Silvaco Talks Atoms to Systems – Where to Next?

Silvaco Talks Atoms to Systems – Where to Next?
by Randy Smith on 07-17-2019 at 10:00 am

At the ES Design West event in San Francisco last week Silvaco’s CTO and EVP of Products, Babak Taheri, gave a presentation titled, “Next Generation SoC Design: From Atoms to Systems”. The time slot for the talk was only 30-minutes which is simply not enough to discuss all the technology Silvaco is providing now. I had not looked closely… Read More


Opening a new front in multi faceted trade war

Opening a new front in multi faceted trade war
by Robert Maire on 05-30-2019 at 5:00 am

We had warned in our May 10th note about the rare earth element risk.  It is one of the few remaining leverage points that China has left that has a potentially strong impact on the US much similar to the US’s impact on Huawei and perhaps even worse. Cutting the US off from rare earth elements is clearly worse than cutting Huawei
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Synchronizing with Sunlin Chou

Synchronizing with Sunlin Chou
by Sunit Rikhi on 05-29-2019 at 1:38 pm

Sometimes we get to see, up close, leaders who make a truly enormous contribution to society. Dr. Sunlin Chou was one such leader and I was a fortunate fellow traveler. Sunlin led the exponential rise of transistors for 35 years, accelerating the waves of revolutionary digital technologies serving humanity.

Fifty years have … Read More


Re Energizing Silicon Innovation

Re Energizing Silicon Innovation
by Bernard Murphy on 05-13-2019 at 12:00 pm

Hardware is roaring back into prominence in technology innovation, from advanced cars to robots, smart homes and smart cities, 5G communication and the burgeoning electronification of industry, medicine and utilities. While software continues to play a role, all of these capabilities depend fundamentally on advances in … Read More


Bottom of a Semiconductor Canoe Cycle Shape

Bottom of a Semiconductor Canoe Cycle Shape
by Robert Maire on 05-09-2019 at 12:00 pm

Nice numbers despite the cycle bottom
KLA put up EPS of $1.80 versus street of $1.67 on revenues of $1.097B versus street of $1.08B. However guidance was weaker than the street was hoping for with a range of $1.21B to $1.29B in revenues generating between $1.55 and $1.85 in non GAAP EPS. This is compared to current street estimates … Read More


A Tale of Two Semis

A Tale of Two Semis
by Robert Maire on 04-21-2019 at 7:00 am

It was the best of times (for stocks)
It was the worst of times (for memory chips)
The disconnect between stock & chip prices

The Venn Diagram of Stocks and Chips

Having been involved with semiconductor and tech stocks for a long time there has always been a loose correlation between the fortunes of the industry and the fortunes… Read More


Report from SPIE EUV Update 2019

Report from SPIE EUV Update 2019
by Robert Maire on 03-01-2019 at 7:00 am

Not as much new – No breakthrough announcements, 300 watts is better than 250 watts – Pellicle Problems, TSMC is EUV king – Third times a charm? We attended this years SPIE Lithography convention in San Jose as we have for many years. Although the show was quite enthusiastic and EUV was the central topic, as it has… Read More


Semiconductor Equipment Companies Facing Significant Headwinds in 2019

Semiconductor Equipment Companies Facing Significant Headwinds in 2019
by Robert Castellano on 02-13-2019 at 12:00 pm

In January 2019, the memory market has been hit with a significant amount of negative news.

  • On Jan. 15, DRAM manufacturer Nanya Technology reported its Q4 2018 revenue was $551 million, down 30.4% QoQ.
  • On Jan. 24, 2019, SK Hynix reported Q4 2018 earnings. Revenues fell 13.7% QoQ to $8.7 billion, while operating profit amounted to
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Semiconductor Security and Sleep Loss

Semiconductor Security and Sleep Loss
by Daniel Nenni on 02-11-2019 at 12:00 pm

One of the semiconductor topics that keeps me up at night is security. We track security related topics on SemiWiki and while the results are encouraging, we still have a very long way to go. Over the last three years we have published 148 security related blogs that have garnered a little more than 400,000 views. Security touches … Read More


2018 Semiconductor Year in Review

2018 Semiconductor Year in Review
by Scotten Jones on 01-04-2019 at 12:00 pm

Strong Overall Market Growth but a Slowdown Looms
After six years of single digit percentage growth in the overall semiconductor market, 2017 saw almost 22% growth and 2018 year-to-date is up roughly 17% (based on numbers published by the world semiconductor trade statistics). The big growth driver the last two years has been … Read More