I don’t know the story behind the name Alchip. I’ve been asking this question ever since its founding in 2003 and still haven’t found the answer. Wikipedia sometimes provides insights and stories behind names of companies, products and services but I couldn’t find any regarding the name Alchip. One thing is for sure. After its consistent… Read More
Tag: 7nm
Analyzing Clocks at 7nm and Smaller Nodes
In the good old days the clock signal looked like a square wave , and had a voltage swing of 5 volts, however with 7nm technology the clock signals can now look more like a sawtooth signal and may not actually reach the full Vdd value of 0.65V inside the core of a chip. I’ll cover some of the semiconductor market trends, and then challenges… Read More
Does SMIC have 7nm and if so, what does it mean
Recently TechInsights analyzed a Bitcoin Miner chip fabbed at SMIC and declared SMIC has a 7nm process. There has been some debate as to whether the SMIC process is really 7nm and what it means if it is 7nm. I wanted to discuss the case for and against the process being 7nm, and what I think it means.
First off, I want to say I am not going … Read More
Intel and the EUV Shortage
In my “The EUV Divide and Intel Foundry Services” article available here, I discussed the looming EUV shortage. Two days ago, Intel announced their first EUV tool installed at their new Fab 34 in Ireland is a tool they moved from Oregon. This is another indication of the scarcity of EUV tools.
I have been tracking EUV system production… Read More
Can Intel Catch TSMC in 2025?
At the ISS conference held from April 4th through 6th I presented on who I thought would have the leading logic technology in 2025. The following is a write up of that presentation.
ISS was a virtual conference in 2021 and I presented on who currently had logic leadership and declared TSMC the clear leader. Following that conference,… Read More
Intel 2022 Investor Meeting
Last Thursday Intel held their investors meeting, in this write up I wanted to focus on my areas of coverage/expertise, process technology and manufacturing.
Technology Development presented by Ann Kelleher
Last year Intel presented their Intel Accelerated plan and, in this meeting, we got a review of where Intel stands on that… Read More
Intel Accelerated
Intel presented yesterday on their plans for process technology and packaging over the next several years. This was the most detailed roadmap Intel has ever laid out. In this write up I will analyze Intel’s process announcement and how they match up with their competitors.
10nm Super Fin (SF)
10nm is now in volume production in three… Read More
Circuit Simulation Challenges to Design the Xilinx Versal ACAP
One of the most unique acronyms that I learned about this past year is ACAP from Xilinx, which stands for Adaptive Compute Acceleration Platform. At the recent Cadence LIVE event, I had the pleasure of watching Pei Yao, a Xilinx senior staff CAD engineer, as she talked about the challenges of getting all the analog and mixed-signals… Read More
Highlights of the TSMC Technology Symposium 2021 – Silicon Technology
Recently, TSMC held their annual Technology Symposium, providing an update on the silicon process technology and packaging roadmap. This article will review the highlights of the silicon process developments and future release plans.
Subsequent articles will describe the packaging offerings and delve into technology … Read More
Is IBM’s 2nm Announcement Actually a 2nm Node?
IBM has announced the development of a 2nm process.
IBM Announcement
What was announced:
- “2nm”
- 50 billion transistors in a “thumbnail” sized area later disclosed to be 150mm2 = 333 million transistors per millimeter (MTx/mm2).
- 44nm Contacted Poly Pitch (CPP) with 12nm gate length.
- Gate All Around (GAA), there are several ways