As I see the semiconductor industry going through significant changes and advances, yet ironically plagued by a growing perception that the pace of scaling is slowing, I was inclined to take a peek into what the industry experts say about the state of the industry and the future of Moore’s Law. Fortunately, at last week’s International… Read More
The smartphone is becoming a commodity, a lifecycle stage where the strong get stronger, the weak get weaker, and the products standardize and start to look alike. This dynamic is driving innovation in existing products to extremes and spawning a new class of wearable devices.
Today two major players are leading the mobile hardware… Read More
As a professional conference attendee I see a lot of keynotes, some good and some bad. I saw a great one from Kurt Shuler at the SEMICO IP Impact Conference last week. Why this conference was not standing room only I do not know. Kurt’s characterization of the semiconductor industry was well worth the price of admission. I didn’t actually… Read More
I am at ARM TechCon today. One interesting presentation was made jointly between Samsung, Cadence and ARM themselves about developing physical libraries (ARM), a tool flow (Cadence) and test chips (Samsung). It was titled Samsung ARM and Cadence collaborate on the silicon-proven world first 14-nm FinFET Cortex-A7 ARM CPU and… Read More
At DAC this year there was a presentation from Samsung titled, “Profile-based Architecture Power Modeling Methodology for AP/SoC Product”. I’ve been using Samsung Smart Phones for the past four generations, so was very curious about how they have managed to improve the average battery life from less than… Read More
Global semiconductor capital spending is headed for another decline in 2013, following a 12% decline in 2012. Gartner’s September forecast called for a 7% decline in 2013. Most of the major spenders expect flat to declining expenditures in 2013. Intel in July estimated 2013 spending of $11 billion, flat with 2012 and down from … Read More
The legend of Intel being two process nodes ahead of the rest of the industry is quickly coming to an end. To come to terms with this you need to do an apple to apple comparison which is what I will do right here, right now.
First and foremost let’s compare SoC silicon delivery since SoCs are driving the semiconductor industry and will … Read More
This time it is between the suppliers of semiconductor manufacturing equipments. And they are among the top ranked global peers. Applied Materials Inc., holding the numero uno position in sales of chip manufacturing equipments in 2012, agreed to acquire Tokyo Electron Ltd, the third in that ranking. Gary Dickerson of Applied… Read More
There was some serious backlash to the “Intel Bay Trail Fail” blog I posted last week, mostly personal attacks by the spoon fed Intel faithful, but there are however some very interesting points made amongst the 30+ comments so be sure and read them when you have a chance.
The Business insider article “The iPhone… Read More
It now appears that Steve Ballmer was suddenly given his walking papers at the urging of an activist investor (ValueAct) and with the concurrence of Bill Gates. Wall Street’s growing impatience tends to coincide when the Innovators Dilemma scenario has taken hold of a company that has been unable to overcome its challengers. Why… Read More
