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It seems to be FD-SOI week yet again. I talked to Thomas Skotnicki this morning. He is the father of thin-box FD-SOI and its birth is an interesting story. The story began 26 years ago (so not quite as far back as the photo!).
Thomas is of Polish origins (he is actually Tomeczek) and grew up in Warsaw where he earned his PhD. In 1983 in Canterbury,… Read More
The use of simulation is well established in the semiconductor industry. Virtually all circuit designs are run through a Spice simulation, layouts are analyzed for timing issues and even process development employs process simulation tools. What I believe is less widely used but just as useful is cost modeling.
The semiconductor… Read More
The TSMC quarterly conference call was last week and of course it stirred up quite a bit of controversy. Let me share with you my experience, observations, and opinions and maybe together we can come up with an accurate prediction for 2016. First let’s take a look at 20nm and what people now call the “Apple effect.”
Correct… Read More
Avionics is by nature a mature market, requiring the use of validated system solution: safety is an absolute requirement, innovative systems require stringent qualification phase. That’s why the very fast adoption of drones as alternative solution for human piloted planes is impressive. It took 10 years or so for drones to be… Read More
Earlier in the week I wrote about GlobalFoundries announcement of 22nm FD-SOI. At SEMICON West there were three events that filled in some more details. First, on Tuesday, a lunch presentation given by SOITEC who make the wafer blanks that FD-SOI requires. Then on Wednesday I sat down for an hour with Gary Patton and Subi Kengeri … Read More
The Chancellor of Germany visited Fab 1 in Dresden today. I did not get to speak with her personally so I will send her a message here. The fabless semiconductor industry is a force of nature. You can either harness the power or be overwhelmed by it. The United States, Taiwan, China, and South Korea have certainly figured this out. Hopefully… Read More
The “Saxony” reference comes from the Holy Roman era which is now the tenth largest of Germany’s sixteen states and is divided into ten districts. The “Silicon” comes from the microchip makers in the Dresden area which is district #2. The largest of said chip makers is now GlobalFoundries so in the same vein that California has Silicon… Read More
There have been rumors around for months (even on Semiwiki here) but today it is official. GlobalFoundries announced 22FDX which is a 22nm FD-SOI platform. GF announced that they had licensed FD-SOI from STMicroelectronics a couple of years ago and then…nothing. I just assumed it was a marketing deal that would be driven… Read More
IBM recently disclosed a working 7nm test chip generating a lot of excitement in the semiconductor industry and also in the mainstream media. In this article I wanted to explore the 14nm, 10nm and 7nm nodes, the status of the key competitors at each node and what it may mean for the companies.
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Everyone is somewhat focused on the march of process nodes. Moore’s Law, although I think that with the breach between technology and cost that may be changing. Moore’s Law was about the lowest cost way to get a given number of transistors manufactured. But now the lowest cost and the highest density are diverging. … Read More
Rapidus, IBM, and the Billion-Dollar Silicon Sovereignty Bet