-Intel jumpstarts foundry model with Tower semi buy @$54B Gets complementary tech to round out offerings
-Approval based on satisfying China’s needs as well
-Margin concerns overblown- Will it be allowed to flourish?
Intel pays up to get foundry and technology….
Intel announced a $5.4B acquisition of Tower Semiconductor… Read More
Exciting times for the semiconductor industry! Last week Intel announced a billion dollar fund to build a foundry ecosystem and today Intel announced they are acquiring foundry Tower Semiconductor for $5.6 billion dollars, WOW! Some people doubted Intel’s commitment to the foundry market this time. I think we can now put that… Read More
On Monday, February 7, 2022, Intel Foundry Services (IFS), made a series of major announcements regarding the RISC-V architecture and ecosystem:
Dan is again joined by Stacy Rasgon, Managing Director and Senior Analyst, U.S. Semiconductors at Bernstein Research. Stacy is an unusual semiconductor analyst as he holds a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from MIT. His substantial technical knowledge allows for a deep dive on Intel and other semiconductor topics that you will… Read More
As the oldest and largest EDA conference, the Design Automation Conference (DAC) brings the best minds together to present, discuss, showcase and debate the latest and greatest advances in EDA. It accomplishes this in the form of technical papers, talks, company booths, product pavilions and panel discussions.
A key aspect … Read More
–ASML great Q4 results-Demand off charts-Supply constrained
-Dealing with chain issues, putting out fires, expediting
-Looking forward to next gen High NA in 2024/2025
-Intel’s order doesn’t give advantage,… Read More
-Chips for America is better than nothing, but not much
–TSMC $40-44B Capex crushes competition (Intel & Samsung)
-Additional efforts other than handouts are necessary
-Could/should TSMC be “adopted” as a US company?
Competition can’t keep up with $40-$44B of Capex
TSMC’s recent announcement… Read More
Standard Cell Scaling
Complex logic designs are built up from standard cells, in order to continue to scale logic we need to continually shrink the size of standard cells.
Figure 1 illustrates the dimensions of a standard cell.
Figure 1. Standard Cell Dimensions.
From figure 1 we can see that shrinking standard cell sizes requires… Read More
One of the sessions I enjoyed at the Synopsys Verification Day 2021 was a presentation on applying formal to a couple of non-traditional problem domains. I like talks of this kind because formal can sometimes be boxed into a limited set of applications, under-exploiting the potential of the technology. Intel have built a centralized… Read More
Semiconductor capital expenditures (CapEx) are on track for strong growth in 2021. For many companies the increase should continue into 2022. TSMC, the dominant foundry company, expects to spend $30 billion in CapEx in 2021, a 74% increase from 2020. TSMC announced in March it plans to invest $100 billion over the next three years,… Read More
