Linley: Mobile Peaked in 2013?

Linley: Mobile Peaked in 2013?
by Paul McLellan on 04-28-2015 at 7:00 am

Last week was the Linley Mobile Conference. Mobile is a huge semiconductor market and, outside of Intel, is the main driver for next generation process technologies. A new generation of mobile phones comes along, fills the leading edge fabs for a year or two and then moves on to the next generation. Nothing comes close to requiring… Read More


2015 Semiconductor Capex led by Memory & Foundry

2015 Semiconductor Capex led by Memory & Foundry
by Bill Jewell on 04-25-2015 at 7:00 am

Semiconductor industry capital expenditures (capex) in 2015 are expected to be $69 billion in 2015, up 6% from $65 billion in 2014 according to IC Insights. We at Semiconductor Intelligence have compiled 2015 capex outlook by company. The major memory companies account for 38% of 2015 capex and the major foundries account for … Read More


Shift-West of Semicon Power Centers

Shift-West of Semicon Power Centers
by Pawan Fangaria on 04-23-2015 at 5:00 pm

It’s true that Japan was once the center of semiconductor business and we were carrying on with that perception until recently. In 1990, six out of top10 semiconductor companies (excluding pure-play foundries) were in Japan; and 59% of worldwide semiconductor market was concentrated with the top10 companies. The semiconductor… Read More


CEVA DSP Cores … Inside Intel

CEVA DSP Cores … Inside Intel
by Majeed Ahmad on 04-22-2015 at 3:00 pm

Intel Corp. is gaining discernible market share in the LTE chips business, and Qualcomm, the 800-pound gorilla in the mobile baseband market, suddenly looks in Intel’s crosshairs. A closer look at Intel’s journey from a mobile silicon underdog to the owner of a swelling LTE footprint shows that design ingredients… Read More


Intel Inline with reduced expectations-2015 flat to down-Slashing Capex

Intel Inline with reduced expectations-2015 flat to down-Slashing Capex
by Robert Maire on 04-16-2015 at 4:00 pm

Intel Inline with lowered numbers- 2015 Revs to be Flat…
Capex Slashed by 13% to $8.7B- 10nm at risk???
Mortgaging the future???
Is the foundry business dead???
Desperately seeking growth!!!

Intel Inline…

Intel reported revenues of $12.8B and EPS of $0.41 in line with downward revised estimates after chopping $1B
Read More


Moore’s Law is dead, long live Moore’s Law – part 1

Moore’s Law is dead, long live Moore’s Law – part 1
by Scotten Jones on 04-15-2015 at 10:00 pm

April 19th is the fiftieth anniversary of Moore’s law! We thought it would be a good opportunity to reflect back on fifty years of Moore’s law, what it is, what it has meant to the industry, what the current status of the law is and what we may see in the future.

Moore’s law
Moore’s law is so well known that you wouldn’t think we would… Read More


Cu-Pillar in Advanced Logic Devices

Cu-Pillar in Advanced Logic Devices
by Arabinda Das on 04-10-2015 at 7:00 pm

In 2001, flipchip with solder bump was already a dominant technology and it was replacing wire bonding as the main interconnection choice for a growing number of devices. It was offering fine pitch interconnections for increased I/O counts. In the solder bump process, a bump is formed on the chip and on the package substrate and … Read More


US is the Ultimate Leader in Semiconductor Business

US is the Ultimate Leader in Semiconductor Business
by Pawan Fangaria on 04-07-2015 at 6:00 pm

Last year in November when I looked at the world’s top20 semiconductor companies with Samsungand TSMCbeing at the second and third rank respectively, first being Intel, I computed the sales numbers of the companies based on their countries and found that Taiwan and South Korea accounted for 34.5% of the total sales of the top20 … Read More


Breakfast was Fab: West Coast Wafers to Wall Street

Breakfast was Fab: West Coast Wafers to Wall Street
by Paul McLellan on 04-07-2015 at 7:00 am

SEMI describes themselves as “the global industry association serving the manufacturing supply chain for the micro- and nano-electronics industries.” That is a pretty broad remit. One of the things that they do as a neutral party is produce the World Fab Forecast. This is actually a bottom-up database that tracks fabs as they … Read More


Security All Around in SoCs at DAC

Security All Around in SoCs at DAC
by Pawan Fangaria on 04-06-2015 at 12:00 am

Last month I was on my way to write a detailed article on important aspects to look at while designing an SoC. This was important in the new context of modern SoCs that go much beyond the traditional power, performance and area (PPA) requirements. I had about 12-13 parameters in my list that I couldn’t cover in one go, so I put the write-up… Read More