Why are Top Brass from NXP, Qualcomm, Skyworks Keynoting Upcoming IEEE SOI-3D-SubVt (S3S) Conference? (San Francisco, Oct.’16)

Why are Top Brass from NXP, Qualcomm, Skyworks Keynoting Upcoming IEEE SOI-3D-SubVt (S3S) Conference? (San Francisco, Oct.’16)
by Adele Hars on 08-25-2016 at 12:00 pm

By Fred Allibert
The IEEE S3S Conference (10-13 October 2016 at the San Francisco Airport Hyatt Regency) brings together 3 key technologies that will play a major role in tomorrow’s industry: SOI, 3D integration, and Subthreshold Microelectronics. The numerous degrees of freedom they allow enable the ultra-low power operation… Read More


Brexit and Semiconductors

Brexit and Semiconductors
by Daniel Nenni on 07-01-2016 at 7:00 am

Interesting news last week with 51.9% of British voters saying yes to Brexit (exiting the European Union). What does it have to do with semiconductors? Plenty! After reading the media’s take on the subject and talking to friends (experts) in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, I must say that there is not a consensus to be found and there… Read More


Top Ten #53DAC Highlights

Top Ten #53DAC Highlights
by Tom Dillinger on 06-13-2016 at 12:00 pm

Here is a very subjective list of the Top 10 logistical and technical highlights from DAC’53.

(10) With DAC attendance down from its peak days, the Austin Convention Center served as an excellent venue. There was good participation from companies with design centers in the “Silicon Hills”. And, I saw colleagues from Silicon Valley,… Read More


Highlights of the 28nm FD-SOI San Jose Presentations

Highlights of the 28nm FD-SOI San Jose Presentations
by Adele Hars on 06-05-2016 at 8:00 pm

Samsung FDSOI productionstatus SanJose16c

Most of the presentations from the FD-SOI Symposium in San Jose last month (April 2016) are now available on the SOI Consortium website (click here to see the full list — if they’re posted, you can download them freely from there). If you don’t have time to wade through them all, here are some of the highlights. … Read More


Arteris Unveils Solution for Heterogeneous Cache Coherent SOC’s

Arteris Unveils Solution for Heterogeneous Cache Coherent SOC’s
by Tom Simon on 05-30-2016 at 12:00 pm

Designing SOC’s for markets like automotive and mobile electronics requires taking advantage of every opportunity for optimization. One way to do this is through building a cache coherent system to boost speed and reduce power. Recently, NXP decided to go about this on their automotive MCU based SOC’s by using Arteris’ just-announced… Read More


Why NXP is Moving to FD-SOI (Part II)

Why NXP is Moving to FD-SOI (Part II)
by Ron Martino on 05-10-2016 at 2:00 pm

At NXP, we’re very excited about the prospects for our new i.MX 7 and 8 series of applications processors, which we’re manufacturing on 28nm FD-SOI. As noted in part I of this article series, the new i.MX 7 series, which leverages the 32-bit ARM v7-A core, is targeting the general embedded, e-reader, medical, wearable… Read More


Why is NXP Moving to FD-SOI?

Why is NXP Moving to FD-SOI?
by Ron Martino on 05-08-2016 at 11:00 am

The latest generations of power efficient and full-featured applications processors in NXP’s very successful and broadly deployed i.MX platform are being manufactured on 28nm FD-SOI. The new i.MX 7 series leverages the 32-bit ARM v7-A core, targeting the general embedded, e-reader, medical, wearable and IoT markets, where… Read More


Join the Multi-die IC session on April 21 at EDPS 2016 in Monterey, CA

Join the Multi-die IC session on April 21 at EDPS 2016 in Monterey, CA
by Herb Reiter on 04-14-2016 at 12:00 pm

Following Moore’s Law down to 10 or even 7 nm labeled feature size demands US $ hundreds of millions of up-front investment, a very large design team and two or more years of development time. These parameters suggest that it only makes sense for very high volume applications to continue on the shrink path to increase SoCs’ functionalities.… Read More


2015 semiconductor market flat, 2016 looking somewhat better

2015 semiconductor market flat, 2016 looking somewhat better
by Bill Jewell on 02-27-2016 at 7:00 am

The 2015 semiconductor market finished with a 0.2% decline from 2014, according to World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS). Optimists will round this to flat with 2014. The flat 2015 follows healthy 9.9% growth in 2014. Going into 2015, forecasts were in the range of 3% to 11%. We at Semiconductor Intelligence were at the high… Read More


Semiconductors Future Hinges on a Single Pillar

Semiconductors Future Hinges on a Single Pillar
by Pawan Fangaria on 01-03-2016 at 7:00 am

A unique phenomenon has started manifesting itself under the slew of mergers and acquisitions this year in the semiconductor landscape. This phenomenon is bound to intensify in the near future and would positions itself as a key factor for the future of the semiconductor industry. The winners and losers in the game would be determined… Read More