Is the Intel Cash Cow in Danger?

Is the Intel Cash Cow in Danger?
by Daniel Nenni on 06-14-2016 at 4:00 pm

There was an interesting panel at the Silicon Summit sponsored by the Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA) on “Designing for the Cloud.” It was led by Linley Gwennap (The Linley Group) with Ivo Bolsons (Xilinx), Ian Ferguson (ARM), and Steve Pawloski (Micron). Missing of course was Intel which derives close to 30% of its revenue… Read More


TSMC Update at #53DAC!

TSMC Update at #53DAC!
by Daniel Nenni on 05-31-2016 at 4:00 pm

TSMC is having an interesting year for sure. I was at the TSMC Symposium in Hsinchu last week and everyone was talking about the new 16FFC process. Silicon is out and it is exceeding expectations leading some people (me included) to believe that TSMC 16FFC will be the next TSMC 28nm in regards to popularity. To be clear, 16FFC is currently… Read More


How TSMC Tackles Variation at Advanced Nodes

How TSMC Tackles Variation at Advanced Nodes
by Pawan Fangaria on 05-27-2016 at 12:00 pm

The design community is always hungry for high-performance, low-power, and low-cost devices. There is emergence of FinFET and FDSOI technologies at ultra-low process nodes to provide high-performance and low-power requirements at lower die-size. However, these advanced process nodes are prone to new sources of variation.… Read More


ARM tests out TSMC 10FinFET – with two cores

ARM tests out TSMC 10FinFET – with two cores
by Don Dingee on 05-25-2016 at 4:00 pm

About 13 months ago, the leak blogs posted news of “Artemis” on an alleged ARM roadmap slide, supposedly a new 16FF ARM core positioned as the presumptive successor to the Cortex-A57. Now, we’re finding out what “Artemis” may actually be, inside a multi-core PPA test chip on TSMC 10FinFET.… Read More


TSMC Leads Again with 3-D Packaging!

TSMC Leads Again with 3-D Packaging!
by Daniel Nenni on 05-24-2016 at 4:00 pm

Continuing to find new ways to extend Moore’s Law, the foundry and technology leader is ready to show off its wafer level system integration prowess with two scalable platforms targeting key growth markets.

CoWoS® (Chip-On-Wafer-On-Substrate) goes after high-performance applications, providing the highest bandwidth and… Read More


Stop FinFET Design Variation @ #53DAC and get a free book!

Stop FinFET Design Variation @ #53DAC and get a free book!
by Daniel Nenni on 05-20-2016 at 7:00 am

If you plan on visiting Solido (the world leader in EDA software for variation-aware design of integrated circuits) at the Design Automation Conference next month for a demonstration of Variation Designer, register online now and get an autographed copy of “Mobile Unleashed”. Such a deal!

Solido Variation Designer is used by… Read More


TSMC and Solido on Variation-Aware Design of Memory and Standard Cell at Advanced Process Nodes

TSMC and Solido on Variation-Aware Design of Memory and Standard Cell at Advanced Process Nodes
by Daniel Nenni on 05-10-2016 at 12:00 pm

Being that TSMC and Solido are founding members of SemiWiki, you should be able find out everything you ever wanted to know on their respective landing pages. If not, just ask a question in the SemiWiki forum and I can assure you it will be answered in great detail. And here are some other interesting 2015 factoids from Solido:… Read More


Semiconductor capital spending slow in 2016

Semiconductor capital spending slow in 2016
by Bill Jewell on 05-01-2016 at 12:00 pm

The outlook for semiconductor capital expenditures (capex) in 2016 is weak. Gartner’s January 2016 forecast called for a decline of 4.7%. IC Insights in February projected a 0.8% decline. The table below shows the Gartner forecast along with the capex forecasts from the top three spenders (Intel, Samsung and TSMC) which… Read More


EUV is coming but will we need it?

EUV is coming but will we need it?
by Scotten Jones on 04-12-2016 at 4:00 pm

I have written multiple articles about this year’s SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference describing all of the progress EUV has made in the last year. Source power is improving, photoresists are getting faster, prototype pellicles are in testing, multiple sites around the world are exposing wafers by the thousands and more. Read More