Is it just me or has AMD just pulled off one of the most amazing semiconductor comebacks of the century? Let’s take a closer look.
Who doesn’t long for the days when Intel and AMD went head to head in the battle for microprocessor supremacy? Back then Intel, was still operating under the Andrew Grove mantra of “Only the Paranoid Survive”… Read More
Two weeks ago the SEMI ISS Conference was held at Half Moon Bay in California. On the opening day of the conference Gary Patton CTO of GLOBALFOUNDRIES gave the keynote address and I also had the chance to sit down with Gary for an interview the next day.
When I started doing IC design back in 1978 we had 6,000 nm channel gate lengths, and today you can buy a smart phone with 16 nm or 14 nm technology, although the gate lengths in those phones are more like 34 nm. The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) makes predictions about emerging trends in our industry and… Read More
While pushing Moore’s Law’s boundaries in the world of 2D packaging, companies are starting to explore nontraditional approaches towards designing integrated circuit chips. 2D packaging is currently the most used method in designing chips in the industry, and while it leads in efficiency of power and performance, it lacks … Read More
A maturetool. A legacytool. A tool that’s a little long in the tooth. We have all used these terms to refer to an EDA product that has not been able to keep up with technical challenges of model complexity, performance, or new features required by current SoC and system design requirements.… Read More
For the last several years, people have predicted the end of Moore’s Law. The reasoning is that there is a limit at which one can’t shrink transistors any further. A reoccurring comment has been “You can’t divide an atom.” I had assumed that its demise would be at the hands of a new paradigm like quantum computing. Now, with Intel’s … Read More
On Monday morning on December 7, 2016 Greg Yeric of Arm gave an excellent and wide ranging plenary talk at IEDM entitled “Moore’s Law at 50: Are we planning for retirement?”. You can download Greg’s slide deck here.… Read More
Wireless Power Will Become Mainstream:
Wireless power will continue to gain traction with increased consumer demand charged by new products and applications. There are two different standards vying for consumer adoption; Qi and Rezence, but the consumer need not worry about a standards war because companies like Hewlett Packard… Read More
On Sunday evening December 6[SUP]th[/SUP] before IEDM, IMEC held the IMEC Technology Forum (ITF). The ITF was held at the Belgium ambassador’s residence, a really beautiful setting for a meeting.
The ITF began with a brief welcome by the Belgium ambassador followed by a brief introduction to IMEC. IMEC is a research institute … Read More
An indecision is actually a very bad decision. It is an implicit decision for the status quo. It is worse than an explicit decision regardless of how bad that decision turns out to be. In my experience, our indecisiveness is caused by various reasons involving trade-offs.… Read More
