GSA Memory+ Conference in Taiwan

GSA Memory+ Conference in Taiwan
by Paul McLellan on 10-18-2013 at 3:02 pm

The GSA Memory+ conference Taiwan will take place on (Halloween!) October 31, 2013 at the Regent Taipei, Taiwan. The main theme of this year is highlighting Memory—the Critical Enabler for Prominent and Emerging Applications in System Logic Solutions.

GSA Memory+ Conference is the global industry event dedicated to all memory… Read More


TSMC Open Innovation Platform Forum, October 1st

TSMC Open Innovation Platform Forum, October 1st
by Paul McLellan on 09-28-2013 at 5:00 am

One of TSMC’s two big Silicon Valley events each year is the Open Innovation Platform (OIP) Forum. This year it is on Tuesday October 1st. It is in the San Jose Convention Center and starts at 9am (registration opens at 8am). Pre-registration to attend is now open here or click on the image to the right.

From 9.10 to 9.40 is the … Read More


A Brief History of TSMC’s OIP part 2

A Brief History of TSMC’s OIP part 2
by Paul McLellan on 09-18-2013 at 11:00 pm

The existence of TSMC’s Open Innovation Platform (OIP) program further sped up disaggregation of the semiconductor supply chain. Partly, this was enabled by the existence of a healthy EDA industry and an increasingly healthy IP industry. As chip designs had grown more complex and entered the system-on-chip (SoC) era, the amount… Read More


Are 28nm Transistors the Cheapest…Forever?

Are 28nm Transistors the Cheapest…Forever?
by Paul McLellan on 09-17-2013 at 10:43 am

It is beginning to look as if 28nm transistors, which are the cheapest per million gates compared to any earlier process such as 45nm, may also be the cheapest per million gates compared to any later process such as 20nm.

What we know so far: FinFET seems to be difficult technology because of the 3D structure and so the novel manufacturing… Read More


TSMC’s 16FinFET and 3D IC Reference Flows

TSMC’s 16FinFET and 3D IC Reference Flows
by Paul McLellan on 09-17-2013 at 2:01 am

Today TSMC announced three reference flows that they have been working on along with various EDA vendors (and ARM and perhaps other IP suppliers). The three new flows are:

  • 16FinFET Digital Reference Flow. Obviously this has full support for non-planar FinFET transistors including extraction, quantized pitch placement, low-vdd
Read More

TSMC OIP: Mentor’s 5 Presentations

TSMC OIP: Mentor’s 5 Presentations
by Paul McLellan on 09-09-2013 at 6:30 pm

At TSMC’s OIP on October 1st, Mentor Graphics have 5 different presentations. Collect the whole set!

11am, EDA track. Design Reliability with Calibre Smartfill and PERC. Muni Mohan of Broadcom and Jeff Wilson of Mentor. New methodologies were invented for 28nm for smart fill meeting DFM requirements (and at 20nm me may … Read More


A Brief History of TSMC OIP

A Brief History of TSMC OIP
by Paul McLellan on 09-01-2013 at 9:00 pm

The history of TSMC and its Open Innovation Platform (OIP) is, like almost everything in semiconductors, driven by the economics of semiconductor manufacturing. Of course ICs started 50 years ago at Fairchild (very close to where Google is headquartered today, these things go in circles). The planarization approach, whereby… Read More


Foundry 2.0: Why It Is Different And Why You Should Care

Foundry 2.0: Why It Is Different And Why You Should Care
by Paul McLellan on 08-29-2013 at 5:22 pm

If you have been to an Ajit Manocha keynote recently, he talks a lot about Foundry 2.0. I covered his keynote at Semicon West in July here. Dan Hutcheson of VLSI Research interviewed Ajit about this new business model to identify it, see how it was different and see how GlobalFoundries were executing the model differently from the … Read More


Funding Startups the SK Telecom Way

Funding Startups the SK Telecom Way
by Paul McLellan on 08-15-2013 at 4:15 pm

At the recent GSA Entrepreneurship Forumone of the panelists was Angel Orrantia of Innopartners who are trying a novel approach to funding startups in the semiconductor space and the surrounding ecosystem.

It seems things got started with an innovation center inside SK Hynix. Just in case you have forgotten, Hynix is the newish… Read More


TSMC Q2 Results: Up 17%; 20nm and 16nm on track

TSMC Q2 Results: Up 17%; 20nm and 16nm on track
by Paul McLellan on 07-24-2013 at 10:47 am

TSMC announced their Q2 financial results yesterday. Revenue was $5.2B (at the high end of guidance) with net income of $1.6B. This is up 17.4% on Q1 and up 21.6% year-to-year. Gross margin is up too, at 49% which is up 3.2 points on Q1 and 0.3 points year-to-year. As usual the financial results are not directly that interesting since… Read More