Cu-Pillar in Advanced Logic Devices

Cu-Pillar in Advanced Logic Devices
by Arabinda Das on 04-10-2015 at 7:00 pm

In 2001, flipchip with solder bump was already a dominant technology and it was replacing wire bonding as the main interconnection choice for a growing number of devices. It was offering fine pitch interconnections for increased I/O counts. In the solder bump process, a bump is formed on the chip and on the package substrate and … Read More


ANSYS Enters the League of 10nm Designs with TSMC

ANSYS Enters the League of 10nm Designs with TSMC
by Pawan Fangaria on 04-09-2015 at 7:00 pm

The way we are seeing technology progression these days is unprecedented. It’s just about six months ago, I had written about the intense collaboration between ANSYSand TSMCon the 16nm FinFET based design flow and TSMC certifying ANSYS tools for TSMC 16nm FF+ technology and also conferring ANSYS with “Partner of the Year” award.… Read More


US is the Ultimate Leader in Semiconductor Business

US is the Ultimate Leader in Semiconductor Business
by Pawan Fangaria on 04-07-2015 at 6:00 pm

Last year in November when I looked at the world’s top20 semiconductor companies with Samsungand TSMCbeing at the second and third rank respectively, first being Intel, I computed the sales numbers of the companies based on their countries and found that Taiwan and South Korea accounted for 34.5% of the total sales of the top20 … Read More


Breakfast was Fab: West Coast Wafers to Wall Street

Breakfast was Fab: West Coast Wafers to Wall Street
by Paul McLellan on 04-07-2015 at 7:00 am

SEMI describes themselves as “the global industry association serving the manufacturing supply chain for the micro- and nano-electronics industries.” That is a pretty broad remit. One of the things that they do as a neutral party is produce the World Fab Forecast. This is actually a bottom-up database that tracks fabs as they … Read More


Intel to Buy Altera?

Intel to Buy Altera?
by Paul McLellan on 03-28-2015 at 1:05 pm

You may already have heard today’s big news in the semiconductor fabless ecosystem that Intel is apparently in talks to buy Altera. I embarrassed myself predicting that Samsung were in talks to buy Freescale (which, of course, they might have been but NXP won that particular race). But this time it is definite enough that … Read More


The Apple A9 Samsung & TSMC Love Triangle

The Apple A9 Samsung & TSMC Love Triangle
by Robert Maire on 03-25-2015 at 10:00 am

The Apple A9 drama continues to play out with no certainty!
At the end of the day does it matter?
Will the winner be the loser?
A Comedy, Tragedy or Love Story?
Depends on your view…

Act I Scene I…The stage is set….

We are watching an Italian Opera of a standard love triangle….
The object of desire is the rich … Read More


TSMC 2015 Technology Symposium

TSMC 2015 Technology Symposium
by Paul McLellan on 03-25-2015 at 7:00 am


This year’s North American TSMC Technology Symposium is fast approaching. There are three, starting in Silicon Valley.

  • San Jose on Tuesday April 7th at the San Jose Convention Center
  • Boston on Tuesday April 14th at the Burlington Marriott
  • Austin on Thursday April 16th at the downtown Hilton

The symposium will also take … Read More


Silvaco Swallows Invarian

Silvaco Swallows Invarian
by Paul McLellan on 03-20-2015 at 7:00 am

Yesterday, Silvaco announced that it has acquired Invarian Inc. Details of the transaction were not disclosed.

Who is Invarian? They are a recognized leader in block-level to full-chip sign-off analysis for complex, high-performance ICs. Their unique methodology utilizes a parallel architecture and concurrent power-voltage-thermal… Read More


TSMC ♥ UMC?

TSMC ♥ UMC?
by Daniel Nenni on 03-18-2015 at 8:00 pm

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