At Computex 2016 in Taipei last week, Intel announced their newest lineup of processors which included a brand new 10-core Extreme Edition processor. The focal point of Intel’s new line-up of Broadwell-E processors, the successor to Intel’s previous Haswell-E workstation/enthusiast lineup is the 10-core Core i7-6950X. Intel… Read More
Tag: intel
LETI Day 2016 : Security in Lyon, Sensor at Semicon West on July 12th
It was the very first time I attended the LETI days, even if I know the research center for many years. LETI was created in the 60’s, as the subsidiary of the CEA (France agency in charge of Atomic Energy) in charge of Microelectronic. Now, for more than 50 years, 2000 research engineers are working to develop technologies, systems … Read More
Xilinx is Killing Altera!
At a recent outing with FPGA friends from days gone by, the long running Xilinx vs Altera debate has come to an end. The bottom line is that Xilinx has used the FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) of the Intel acquisition quite effectively against Altera and is racking up 20nm and 16nm design wins at an alarming rate. It will be a while … Read More
ARM vs Intel: The New War Frontiers
With Intel’s exit from smartphone processor market, the competitive zones are redefined with its rivalry with ARM. Is ARM’s domination the only reason for Intel’s exit? With no competing architecture, is ARM a monopoly in smartphone processor IP market? What are the new areas of competition between ARM and Intel? I will attempt… Read More
The iPhone 7 Intel Modem Controversy Explained!
The media is really having a field day on this one so I think it deserves further discussion. The rumor is that Intel has won the modem socket in the iPhone 7. The same rumor was circulating about Intel winning the modem socket for the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 5e so it really has reached urban legend status. The question I have is why does … Read More
The Business of the Semiconductor Business, Part One: What Happened?
This is the first of an occasional series of articles on the semiconductor industry. Many column inches have covered industry consolidation and in this first article, I aim to explain how the industry reached this point. Later articles will cover subjects including China, joint ventures, emerging players like Brazil and Vietnam,… Read More
Intel’s New Strategy Is The Right One For The Company
Intel has been the focus of a lot of attention in the last week due to the company’s major restructuring announcement which came on the heels of Intel’s most recent earnings announcement. The majority of analyses that immediately followed the company’s announcement focused singularly on the layoffs, which amount to 11% of the … Read More
AMD Forms China X86 Server Chip Joint Venture
We have written a lot of research and notes about the China server market and their unique needs as it relates to security and intellectual property and the ways western server OEMs and chipmakers like Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, ARM Holdings, Qualcomm and IBM’s OpenPOWER are addressing the challenge.
Basically, China wants… Read More
3D NAND – Moore’s Law in the third dimension
For more than a decade 2D NAND has been the leading driver of lithography shrinks, for example, Samsung went from 120nm in 2003 to 16nm in 2014 with shrinks on an almost yearly basis, but the shrinks came at a price. At 16nm Self Aligned Quadruple Pattering (SAQP) was required for the most critical layers and patterning related costs… Read More
Semiconductor capital spending slow in 2016
The outlook for semiconductor capital expenditures (capex) in 2016 is weak. Gartner’s January 2016 forecast called for a decline of 4.7%. IC Insights in February projected a 0.8% decline. The table below shows the Gartner forecast along with the capex forecasts from the top three spenders (Intel, Samsung and TSMC) which… Read More