Traditionally logic devices built on top of thin-film-transistors (TFTs) have used one type of device, either an NMOS a-Si: TFT (hydrogenated amorphous silicon) or a PMOS organic device. Recently a-Si:H and pentacene PMOS TFTs have been integrated into complementary logic structures similar to CMOS. This, in turn, creates… Read More
There were a number of trends discernible at CES this year, one of the big ones being wearables, especially in the medical and fitness areas. I wear a FitBit Flex and I have, but rarely wear, a Pebble Watch that links to my iPhone. I would say that at this point they are promising but are more gimmicks than truly useful. My Fitbit measures… Read More
Yesterday was Dan Niles’s economic review that he presents quarterly for GSA. As always he starts from big macroeconomic picture and ends up looking at the implications for semiconductor end-markets and thus the implication for semiconductors in general and the fabless ecosystem in particular.
The big picture is that… Read More
The book “Fabless: The Transformation of the Semiconductor Industry” is now available in the Kindle (mobi) and iBooks (ePub) formats. We are really looking forward to your feedback before we go to print in March. This was truly a Tom Sawyer experience for me. As the story goes Tom made whitewashing a fence seem like fun so his friends… Read More
This year marks the 20th anniversary of GSA and collaboration around the foundry and fabless ecosystem. Originally GSA was FSA, the fabless semiconductor association. There was a semiconductor associations 20 years ago, the SIA, but that was still the “real men have fabs” era and fabless semiconductor companies… Read More
In continuation to my earlier observations and anticipations (landscape1, landscape2) which came up to my expectations, I was further inspired to ponder over the macros of our ever growing semiconductor industry. We may argue the business is stagnating, we may argue that the pace of scaling is slowing, but when I look back at the… Read More
At the Jasper Users Group meeting in October Rajeev Ranjan presented on the JasperGold COV App which he described as the Swiss army knife for verification. It comes in many sizes and contains many useful tools.
The primary goal of COV is to provide coverage metrics:
At the SEMI ISS conference earlier this week, the last speaker in the technology challenges section was Handel Jones of IBS. I’ve known Handel since the mid-1980s when he came to VLSI Technology and told us we were losing money on 90% of the designs we were doing but our cost model was not good enough and so we didn’t even… Read More
Based on local traffic patterns and my experience in Silicon Valley over the last 30 years we are looking at a much higher employment rate inside the fabless semiconductor ecosystem, absolutely. Jobs are being filled more so than I have seen in the past ten years. The challenge of course is finding the right people for the right job… Read More
Paul Farrar, the General Manager of the Global 450mm Consortium (G450C) presented at the SEMI ISS conference today. What is G450C, it is a public-private consortium to develop a cost-effective 450mm wafer fabrication infrastructure, develop equipment prototypes and coordinate the industry move to 450mm. It is located in Albany… Read More
