How the Father of FinFETs Helped Save Moore’s Law

How the Father of FinFETs Helped Save Moore’s Law
by Daniel Nenni on 10-07-2025 at 8:00 am

Chenming Hu and Obama

In the early 2000s, Moore’s Law—the observation that the number of transistors on a chip doubles roughly every two years—was facing an existential crisis. As semiconductor nodes shrank below 90nm, planar transistors suffered from debilitating issues: leakage currents soared, power efficiency plummeted, and scaling became… Read More


Thermal Sensing Headache Finally Over for 2nm and Beyond

Thermal Sensing Headache Finally Over for 2nm and Beyond
by Admin on 10-02-2025 at 6:00 am

PNPBJT in a diode connected configuration

By Nir Sever, Senior Director Business Development, proteanTecs

Silicon-proven LVTS for 2nm: a new era of accuracy and integration in thermal monitoring

Effective thermal management is crucial to prevent overheating and optimize performance in modern SoCs. Inadequate temperature control due to inaccurate thermal sensing… Read More


Simulating Gate-All-Around (GAA) Devices at the Atomic Level

Simulating Gate-All-Around (GAA) Devices at the Atomic Level
by Daniel Payne on 09-17-2025 at 10:00 am

GAA FET min

Transistor fabrication has spanned the gamut from planar devices o FinFET to Gate-All-Around (GAA) as silicon dimensions have decreased in the quest for higher density, faster speeds and lower power. Process development engineers use powerful simulation tools to predict and even optimize transistor performance for GAA devices.… Read More


Alchip’s Technology and Global Talent Strategy Deliver Record Growth

Alchip’s Technology and Global Talent Strategy Deliver Record Growth
by Kalar Rajendiran on 05-20-2025 at 10:00 am

Alchip TSMC 2nm N2

Alchip Technologies Ltd., a global leader in high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) ASIC design and production services, continues its trajectory of rapid growth and technical leadership by pushing the boundaries of advanced-node silicon, expanding its global design capabilities, and building… Read More


IEDM 2022 – TSMC 3nm

IEDM 2022 – TSMC 3nm
by Scotten Jones on 01-02-2023 at 6:00 am

TSMC CPP

TSMC presented two papers on 3nm at the 2022 IEDM; “Critical Process features Enabling Aggressive Contacted Gate Pitch Scaling for 3nm CMOS Technology and Beyond” and “A 3nm CMOS FinFlexTM Platform Technology with Enhanced Power Efficiency and Performance for Mobile SOC and High Performance Computing Applications”.

When … Read More


Intel Evolution of Transistor Innovation

Intel Evolution of Transistor Innovation
by Daniel Nenni on 03-03-2022 at 10:00 am

Intel Transistor Innovations 1971

Intel recently released an exceptional video providing an insightful chronology of MOS transistor technology.  Evolution of Transistor Innovation is a five-minute audiovisual adventure, spanning 50 years of Moore’s Law.  Some of the highlights are summarized below, with a few screen shot captures – the full video is definitely… Read More


Intel 2022 Investor Meeting

Intel 2022 Investor Meeting
by Scotten Jones on 02-21-2022 at 6:00 am

Figure 1 Process Innovations

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


The Rising Tide of Semiconductor Cost

The Rising Tide of Semiconductor Cost
by Doug O'Laughlin on 02-13-2022 at 6:00 am

Moores Law Slowing Down

It Isn’t Transistory

There’s a quiet upheaval happening in the semiconductor industry. The rules that have always governed the industry are fraying, undoing assumptions that we took for granted, that was pounded into us in school. The irreproachable Moore’s Law, that exponential progress will make things cheaper, better,… Read More


Samsung Keynote at IEDM

Samsung Keynote at IEDM
by Scotten Jones on 01-27-2022 at 6:00 am

Samsung Keynote Figure 1

Kinam Kim is a longtime Samsung technologist who has published many excellent articles over the years. He is now the Chairman of Samsung Electronics, and he gave a very interesting keynote address at IEDM.

He began with some general observations:

The world is experiencing a transformation powered by semiconductors that has been… Read More


IBM at IEDM

IBM at IEDM
by Scotten Jones on 01-10-2022 at 6:00 am

Vertical FET process

IBM transferred their semiconductor manufacturing to GLOBALFOUNDRIES several years ago but still maintains a multibillion-dollar research facility at Albany Nanotech. IBM is very active at conferences such as IEDM and appears to have a good public relations department because they get a lot of press.

At the Litho Workshop … Read More