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
Tag: intel
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
Why I’ll Always Be an Andy Grove Fan
Silicon Valley sadly lost a respected and revered leader with the death of Andrew Grove in March. The co-founder and former CEO of Intel was an inspiration to generations of technologists and business leaders, including me. Andy had a profound influence on me throughout my career. And while I only met him once, I feel as though I’ve… Read More
Intel And Qualcomm Partner (Yes, Really)
For the longest time, the 802.11ad space, also known as WiGig by others, was a conglomeration of different 60 GHz Wi-Fi technologies. There have been many companies that have announced technologies utilizing 60 GHz Wi-Fi technologies including Intel, Nitero, Peraso, Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics and SiBEAM. Even though many… Read More