Keynote #2 at SNUG 2012 was John Cornish, VP Marketing at ARM. Why they sent a marketing person to speak in front of 2,000+ engineers I do not know. To top that, next time they should send a sales person and do a real dog and pony show. To find out more about John I checked his LinkedIn profile which was bare. So enough about John, lets hit … Read More
Sometime early in 2013, Intel will tape out its first production chip for 14nm and it won’t be an x86 processor. It’s neither necessary nor prudent to lead with a new x86 processor when the one missing element that the mobile market desperately needs is nowhere to be found: an ultra low power 4G LTE chip that fits under the battery… Read More
There were three keynotes at CDNLive this morning, and one theme ran through them: collaboration. In fact there was one specific instance of collaboration that all three people mentioned. Taping out an ARM Cortex-A15 in TSMC 20nm technology using a Cadence tool flow.
Lip-Bu, Cadence’s CEO, went first. He had some numbers… Read More
After the introduction of the NEWiPAD, Apple has placed itself just two short steps away from dominating the computer market – including PCs. One step, which is widely reported, is a smaller iPAD with an 8” screen that aims for a $299 price point. Amazon will take the rest of the market under $299. The second step is purely speculation… Read More
Last week I had an interesting meeting with GLOBALFOUNDRIES executives Kevin Meyer and Mojy Chian. It certainly seems that GFI has turned a corner! I will be in Dresden next week for DATE 2012 and will also visit the GFI Fab there. 28nm and 20nm are on track so expect an aggressive implementation plan from GFI this year.… Read More
This year’s CEO forecast panel was held at Silicon Valley Bank. Bankers live better than verification engineers, as if you didn’t know, based on the quality of the wine they were serving compared to DVCon.
This year the panelists were Ed Cheng from Gradient, Lip-Bu, Aart and Wally (and if you don’t know who they… Read More
The 1999 IDM paper Sub 50-nm FinFET: PMOSstarted the 3D transistor ball rolling, then in May of 2011 Intel announceda production version of a 3D transistor (TriGate) technology at 22nm. Intel is the leader in semiconductor process technologies so you can be sure that others will follow. Intel has a nice “History of the Transistor… Read More
A client turned me on to a great new book, “The Age of the Platform” by Phil Simon. It’s about how Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google have radically transformed the landscape. For me, it’s not just social networking – it’s social computing, changing how things are designed.
I’m borrowing this right from Phil’s… Read More
Consumer electronics is a new driver in our global semiconductor economy as we enjoy using Smart Phones, Tablets and Ultra Books. The challenge of designing and then verifying the electronic systems to meet the market windows is a daunting one. Instead of starting with a blank sheet for a new product, most electronic design companies… Read More
Apple’s blowout earnings for the quarter that just ended has huge ramifications for the entire semiconductor industry as suppliers align much closer to them or figure out how to minimize the damage that is to come through the rest of 2012. The immediate implication is that Wall St. will likely toss to the sidelines any semiconductor… Read More
