As a long time semiconductor IP professional I can tell you for a fact that it is one of the most challenging segments of semiconductor design. Given the growing criticality of semiconductor IP, the challenges of being a leading edge IP provider are increasing and may be at a breaking point. The question now is: What does it take to … Read More
Fabless companies and the need for foundries
The success of fabless semiconductor companies is well documented with companies such as Qualcomm, Broadcom, MediaTek, AMD, Avago and others selling semiconductors made using the fabless model (see Fabless: The Transformation of the Semiconductor Industry by Daniel Nenni and … Read More
Why do I stalk the FPGA industry? Well, FPGAs are an important part of the fabless semiconductor ecosystem for two reasons: 1.) They enable very cost effective design starts which are the life’s blood of the semiconductor industry and 2.) FPGA prototyping allows designers to verify their designs before committing to silicon and… Read More
We all have echoed the fact that the arrival of fabless business model in the semiconductor industry has transformed it completely. The book, “Fabless: The Transformation of the Semiconductor Industry” provides several stories around that. In the backdrop of that, one key point to ponder upon is the start of pure-play foundries;… Read More
Global semiconductor production capacity and its utilization level are key elements of the technology economy. During a panel at DAC in June Mentor Graphics posited that we are entering into a period where leading edge processes will be in high demand and also older nodes are seeing increasing demand due to Internet of Things designs… Read More
Electronics is unusually an evergreen industry where companies make profit, yet end-product prices go down significantly after a brief period of price skimming. A product phases out quite fast (in case of smartphones every 1.5 to 2 years), but still yields big bucks for successful companies in its value-chain. How does this happen?… Read More
As we have moved down from a CAGR of ~9% over last three decades to a CAGR of ~5% in the current decade, it’s time to check the realities. It can be definitely argued that a 5% of CAGR over a solid base of ~$378 billion should be considered good enough. In my view that’s the sign of maturity in the semiconductor market. At the same time we are… Read More
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
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 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
