In 2015 Qualcomm stunned the fabless semiconductor world with an unprecedented layoff. When I first heard about it the number was 5% but it kept growing and finally hit 15%. The big misstep here was, that after being the SoC leader starting in 2007 with the Snapdragon series of chips that powered the Smartphone revolution, QCOM did… Read More
Memory War Z: Samsung spins antidote to 3D XPoint
The 2016 edition of the Flash Memory Summit produced more than the usual amount of excitement. Samsung’s response to the Intel/Micron 3D XPoint challenge arrived in new slideware, indicating the war for next-generation SSDs is just starting. Who has the advantage?
We’d all like to think this is about creating a breakthrough technology,… Read More
TSMC and Pokemon Go!
As Pokemon Go invades the world, let me give you a firsthand player’s description of the game and why the next generation of augmented reality apps will energize the fabless semiconductor ecosystem and greatly benefit TSMC.
While I am not a “gamer” per say, I am a technologist and am always looking for new semiconductor market drivers.… Read More
Burned again – can smartwatches recover?
With Intel’s Basis Peak smartwatch on intergalactic recall and Apple’s smartwatch sales falling faster than Skylab, designers now must face the real questions: 1) what is the right use case, and 2) what are the right chips to implement it?… Read More
One transistor for the future of mmWave?
We’ve heard recently from several sources that millimeter wave radios, once the exclusive realm of defense and satellite use, are now finding homes in applications such as automotive radar and 5G networks. Therein lies a significant opportunity for digital design: moving frequency conversion and filtering from the analog … Read More
SEMICON West – Harry Levinson and Mike Lercel Interview
On Tuesday morning at SEMICON I had the opportunity to sit down with Harry Levinson, Sr. Director of Technology Research and Sr. Fellow at Global Foundries and Michael Lercel, Director of Strategic Marketing at ASML to discuss the state of lithography.
I opened the discussion with a question about how we are going to address lithography… Read More
Foundry Technology Packaging Solutions
A significant shift is underway in the fabless semiconductor business model. As the application markets have become more diverse (and more cost-sensitive), product requirements have necessitated a new focus on multi-die packaging technology. … Read More
Why is AMD Stock Jumping?
One of my favorite pastimes is listening to the quarterly investor calls of the leading semiconductor companies. I can then match up the talking points with the calls I do with Wall Street, the conferences I attend, and the other data points I have collected while working inside the fabless semiconductor ecosystem for more than … Read More
SEMICON West – Leti FDSOI and IOT, status and roadmap
On Tuesday, July 12th at SEMICON West I had an opportunity to sit down with Marie Semeria, the CEO of Leti and discuss the status and future of FDSOI. Leti pioneered FDSOI 15 years ago and has been the leading FDSOI research ever since.
Two years ago Leti and ST Micro demonstrated products on 28nm that are cost competitive with bulk technology.… Read More
IMEC-Horizontal Nanowires for 5nm at the VLSI Technology Symposium
At the VLSI Technology Symposium, IMEC presented a paper entitled “Gate-All-Around MOSFETs based on Vertically Stacked Horizontal Si Nanowires in a Replacement Metal Gate Process on Bulk Silicon Wafers”. I have wanted to blog about this paper since the symposium was held but also wanted to tie it in with an interview… Read More
Disaggregating LLM Inference: Inside the SambaNova Intel Heterogeneous Compute Blueprint