I spent some quality time with Subi Kengeri, Vice President, Technology Architecture, Office of the CTO, GLOBALFOUNDRIES in Las Vegas during CES. Great guy, he worked at Silicon Access, Virage and TSMC before GF. One thing you should know about embedded memory guys, SRAM is the first thing that goes through a new process so they … Read More
This is the second blog entry about an ST Ericsson white-paper on multiprocessors in mobile. The first part was here.
The first part of the white-paper basically shows that for mobile the optimal number of cores is two. It is much better to use process technology (and good EDA) to run the processor at higher frequency rather than add… Read More
The biggest surprise embedded in the Intel 22nm SoC disclosure is that they still do NOT use Double Patterning which is a big fat hairy deal if you are serious about the SoC foundry business. The other NOT so surprising thing I noticed in reviewing the blogosphere response is that the industry term FinFET was dominant while the Intel… Read More
The preceding two Semiwiki articles in this thread provided an overview to the FinFET structure and fabrication. The next three articles will discuss some of the unique modeling requirements and design constraints that FinFET’s introduce, compared to planar FET technology.
Due to the complexity of FinFET modeling – … Read More
The common theme amongst semiconductor ecosystem conferences this year is FinFETS, probably the most exciting technology we will see this decade. A lot has been written on SemiWiki about FinFETS, it is one of the top trending search terms, but there is some confusion about the process naming so let me attempt to explain.
In planar… Read More
An announcement at the ARM conference was of a joint project to tape out an ARM Cortex-M0 in IBM’s 14nm FinFET process. In fact they taped out 3 different versions of the chip using different routing architectures to see the impact on yield.
This was the first 14nm ARM tapeout, it seems. I’m sure Intel has built plenty … Read More
Today GlobalFoundries announced a 14nm process that will be available for volume production in 2014. They are explicitly trying to match Intel’s timeline for the introduction of 14nm. The process is called 14XM for eXtreme Mobility since it is especially focused on mobile. The process will be introduced just one year after… Read More
Thanks to SemiWiki readers for the feedback and comments on the previous “Introduction to FinFET Technology” posts – very much appreciated! The next installment on FinFET modeling will be uploaded soon.
In the interim, Dan forwarded the following link to me “ Intel’s FinFETs too complicated and difficult, says … Read More
Rajiv Bhateja, Dhrumil Gandhi and Neal Carney met with me at DAC on Wednesday to give an update on what’s new in 2012 for Tela Innovations, a provider of lithography optimized IP and tools. This team has a rich history in EDA and IP from companies like: ARM, Artisan, Mentor Graphics and Silicon Compilers.… Read More
Ever since the “Intel Reinvents Transistors Using New 3-D Structure” PR campaign I have been at odds with them. As technologists, I have nothing but respect for Intel. The Intel PR department, however, quite frankly, is evil. Correct me if I’m wrong here but Intel did not “reinvent” the transistor. Nor did they come up with the name… Read More
