Podcast EP215: A Tour of the GlobalFoundries Silicon Photonics Platform with Vikas Gupta

Podcast EP215: A Tour of the GlobalFoundries Silicon Photonics Platform with Vikas Gupta
by Daniel Nenni on 04-05-2024 at 10:00 am

Dan is joined by Vikas Gupta, senior director of product management at GlobalFoundries focused on Silicon Photonics and ancillary technologies. Vikas has close to 30 years of semiconductor experience with TI, Xilinx, AMD, GlobalFoundries, POET Technologies, and back to GlobalFoundries.

Vikas discusses the growing demands… Read More


Semiconductor CapEx Down in 2024

Semiconductor CapEx Down in 2024
by Bill Jewell on 03-21-2024 at 2:00 pm

Delayed Wafer Projects

U.S. President Biden announced on Wednesday an agreement to provide Intel with $8.5 billion in direct funding and $11 billion in loans under the CHIPS and Science Act. Intel will use the funding for wafer fabs in Arizona, Ohio, New Mexico, and Oregon. As reported in our December 2023 newsletter, the CHIPS Act provides a total of $52.7… Read More


IEDM 2023 – Modeling 300mm Wafer Fab Carbon Emissions

IEDM 2023 – Modeling 300mm Wafer Fab Carbon Emissions
by Scotten Jones on 01-09-2024 at 6:00 am

Figure 1

For the first time ever, IEDM held a sustainability session at the 2023 conference. I was one of the authors who presented an invited paper, the following is a summary of my presentation.

Call to Action

From the United Nations [1]:

“Climate Change is the defining issue of our time, and we are at a defining moment.”

“Without drastic … Read More


DesignCon 2023 Panel Photonics future: the vision, the challenge, and the path to infinity & beyond!

DesignCon 2023 Panel Photonics future: the vision, the challenge, and the path to infinity & beyond!
by Raha Vafaei on 02-28-2023 at 6:00 am

Image 1 1

The explosion in volume and consumption of data, fueled by industry trends in virtualization, networking, and computing among others, continues to push photonic solutions forward into leading positions. On Feb 2nd, I attended a panel by Ansys at DesignCon that brought together industry experts from Intel, GlobalFoundries,… Read More


Samsung Versus TSMC Update 2022

Samsung Versus TSMC Update 2022
by Daniel Nenni on 12-02-2022 at 6:00 am

TSMC Versus Samsung

After attending the TSMC and Samsung foundry conferences I wanted to share some quick opinions about the foundry business. Nothing earth shattering but interesting just the same. Both conferences were well attended. If we are not back to the pre pandemic numbers we are very close to it.

TSMC and Samsung both acknowledged that there… Read More


Podcast EP126: Unifying RF and Optics with POET’s Optical Interposer Platform

Podcast EP126: Unifying RF and Optics with POET’s Optical Interposer Platform
by Daniel Nenni on 11-25-2022 at 10:00 am

Dan is joined by Dr. Suresh Venkatesan, chairman and CEO, POET Technologies. Suresh joined POET Technologies from GLOBALFOUNDRIES where he served as senior vice president, Technology Development. He is an industry veteran with over 22 years of experience in semiconductor technology development. Prior to joining GLOBALFOUNDRIES,… Read More


AMAT and Semitool Deja Vu all over again

AMAT and Semitool Deja Vu all over again
by Robert Maire on 11-24-2022 at 6:00 am

Lam SemiWiki SemiSysco

-Lam/Semisysco is a repeat of AMAT/Semitool
-Adds wet processing that larger companies lack
-Semisysco tools amazingly similar to those made by Semitool
-Lightning strikes twice for Ray Thompson

Deja Vu all over again

In a clear example of history repeating itself, Lam Research bought Semisysco, a company founded by Ray Thompson,… Read More


The New Normal for Semiconductor Manufacturing

The New Normal for Semiconductor Manufacturing
by Daniel Nenni on 05-27-2022 at 6:00 am

200mm 300mm Semiconductor Capacity

One of the recent live events I attended was the 2022 GSA Silicon Leadership Summit on May 12th at the Santa Clara Convention Center (my favorite location). This was the first GSA live event in two years so it was a must attend gathering. This event targets semiconductor ecosystem executives (200+ people attended) so there were many… Read More


Podcast EP80: The Future of Silicon Photonics with Dr. Anthony J. Yu

Podcast EP80: The Future of Silicon Photonics with Dr. Anthony J. Yu
by Daniel Nenni on 05-18-2022 at 8:00 am

Dan is joined by Dr. Anthony J. Yu, vice president of the Computing and Wired Infrastructure (CWI) Business Unit at GlobalFoundries (GF), where he is responsible for providing differentiated photonic manufacturing services and solutions to clients across multiple industries. Prior to being named VP of CWI, Dr. Yu was vice… Read More