ASMC 2015: GlobalFoundries 22nm SOI plans and more!

ASMC 2015: GlobalFoundries 22nm SOI plans and more!
by Scotten Jones on 05-16-2015 at 3:00 pm

The Advance Semiconductor Manufacturing Conference was held on May 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] through May 6[SUP]th[/SUP] in Saratoga Springs, New York. ASMC brings a unique operational perspective to technical conferences related to semiconductors. In this blog I wanted to discuss what I thought was the most interesting paper of the… Read More


TSMC 10nm Readiness and 3DIC

TSMC 10nm Readiness and 3DIC
by Paul McLellan on 05-03-2015 at 1:00 am

At the TSMC Technology Symposium last month Suk Lee presented a lot of information on design enablement. Suk is an interesting guy with a unique background in ASIC, Semiconductor, EDA, and now Foundry. In baseball terms that would be like playing infield, outfield, home plate, and umpire!

Around the turn of the millennium Suk actually… Read More


Linley: Mobile Peaked in 2013?

Linley: Mobile Peaked in 2013?
by Paul McLellan on 04-28-2015 at 7:00 am

Last week was the Linley Mobile Conference. Mobile is a huge semiconductor market and, outside of Intel, is the main driver for next generation process technologies. A new generation of mobile phones comes along, fills the leading edge fabs for a year or two and then moves on to the next generation. Nothing comes close to requiring… Read More


2015 Semiconductor Capex led by Memory & Foundry

2015 Semiconductor Capex led by Memory & Foundry
by Bill Jewell on 04-25-2015 at 7:00 am

Semiconductor industry capital expenditures (capex) in 2015 are expected to be $69 billion in 2015, up 6% from $65 billion in 2014 according to IC Insights. We at Semiconductor Intelligence have compiled 2015 capex outlook by company. The major memory companies account for 38% of 2015 capex and the major foundries account for … Read More


Shift-West of Semicon Power Centers

Shift-West of Semicon Power Centers
by Pawan Fangaria on 04-23-2015 at 5:00 pm

It’s true that Japan was once the center of semiconductor business and we were carrying on with that perception until recently. In 1990, six out of top10 semiconductor companies (excluding pure-play foundries) were in Japan; and 59% of worldwide semiconductor market was concentrated with the top10 companies. The semiconductor… Read More


Moore’s Law is dead, long live Moore’s Law – part 4

Moore’s Law is dead, long live Moore’s Law – part 4
by Scotten Jones on 04-21-2015 at 11:00 pm

In the third installment of this series we discussed the status of DRAM scaling and Moore’s law. In this installment we will tackle logic. The focus will be on foundry logic.

Logic technology challenges
In the second installment of this series we discussed constant electric field scaling. As we mentioned in that installment at … Read More


Intel Inline with reduced expectations-2015 flat to down-Slashing Capex

Intel Inline with reduced expectations-2015 flat to down-Slashing Capex
by Robert Maire on 04-16-2015 at 4:00 pm

Intel Inline with lowered numbers- 2015 Revs to be Flat…
Capex Slashed by 13% to $8.7B- 10nm at risk???
Mortgaging the future???
Is the foundry business dead???
Desperately seeking growth!!!

Intel Inline…

Intel reported revenues of $12.8B and EPS of $0.41 in line with downward revised estimates after chopping $1B
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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