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
Tag: samsung
No reason for FD-SOI Roadmap to follow Moore’s law!
We in Semiwiki are writing about FD-SOI since 2012, describing all the benefits offered by the technology in term of power consumption, price per performance compared with FinFET, etc. Let me assess again that I am fully convinced that FD-SOI is a very smart and efficient way to escape from the Moore’s law paradox: the transistor… 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
EUV is coming but will we need it?
I have written multiple articles about this year’s SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference describing all of the progress EUV has made in the last year. Source power is improving, photoresists are getting faster, prototype pellicles are in testing, multiple sites around the world are exposing wafers by the thousands and more. … Read More
Book Review Mobile Unleashed The History of ARM
After having taken a closer look at x86 processor with “Inside The Machine” I came across “Mobile Unleashed“, a book about the history of a non-Silicon Valley company and technology for a change that has significantly shaped the world of computing as we know it today: ARM.
Written by Daniel Nenni and Don Dingee the book tells the story… Read More
Mobile Unleashed…Reviewed
I finished reading Don Dingee and Dan Nenni’s book, Mobile Unleashed, the Origin and Evolution of ARM Processors in Our Devices. I guess by way of disclosure I should say that Don and Dan both blogged with me here on SemiWiki for several years before I joined Cadence, and Dan’s last book Fabless was co-authored with me… Read More
10nm SRAM Projections – Who will lead
At ISSCC this year Samsung published a paper entitled “A 10nm FinFET 128Mb SRAM with Assist Adjustment System for Power, Performance, and Area Optimization. In the paper Samsung disclosed a high density 6T SRAM cell size of 0.040µm[SUP]2[/SUP]. I thought it would be interesting to take a look at how this cell size stacks … Read More
OCF shows there may be hope for IoT consortia yet
The recent launch of the Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) was met first with a wave of “oh good, another IoT consortium”, then “phew, it’s just a rebrand of the OIC”, followed by a bit of confusion over why a few AllSeen Alliance players and some other names jumped in. Is it just a marketing ploy, or is there more to this?… Read More
Sustainability, Semiconductor Companies and Software Companies
I certainly want to leave the Earth a better place to live for my children and generations to come, so sustainability is a value that resonates with me. How is a consumer like me to know which companies are the most sustainable in areas that matter, like:… Read More
Positive pointers from Samsung, GF, Renesas, NXP/Freescale, ST, Soitec – so will 2016 be the year of FD-SOI?
A little over a month into 2016 and we already have a raft of FD-SOI news from Samsung, GlobalFoundries, NXP/Freescale, Renesas and more. Quite a bit of it came out of the recent SOI Consortium forum in Tokyo. Many of the presentations are now available on the SOI Consortium website (click here to see what’s there) – but keep checking… Read More