I remember the days of the IDM (integrated device manufacturer). For me, it was RCA, where I worked for 15 years as the company changed from RCA to GE and then ultimately to Harris Semiconductor. It’s a bit of a cliché, but life was simpler then, from a customer point of view at least. RCA did it all. We designed all the IP, did the physical… Read More
Being an old ASIC physical design guy, I tend to think of ASICs from a “bond-pads-in” perspective. This week however, I had a very eye-opening discussion with Dan Leung, Director of Packaging and Assembly for Open-Silicon, that totally changed my perspective. While I had been exposed many times to the concept of systems-in-a-package… Read More
Open Silicon hosted a webinar today focusing on their High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) IP-subsystem product offering. Their IP-subsystem is based on the HBM2 standard and includes blocks for the memory controller, PHY and high-speed I/Os, all targeted to TSMC 16nm FF+ process. The IP-subsystem supports the full HBM2 standard with… Read More
When someone says, “2.5D packaging” my first thought is TSMC and my second thought is Herb Reiter. Herb has more than 40 years of semiconductor experience and he has been a tireless promoter of 2.5D packaging for many years. Herb writes for and works with industry organizations on 2.5D work groups and events at conferences… Read More
Calling all ASIC designers working on High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM) access architectures in high-performance computing (HPC), networking, deep learning, virtual reality, gaming, cloud computing and data center applications. You won’t want to miss this upcoming webinar focused on system integration aspects of a HBM2 ASIC… Read More
Artificial intelligence, or AI is really heating up these days. The technology has been around for decades, but of late it is becoming quite a focus for applications such as data center analytics, autonomous vehicles and augmented reality. Why the rebirth? The trend appears to be driven by two forces – availability of data to train… Read More
The first transistor was made of two electrodes, held in place by plastic, making contact with a piece of doped germanium. Ever since then, devices and their packaging have been performing a complicated and oftentimes intricate dance. Single transistor devices became integrated circuits, and along the way separate IC’s were… Read More
As you all know I’m a big fan of the ASIC business dating back to the start of the fabless semiconductor transformation where anybody could send a design spec to an ASIC company and get a chip back. The ASIC business model also started the smart phone revolution when Samsung built the first Apple SoCs for the iPhones and iPads.
Today … Read More
Last week Samsung hosted the GSA Silicon Valley “State of the Industry” Meet-up which was well attended by the semiconductor elite, myself included. The agenda started with an update on the semiconductor industry outlook followed by deep dives into Automotive, IoT, Artificial Intelligence, and Cybersecurity all of which are… Read More
