Bob Swan started as interim CEO in June of 2018 and took the full-time CEO job in January of 2019. I was a vocal critic of the previous CEO Brian Krzanich (BK) and really felt he was not fit to serve. As it turns out I was right. It is not just the CEO himself, but also the people that he surrounds himself with. BK surrounded himself with the… Read More
The 3 way relationship is more complex than it seems
On the surface it seems simple. AMD and TSMC compete with Intel making its own chips and TSMC making them for AMD. But… Read More
The International Electron Devices Meeting is a premier event to learn about the latest in semiconductor process technology. Held every year in early December is San Francisco this years conference will be held from Decembers 7th through December 11th. You can learn more about the conference at their web site here.
This is a must… Read More
I recently had the pleasure of attending the AI Hardware Summit at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. This two-day conference brought together many companies involved in building artificial intelligence solutions. Though the focus was on building the hardware for this area, there was naturally much discussion… Read More
Synopsys just announced the availability of their IP solution supporting CXL (Compute Express Link). This new protocol is going to be an important component for several applications expected to be shipping starting in 2021. CXL is an alternate protocol that runs on the same physical layer as PCI Express (PCIe). Among other usages,… Read More
In this second article about China’s role in the global semiconductor industry I analyse the impact of the Chinese government’s Big Fund and compare Chinese investments in semiconductor R&D with those in other countries. In my previous article, I looked at the possible effects of a US-China decoupling in the… Read More
The IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting is in my opinion the leading technology conference to understand the current state-of-the-art in semiconductor process technology. Held each year in early December in San Francisco it is a must attend conference for anyone following technology development. The following is… Read More
The pace of Moore’s Law scaling for monolithic integrated circuit density has abated, due to a combination of fundamental technical challenges and financial considerations. Yet, from an architectural perspective, the diversity in end product requirements continues to grow. New heterogeneous processing units are being… Read More
Naveed Sherwani, President and CEO of SiFive, did the keynote for this year’s Silicon Summit. This is one of the premier events for the C level executives in Silicon Valley, absolutely. Naveed is one of the top visionaries for the semiconductor industry and he certainly did not disappoint this time or any other time in my experience.… Read More
The “20 Questions with John East” series continues
From time to time I present the History of Silicon Valley as I saw it to various audiences. I always enjoy doing that. I’ve learned that the part that audiences like the most is the Apple / Steve Jobs story. That’s not hard to understand. Steve Jobs was truly fascinating! The story… Read More
