A couple of days ago I was reading a news article which said how long the world economy will be dependent on a single engine to drive it; obviously that single engine is USA. If we consider the overall economy, definitely USA is driving it, and semiconductor is a large part of it. The semiconductor is driving electronics and that is attracting… Read More
Tag: samsung
Xiaomi Already #3 in Smartphones Behind Samsung and Apple
The Q3 results are mostly in now and there are two big stories. The iPhone 6 of course, which started shipping just before the end of the quarter. The other story is China, now the #1 mobile market in the world. These have led to very different stories for different companies.
Samsung is basically flat with Q2, but that was a big drop. … Read More
In-Design DFM Signoff for 14nm FinFET Designs
While FinFET yield controversy is going on, I see a lot being done to improve that yield by various means. One prime trend today, it must be, it’s worthwhile, is to pull up various signoffs as early as possible during the design cycle. And DFM signoff is a must with respect to yield of fabrication. This reminds me about my patents filed… Read More
Intel: Spectacular PC, Some Progress in Mobile
Intel announced their quarterly results today. They beat consensus by a cent. Not surprisingly their business is driven heavily by the microprocessor businesses, what Intel calls PC and Datacenter. Revenue and earnings both set new records in both groups.
As Brian Krzanich, the CEO, said:In the Data Center, we saw double-digit… Read More
Samsung Profits Fall 60%
Samsung’s profits fell to $3.8B which is 60% down on where they were a year ago. They said this is primarily due to a shortfall in smartphone sales. Samsung’s problem is not that it competes with Apple, their phones seem close enough that the Galaxy line has been doing very well in places like the US. It’s problem… Read More
The Apple Samsung TSMC Intel 14nm Mashup!
One of the strengths of the fabless semiconductor ecosystem is competition since it keeps innovation high and prices low. One of the challenges of fostering competition is that you have to make good on a threat of using a competing product during a pricing negotiation. Well, in my opinion, for the next version of the iPhone, Apple… Read More
Key Collaboration to Enable Designs at Advanced Nodes
In the semiconductor ecosystem, several partners (or better to say stakeholders) join together in the overall value chain to finally output the most coveted chip, err I should say SoC these days. It becomes really interesting when we start analyzing the real value added by each of them, none appears to be less. Well, then to whom … Read More
GlobalFoundries and Samsung at ARM
It was back in April that GlobalFoundries and Samsung announced that GF would license Samsung’s 14nm process to run in their Fab8 in upstate New York. Since then there has not really been any news and of course those of us that follow the foundry industry wondered to what extent there was real substance to the agreement or if … Read More
Who Will Lead at 10nm?
There has been a lot of discussion on SemiWiki lately around 14nm FinFET technology and who really leads and by how much. I thought it would be interesting to review some process metrics for previous technology generation and then make some forecasts around 10nm.
The focus of this article will be Intel, TSMC and Global Foundries/Samsung… Read More
Samsung 14nm FinFET Design with Cadence Tools
The first consumer products with 20nm processing are arriving in 2014 like the 2 billion transistor A8 chip in the iPhone 6, however at the 14nm node there are new designs underway to continue the trend of Moore’s Law. To get a better feel for the challenges of designing with 14nm FinFET technology I watched a 23 minute video … Read More