On the Cadence booth at DAC, Lars Liebmann of IBM presented on the challenges of 10nm. As he put it, how the lithography folks are keeping things very interesting for the EDA tool development engineers. Although 14nm/16nm hasn’t yet ramped into HVM, the advanced work for tools and IP has all moved to 10nm. Although Lars gave… Read More
This week is the 10[SUP]th[/SUP] annual ARM Technical Conference in Silicon Valley. In regards to size, content, and relevance, I believe ARM TechCon is the #1 event for the fabless semiconductor ecosystem for sure. I attended keynotes, sessions, and walked the hallways on Wednesday and Thursday. I wish I could write about everything… Read More
The global semiconductor market was US$82.2 billion in the second quarter of 2014 according to World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS). 2Q 2014 was up 4.8% from 1Q 2014 up 10.1% from 2Q 2013. Healthy growth should continue into 3Q 2014. The table below shows initial revenue growth guidance for 2Q 2014, final reported revenue… Read More
Recently someone described the Internet of Things (IoT) as being the semiconductor classification that we used to call ‘other’. It’s a nice line but actually I think IoT really is something different from what we were already doing before. Although it is a market that cuts across medical, automotive, home-electronics,… Read More
SEMI’s Strategic Materials Conference is coming up fast, on September 30th and October 1st next week at the Biltmore in Santa Clara. This year’s theme, Materials Matter—Enabling the Future of IC Fabrication and Packaging, will take a broad look at what is driving the demand for new materials, and how material suppliers … Read More
I was in Tanzania a few weeks ago. One of the conceits that we have in the US is that we lead the world in technology. That is true in many areas but in mobile the US is a laggard. Just look at the fuss made about NFC payments in the new iPhone given that Japan had mobile payments over a decade ago.
Another area where the US is a laggard, or maybe… Read More
The recent outbreak of Ebola in West Africa underscores the urgent need for globally affordable tools to help fight infectious diseases. Among these, a method to rapidly and accurately identify the infectious pathogen is of particular importance.
In recent years, researchers have tried many ways to achieve easily portable … Read More
I have it on pretty good authority that IBM has in fact come to terms with GLOBALFOUNDRIES on the sale of their semiconductor business. For those of you who have been following the story, especially the IBM semiconductor people, it has been a real roller coaster ride. If in fact this handshake deal goes through (expect a public announcement… Read More
The semiconductor design industry is ever challenged with increasing chip density, manufacturing complexity with cutting-edge technologies, accommodating multiple IPs with different functionalities from various sources, optimizing power, performance and cost, maximizing manufacturability and reliability and still… Read More
Since power has become a critical factor in semiconductor chip design, the stress is towards decreasing supply voltage to reduce power consumption. However, the threshold voltage to switch devices cannot go down beyond a certain limit and these results in an extremely narrow margin for noise between the two. And that gets further… Read More
