Twenty-five years ago, SEMATECH first alerted the world to a concern known as the design productivity gap: the observation that the ability to manufacture complex chips had started outpacing the capability of designers to create them by more than a factor of two. This concern was subsequently reiterated… Read More
-A repeat of the auto industry bailout of self inflicted issues?
-Not just money but systemic change is needed
-Perhaps chips need an Elon led revolution like autos & space
-Govt $ need focus not thrown into existing spend avalanche.
Are chips a replay of the auto industry bailout a decade ago? Deja Vu all over again.
The… Read More
In the mid 1980’s, Tommy George, then President of Motorola’s Semiconductor Sector, pointed out to me that the semiconductor revenue per unit area had been a constant throughout the history of the industry including the period when germanium transistors made up a large share of semiconductor revenue. I began tracking the numbers… Read More
Let me start with a quote:
“Competition is always a good thing. It forces us to do our best. A monopoly renders people complacent and satisfied with mediocrity.”– Nancy Pearcy
By the end of post, it will be quite evident that it was the competition that led to one of the classiest campaign “Intel Inside” for its processors. As I mentioned… Read More
SEMATECH has been around for over 20 years, starting in Austin. Today it is in upstate New York which increasingly seems to be the area for semiconductor research with IBM (still doing research although they sold their semiconductor business to GlobalFoundries), GlobalFoundries’ own Fab 8, the College of Nanoscale Science… Read More
I have previously written about SPIE day 1 and 2 so I want to wrap up my coverage with some impressions from days 3 and 4. My single biggest take away from the conference is that EUV has made tremendous progress in the last 12 months. Last year the mood of the conference was in my opinion pessimistic with respect to EUV, this year the mood… Read More
Rumor that Intel has quit Sematech confirmed by website?
Potential industry impact-
Is this a consolidation by-product?
Do we need a trade group?
Does it benefit Intel?
We have heard from several sources over the last few days that Intel has quit Sematech, the semiconductor industry trade group focused on technology development… Read More
Novati is a semiconductor company that you probably haven’t heard of. It has its roots in Sematech back when Sematech was mainly in Austin rather than New York where it is today. The Sematech fab first became an independent company and then acquired by SVTC and operated under that name for 4 years. Finally, last the investors… Read More
At Semicon a few weeks ago the big news was that Intel was making a big investment in ASML as a way of funding two development programs: extreme ultra-violet (EUV) and 450mm wafers. This week TSMC announced that they would join the program too, committing 275M Euros over a five year period. They are also taking a 5% stake in ASML. ASML… Read More
