The third quarter 2020 semiconductor market totaled $114 billion, up 11.0% from second quarter 2020, according to World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS). The 3Q20 growth was the highest since 11.6% in 3Q16. The strong 3Q20 growth follows a 2.1% decline in 2Q20 versus 1Q20. The second quarter is normally a healthy growth … Read More
The semiconductor industry today is faced with several substantial issues—the continuing rise in design costs for complex SoCs, the decrease in the incidence of first-time-right designs and the increase in the design cycle time against shrinking market windows and decreasing product life cycles. An additional factor has … Read More
The semiconductor foundry business has been front page news of late and for good reason, it’s an exciting time in the semiconductor industry and the foundries are where it all begins. Unfortunately, most of the “exciting” news has been overblown but this topic is of great interest, to me at least. Having been intimately involved… Read More
If you search on “the six signs” you will find references to a fantasy novel, “The Dark is Rising Sequence” by Susan Cooper. In this fantasy work there are six signs: wood, bronze, iron, water, fire and stone. Their purpose has something to do with driving away the Dark. Here is a quote from the book that puts these six signs in some context:… Read More
Wally Rhines is President and CEO of Cornami, Inc., a company named for its “tsunami of cores”. The company has developed a “TruStream” programming environment that generates independent executable streams of data and control. They have also designed a chip that provides the computational fabric for multi-core execution of… Read More
No-one likes being put on the spot and yet we all like a forecast…and as we all know, the only guarantee with a forecast is that it is wrong. Sports commentators have carved out a special niche for themselves with the ‘commentators curse’, just as they extol the virtues of an individual or a team, the sporting gods prove them wrong in … Read More
Is the US finally getting truly tough on China? or just a bluff?
Could lead to a global reset of the industry & 10 year retreat?
Tech stocks wings have melted after super heated stock run?
SMIC added to the “naughty” list?
There have been numerous reports that the US is considering adding SMIC to the China “naughty”… Read More
I made it through the Virtual Intel Architecture Day last week and much to my surprise it was very well done. Virtual events have been hit and miss but this one was definitely a hit. Great content, approachable experts, a glitch-free experience. The mainstream media has been redundantly covering it so let me add my many years of experience,… Read More
Cyber security, economic growth, government leadership and industry support must be weighed
The debate
A healthy public debate is underway as to whether India should invest in semiconductor manufacturing. PVG Menon, former chair of the India Electronics and Semiconductor Association, supports the objective as part of a full… Read More
KLA reports excellent June & Better Sept Guide-
Orbotech Diversification Helps provide growth-
Mix is perfect-China working fine-
Foundry is solid-
Solid execution and Financials
KLAC reported $1.46B in revenues and $2.73 Non GAAP with gross margins of 60.3%. That is versus expectations of $1.42B and EPS of $2.41…a… Read More
