Dan Niles: Everything Changed on May 22nd

Dan Niles: Everything Changed on May 22nd
by Paul McLellan on 06-26-2013 at 11:09 pm

I listened to Dan Niles’s quarterly report that he does for GSA. He had a lot of the usual background data on savings rates and GDP growth, but the big story is that everything changed on May 22nd and that this will turn out to be a very significant moment. That was the day that the Fed basically announced that it would start to “taper”… Read More


GSA Entrepreneurship Conference

GSA Entrepreneurship Conference
by Paul McLellan on 06-10-2013 at 12:04 am

GSA’s next event is the annual Entrepreneurship Conference to be held at the Computer History Museum on July 18th. The event runs from 3pm to 8pm. Attendance is free but you must register here.

The event consists of 5 panel sessions followed by a reception. The full roster of who will be on each panel is not completely finalized… Read More


GSA Awards…Nominate!

GSA Awards…Nominate!
by Paul McLellan on 05-08-2013 at 4:50 pm

For 19 years GSA (presumably going back to the days when it was Fabless Semiconductor Association, FSA) has recognized public and private semiconductor companies. The awards are celebrated at a dinner. This year’s dinner is on Thursday December 12th at the Santa Clara Convention Center. The keynote speaker at the dinner… Read More


Global Foundries Does DAC

Global Foundries Does DAC
by Paul McLellan on 05-07-2013 at 8:05 pm

Global Foundries will be at DAC in booth 1314. There will be 6 pods there demonstrating:

  • Advanced Technology: 28nm ready and ramping, and next is 20LPM and 14XM.
  • PDKs: For 28nm, 20nm and 14nm. 14nm handles FinFET enablement complexity. Robust, easy to use and high quality, supports pretty much the full range of EDA tools.
  • Design
Read More

The Capital Lite Semiconductor Model

The Capital Lite Semiconductor Model
by Paul McLellan on 05-07-2013 at 8:05 pm

For a couple of years the GSA has had working group looking at funding of semiconductor investment. There is a general feeling, which I share, that it is hard to get a fabless semiconductor company off the ground (nobody would dream of trying to create one with a fab these days) due to the size of the investment and the relatively long… Read More


GSA European Executive Forum

GSA European Executive Forum
by Paul McLellan on 04-27-2013 at 9:58 am

The first week of June is DAC in Austin of course. But over in Europe, the Wednesday and Thursday of that week, June 5-6th is the GSA European Executive Forum, bringing C-level executives together from all over Europe. It actually runs from 2pm on Wednesday until about 2pm on Thursday including a VIP dinner on Wednesday evening sponsored… Read More


A bird told me the EDPS Monterey Conference was a great success

A bird told me the EDPS Monterey Conference was a great success
by Camille Kokozaki on 04-20-2013 at 8:10 pm

The 20th annual Electronic Design Process Symposium (EDPS) held April 18-19 at the Monterey Beach Hotel in Monterey California was an unqualified success. I know this because a bird (seagull?) sitting on the window sill of the conference room was so captivated by the fascinating insight provided by a number of luminaries that … Read More


Moore, or More Than Moore?

Moore, or More Than Moore?
by Paul McLellan on 04-19-2013 at 12:05 pm

Yesterday was the 2013 GSA Silicon Summit, which was largely focused on contrasting what advances in delivering systems will depend on marching down the ladder of process nodes, and which will depend on innovations in packaging technology. So essentially contrasting Moore’s Law with what has come to be known as More Than… Read More


Altera, Intel, TSMC, ARM: the Plot Thickens

Altera, Intel, TSMC, ARM: the Plot Thickens
by Paul McLellan on 04-16-2013 at 7:15 pm

Vince Hu of Altera presented us her at the GlobalPress Electronics Summit on their process roadmap. Since just a month or two ago they announced that Intel would be their foundry at 14nm, everyone wanted to get a better idea of what was really going on.

At 28nm, Altera use 2 processes, TSMC 28HP (for high end Stratix-5 devices) and TSMC… Read More