Daniel Nenni recently blogged about Intel’s claims of industry leading process density that were made at their analysts meeting. It isn’t clear to me why Intel makes this such a big focus at the analysts meetings, they really don’t compete with the foundries much but this seems to be a big deal to them. I thought it would be interesting… Read More
Tag: samsung
28nm FD-SOI: A Unique Sweet Spot Poised to Grow
I have been silently watching STMicroelectronics pursuing FD-SOI technology since quite a few years. FinFET was anyway getting more attention in the semiconductor industry because of several factors involved. But from a technology as well as economic perspective there are many plus points with FD-SOI. I remember my debate,… Read More
GlobalFoundries Visit – Part 1 – It’s All About Execution
Fabless companies and the need for foundries
The success of fabless semiconductor companies is well documented with companies such as Qualcomm, Broadcom, MediaTek, AMD, Avago and others selling semiconductors made using the fabless model (see Fabless: The Transformation of the Semiconductor Industry by Daniel Nenni and … Read More
GlobalFoundries 14nm Process Update
Last Monday Daniel Nenni and I had a conference call with Jason Gorss and Shubhankar Basu of Global Foundries to get an update on their 14nm process. Shubhankar is the product line manager for 14nm.
Global Foundries 14nm process is a FinFET on bulk process they licensed from Samsung and both companies supply the same process although… Read More
Who Will Get the Next Bite of Apple Chip Business?
Recent reports have Intel displacing Qualcomm as the modem supplier and TSMC as the foundry for the next Apple A10 SoC. That is if you call this a credible report: … Read More
Nine Cost Considerations to Keep IP Relevant –Part2
In the first part of this article I wrote about four types of costs which must be considered when an IP goes through design differentiation, customization, characterization, and selection and evaluation for acquisition. In this part of the article, I will discuss about the other five types of costs which must be considered to enhance… Read More
Leveraging Synopsys’ Lynx Design System for SoC Designs on Advanced Nodes
There was a time when design goals were decided in the beginning, targeted on a particular technology node, design planning done for the same, and implementation done through point tools connected indesign flows customized according to the design. It’s no longer the case for modern SoC designs; there are multiple technology … Read More
Can the Likes of iPhone 6s Bring New Disruptions?
In more than 30 years of semiconductors, we have seen many technology-induced disruptions in our ecosystem, be it healthcare, consumer, mobile, aerospace, or any other field for that matter. To name a few are portable healthcare devices at much lower prices, video conferencing over internet that reduced the need of physical … Read More
Samsung Device Solutions Has a New Home
Last week it was the formal opening of Samsung’s new office building in North San Jose. They have brought together all of semiconductor device solutions in a huge new office building. The building can hold 2000 people. Samsung Device Solutions consists of:
- memory
- system LSI
- LED
- display
Dr OH Kwan, the CEO of Samsung Electronics,… Read More
Semiconductor Inventories Under Control
The semiconductor market is currently in a slow growth period. After 10% growth in 2014, the market is expected to only show low single-digit growth in 2015. Our own forecast at Semiconductor Intelligence is 1.5%. In several previous market slowdowns, inventories in the channel have climbed as some companies were slow to adjust… Read More