First Thoughts from #54DAC!

First Thoughts from #54DAC!
by Daniel Nenni on 06-24-2017 at 7:00 am

This was my 34[SUP]th[/SUP] DAC, yes 34. It is a shame blogging did not exist back then because I would have liked to have read thoughts from my eager young mind, or maybe not. The first thing that struck me this year is the great content. Before DAC I review the sessions I want to see and this year there were many more than I had time for. … Read More


Samsung Details Foundry Roadmap

Samsung Details Foundry Roadmap
by Scotten Jones on 06-09-2017 at 10:00 am

Samsung recently held a meeting where they laid out a detailed roadmap for their foundry business. On Tuesday June 1st, Daniel Nenni and myself had an interview with Kelvin Low, senior director of foundry marketing and business development to discuss the details of Samsung’s plans.… Read More


Memory drives semiconductor boom in 2017

Memory drives semiconductor boom in 2017
by Bill Jewell on 06-03-2017 at 7:00 am

The semiconductor market was down 0.4% in first quarter 2017 from 4Q 2016 and up 18.1% from a year ago, according to World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS). The 0.4% decline in 1Q 2017 versus 4Q 2016 is strong compared to an average 4% decline from 4Q to 1Q over the previous five years. The relative strength in 1Q 2017 was driven… Read More


SEMICON Southeast Asia reflects strong equipment market

SEMICON Southeast Asia reflects strong equipment market
by Bill Jewell on 04-28-2017 at 4:00 pm

SEMICON Southeast Asia was held this week in Penang, Malaysia. Over 6500 people attended the conference to learn about the latest trends and equipment in semiconductor manufacturing.


Dr. Dan Tracy, Senior Director Industry Research and Statistics at SEMI, presented an optimistic outlook for the semiconductor equipment market… Read More


14nm 16nm 10nm and 7nm – What we know now

14nm 16nm 10nm and 7nm – What we know now
by Scotten Jones on 04-07-2017 at 7:00 am

Last week Intel held a manufacturing day where they revealed a lot of information about their 10nm process for the first time and information on competitor processes continues to slowly come out as well. I thought it would be useful to summarize what we know now, especially since some of what Intel announced was different than what… Read More


Intel Manufacturing Day: Nodes must die, but Moore’s Law lives!

Intel Manufacturing Day: Nodes must die, but Moore’s Law lives!
by Scotten Jones on 03-29-2017 at 4:00 pm

Yesterday I attended Intel’s manufacturing day. This was the first manufacturing day Intel has held in three years and according to Intel their most in depth ever.

Nodes must die
I have written several articles comparing process technologies across the leading-edge logic producers – GLOBALFOUNDRIES, Intel, Samsung… Read More


Samsung Should Just Buy eSilicon Already!

Samsung Should Just Buy eSilicon Already!
by Daniel Nenni on 03-22-2017 at 12:00 pm

As you all know I’m a big fan of the ASIC business dating back to the start of the fabless semiconductor transformation where anybody could send a design spec to an ASIC company and get a chip back. The ASIC business model also started the smart phone revolution when Samsung built the first Apple SoCs for the iPhones and iPads.

Today … Read More


Succeeding with 56G SerDes, HBM2, 2.5D and FinFET

Succeeding with 56G SerDes, HBM2, 2.5D and FinFET
by Daniel Nenni on 03-17-2017 at 4:00 pm

eSilicon presented their advanced ASIC design capabilities at a seminar last Wednesday evening. This event was closed to the press, bloggers and analysts, but I managed to get some details from a friend who attended. The event title was: “Advanced ASICs for the Cloud-Computing Era: Succeeding with 56G SerDes, HBM2, 2.5D and FinFETRead More


SPIE 2017: EUV Readiness for High Volume Manufacturing

SPIE 2017: EUV Readiness for High Volume Manufacturing
by Scotten Jones on 03-03-2017 at 12:00 pm

The SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference is the world’s leading conference addressing photolithography. This year on the opening day of the conference, Samsung and Intel presented papers summarizing the readiness of EUV for high volume manufacturing (HVM). In this article, I will begin by summarizing the EUV plans … Read More


EUV is NOT Ready for 7nm!

EUV is NOT Ready for 7nm!
by Daniel Nenni on 02-27-2017 at 8:00 am

The annual SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference kicked off last night with vendor sponsored networking events and such. SPIE is the international society for optics and photonics but this year SPIE Advanced Lithography is all about the highly anticipated EUV technology. Scotten Jones and I are at SPIE so expect more detailedRead More