It’s no coincidence that the TSMC Symposium is right after the Q1 earnings call. This will allow TSMC to talk more freely and they certainly will, my opinion. It is a very interesting time in the semiconductor industry and TSMC, being the bellwether, can tell us what will happen the rest of the year and give us some 2020 insights.… Read More
TSMC and Samsung continue to raise the competitive bar for FinFET foundry market share with dueling announcements this week. As I mentioned previously in the blog Semiconductor Foundry Landscape Update 2019, FinFETs are the market to watch with the coming onslaught of 5G and AI chips on the edge, in the cloud, and in our autonomous… Read More
Last week TSMC announced the availability of its complete 5nm design infrastructure that enables SoC designers to implement advanced mobile and high-performance computing applications for the emerging 5G and AI driven markets. This fifth generation 3D FinFET design infrastructure includes technology files, PDKs (Process… Read More
The cloud is a highly popular term that a lot of people don’t fully understand. If you are one of those people please read on as I will share my experience, observations, and opinions. Even if you are a cloud aficionado you may want to catch up on what’s new with EDA cloud services so again read on.
When we first started SemiWiki 9 years … Read More
I plan to attend to the GSA European Forum in Munich (April 15-16), so I first looked at the event description and at the impressive speakers list. In such event, the goal is at 50% to listen, and 50% to network with the speakers and the other attendant. The center of gravity is clearly semiconductor, but the event involved speakers … Read More
In 2015 Intel acquired Altera for $16.7B changing one of the most heated rivalries (Xilinx vs Altera) the fabless semiconductor ecosystem has ever seen. Prior to the acquisition the FPGA market was fairly evenly split between Xilinx and Altera with Lattice and Actel playing to market niches in the shadows. There were also two FPGA… Read More
Last week I attended the 2019 SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference. I gave two presentations, attended dozens of papers and conducted three interviews. I will be doing some detailed write ups particularly on EUV but I am waiting for the presentations from several of the papers. In the mean time I thought I would put some overall … Read More
The GLOBALFOUNDRIES story has been one of the more interesting ones inside the fabless semiconductor ecosystem. It started in 2008 when AMD announced a partnership with ATIC of Abu Dhabi to create a new joint venture company to become the world’s first truly global semiconductor foundry. On March 4[SUP]th[/SUP] of 2009 (happy… Read More
I was asked to present at Nikon’s LithoVision event again this year. LithoVision is held the day before the SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference also in San Jose. The following is a write up of my talk.… Read More
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
