TSMC was founded in 1987 by Morris Chang. At about the same time, I was wrestling with the question of whether or not to join Actel. Morris had been a top executive at Texas Instruments during the period when TI took ownership of the TTL market. (See my week #8. Texas Instruments and the TTL Wars) I have to admit that when I first … Read More
The TSMC Symposium and OIP Ecosystem Fourm are the most coveted events of the year for the fabless semiconductor ecosystem, absolutely. In my 35 years of semiconductor experience never has there been a more exciting time in the ecosystem and that is clear by the overview and agenda for this year’s event. I hope to see you there:… Read More
Surrogate Wars
Is GloFo using the trade war as an excuse?
Does TSMC get lumped in with China on trade?
Does this alienate TSMC into China’s embrace?
Much like Vietnam and Korea before it, there have been a number of “surrogate” wars between the US and China as well as many other wars between the US and Russia using… Read More
The IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting is in my opinion the leading technology conference to understand the current state-of-the-art in semiconductor process technology. Held each year in early December in San Francisco it is a must attend conference for anyone following technology development. The following is… Read More
Me.
In the early stories of this series (Weeks three though six), I talked about what I believe were the three seminal events in the history of the semiconductor: Shockley’s invention of the transistor, Noyce’s invention of the integrated circuit, and Intel’s 1971 — the introductions of the first commercially successful… Read More
Last year at Semicon I sat down with Soitec and got an update on the company. You can read my write up from last year here. A key point last year was Soitec was continuing to be profitable and grow after several years of financial struggles.
On Thursday, July 11th I got to sit down with Soitec’s CEO, Paul Boudre and get an update on… Read More
An in line quarter
Applied reported a quarter just above the mid point of guidance and analyst numbers (which mimic guidance) with revenues of $3.56B and EPS of $0.74 with guidance of $3.685B+-$150M and EPS o $0.72 to $0.80, also in line with current expectations. All in all a fairly boring quarter with business bouncing along a soft… Read More
Recently, the combined market share of the top ten and top twenty semiconductor companies has been increasing, contrary to the trend of the last fifty years. Given the acceleration in mergers and acquisitions that began in 2015, one might assume that, as the semiconductor industry approaches maturity, companies are consolidating… Read More
On our recent Asian tour, Hong Kong was our last leg, arriving this past Friday and departing Monday, the day the airport stood still. We were on a 2:20PM flight out of Hong Kong back to the states which was one of the last flights to leave before the airport was shut down. Much like the China trade issue, the Hong Kong problem looks to be… Read More
As more than 343 people (and counting) know, we will be releasing the 2019 updated PDF version of our first book “Fabless: The Transformation of the Semiconductor Industry” via handout at a live webinar. The response has been overwhelming and I want to personally thank you. The webinar will be a brief overview of the book with a question… Read More
