In the mid 1980’s, Tommy George, then President of Motorola’s Semiconductor Sector, pointed out to me that the semiconductor revenue per unit area had been a constant throughout the history of the industry including the period when germanium transistors made up a large share of semiconductor revenue. I began tracking the numbers… Read More
Figure 1 is the most basic of all the predictable parameters of the semiconductor industry, even more so than Moore’s Law. It is the learning curve for the transistor. Since 1954, the revenue per transistor (and presumably the cost per transistor, if we had the data from the manufacturers) has followed a highly predictable learning… Read More
It’s Sunday afternoon and I just attended the annual Needham presentation at #56DAC in sunny Las Vegas, where Rich Valera shared an upbeat view of EDA and IP growth. Here are the five drivers of this growth:
For the IoT market they’ve seen a CAGR of 8.6% to $8.2B in 2018, projected… Read More
New products always take precedence since EDA is a “mature” market. I have inside knowledge on this one so I can tell you it is not to be missed. Coincidently, but not really, a related white paper was just published so if you are not going to 56thDAC you can still get a virtual briefing. If you are going to DAC be sure and stop by the Fractal… Read More
Mentor continues to invest in conferences such as DAC, no matter the location, for which I am very grateful. They have a long list of activities this year but I wanted to point out my top three:
Wally Rhines has a talk in the DAC Pavilion which is first on the list. Wally’s expert industry perspective is the result of tireless research… Read More
Just two more weeks before the 2019 CEO Outlook Thursday, May 23, at SEMI. If you haven’t registered yet, do so today. We’re expecting a full house as a result of our powerhouse lineup and networking opportunities.
That lineup includes Ed Sperling, editor in chief of Semiconductor Engineering, who will serve as moderator. Panelists… Read More
This will be one of the more interesting Mentor User Group Meetings now that the Siemens acquisition has fully taken effect and the new management team is in place. The Mentor User Conference is at the Santa Clara Marriott, Santa Clara, California on May 2, 2019 from 9:00 am to 6:00pm.
Remember, in 2017 Siemens acquired Mentor Graphics… Read More
The 21[SUP]st[/SUP] IP-SoC Days conference will be held in Grenoble, France, on December 5-6, 2018. IP-SoC is now the unique IP centric conference, with presentations reflecting the complete IP ecosystem: IP suppliers and foundries, external IP or internal reuse managers. Look at the program, you will see the hot topics covered… Read More
The “20 Questions with Wally Rhines” series finale
During the period from 1997, I had the privilege to work with Greg Hinckley, a superb “out of the box” thinker and excellent operational manager. We had such a common view of the world that we almost always agreed upon the best approach to problems and opportunities … Read More
The “20 Questions with Wally Rhines” series continues
Carl Icahn is a remarkably charming person. You might expect him to be a mean, aggressive adversary but he actually jokes about his foibles, tells stories about interesting people and gently poses questions. “I thought Jerry Yang just didn’t want to sell his Yahoo… Read More
