are two different standards vying for consumer adoption; Qi and Rezence, but the consumer need not worry about a standards war because companies like Hewlett Packard… Read More
Intel reaches for all-new experience at CES2016
When Gary Shapiro introduced Brian Krzanich for Intel’s keynote at #CES2016, he just possibly may have been the last person to say “Moore’s Law” outside of a museum ever again. Krzanich was about to take Intel into new territory, where “Copy Exactly” and tick-tock also don’t matter.… Read More
IEDM Blogs – Part 6 – IMEC Technology Forum – Part 1
On Sunday evening December 6[SUP]th[/SUP] before IEDM, IMEC held the IMEC Technology Forum (ITF). The ITF was held at the Belgium ambassador’s residence, a really beautiful setting for a meeting.
The ITF began with a brief welcome by the Belgium ambassador followed by a brief introduction to IMEC. IMEC is a research institute … Read More
My Life at Fairchild – 1980-1983
After spending my first year learning a great deal about Diffusion and completing my orientation at Fairchild, I was moved to the 3″ Photolithography area as a sustaining engineer. As with the Diffusion area, being a sustaining engineer in Photo meant dispositioning lots on hold and making process improvements as needed.… Read More
Facing the Quantum Nature of EUV Lithography