As we celebrate the 50[SUP]th[/SUP] anniversary of the publication of Moore’s Law in Electronics Magazine (April 19, 1965), the industry finds itself in an increasingly costly global effort to keep transistor scaling on track. “Is Moore’s Law dead?” is a common question these days.
But practically speaking the doubling of transistor… Read More
This will be a year of change for the fabless semiconductor ecosystem, absolutely. Last year we were wondering how Samsung Mobile was going to compete with the China clones and other low end smart phones. We now know the answer to that question thanks to the Chipworks tear down of the Galaxy S6. SemiWiki IP expert Dr. Eric Esteve blogged… Read More
For a design engineer engulfed in the daily rigorous routine of having to keep in sync with updates from various design team members as well the dictums of the design management team, the task of remaining up-to-date with the design information is very often daunting.
What design changes have been checked in this week? Is the verification… Read More
A weak first quarter outlook for the semiconductor market is indicating a slow start to 2015. Intel recently lowered the midpoint of its 1Q 2015 revenue guidance from $13.7 billion (down 7% from 4Q 2014) to $12.8 billion (down 13%). The table below shows the estimated top 25 semiconductor companies revenue change for 4Q 2014 versus… Read More
The relationship between TSMC and UMC is one of the more interesting ones in the fabless semiconductor ecosystem in my opinion. Both are headquartered in Hsinchu Taiwan and it is very hard to visit one company without seeing the other as they have facilities right across the street from each other. They also share humble beginnings… Read More
Are you interested in any of these?
No? Then I think you got the wrong… Read More
In my last blog here, I talked about last 30+ years of semiconductor IC market. While we have seen this market growing at CAGR of ~9% over last 30+ years, the CAGR of current decade is expected to be at just ~4%. Although the base size of the overall semiconductor IC market is quite healthy, expected to be at ~$378B by 2019, we cannot hope… Read More
There is quite a debate raging on whether Samsung Foundry is truly in production at 14nm. The word amongst the fabless semiconductor ecosystem is yes and this comes from two very large fabless companies that are reportedly using Samsung for 14nm and have even started looking at Samsung 10nm. Of course you can Google for stories by… Read More
1000 simulated wafers versus 700 simulated
At the opening of the SPIE conference ASML announced that TSMC had reached 1000 wafers a day “exposed”… Read More
TCAD is a somewhat specialized area since not that many people design semiconductor processes compared to the number who design chips. Bit without TCAD there would be no chips. One area where the two domains intersect is that of SEE, where neutrons (mainly) can cause a flop or a memory bit to change. Since we live on a radioactive planet… Read More
