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Commentary / Analysis

• Samsung Describes 10nm SRAM (Thursday Feb. 04, 2016)
  Samsung gave a peek at its 10nm finFET technology and an advanced 128 Mbit SRAM made in the process in a paper at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) .
  
  
• TSMC's 300mm Chinese Wafer Fab Wins Approval (Thursday Feb. 04, 2016)
  The Taiwanese government has given foundry chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan) approval to build a 300mm wafer fab in China, according to reports that reference the Investment Commission of the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
  
  
• FinFETs Flow at Samsung, TSMC (Wednesday Feb. 03, 2016)
  Production of next-generation FinFET chips is underway at Samsung and TSMC. Although Samsung announced mass production of its 14nm LPP process technology with a major customer win in Qualcomm, TSMC may have the last laugh with Apple using its process.
  
  
• Moore's Law Goes Post-CMOS (Tuesday Feb. 02, 2016)
  Moore’s Law has a long life, but pure vanilla CMOS process technology -- not so much. That’s the view of Intel’s top fab executive, speaking to an audience of chip designers.
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Sales Top $335 Billion in 2015 (Monday Feb. 01, 2016)
  The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), representing U.S. leadership in semiconductor manufacturing, design, and research, today announced the global semiconductor industry posted sales totaling $335.2 billion in 2015, a slight decrease of 0.2 percent compared to the 2014 total, which was the industry’s highest-ever sales total.
  
  
• 16 Insights on ICs (Monday Feb. 01, 2016)
  It’s a sad sign of the times when the most bullish market researcher predicts 4% growth. Even worse when the veteran analyst further explains he has a 70% confidence growth will be in the 2-6% range, and notes a few wild cards like the gyrating China stock market and plummeting price of oil.
  
  
• Smartphone Apps Processors Revenue Declined -9 Percent in Q3 2015 (Monday Feb. 01, 2016)
  The global smartphone Applications Processor (AP) market declined -9 percent year-over-year to reach $5.3 billion in Q3 2015, according to Strategy Analytics Handset Component Technologies service report, "Smartphone Apps Processor Market Share Q3 2015: Samsung LSI Doubles its Shipments Y-o-Y."
  
  
• Why Opt For Chip Stack, FD-SOI in Image Sensors? (Friday Jan. 29, 2016)
  If Samsung’s latest smartphone TV commercial (which touts a number of superior camera features and ends with a tagline -- “It's Not a Phone, It's a Galaxy”) is any indication, the ingredient that matters most in smartphones today isn’t the phone. It’s the camera.
  
  
• India Preps RISC-V Processors (Thursday Jan. 28, 2016)
  An R&D division of the Indian government is in line to receive about $45 million before June to fund the development of its first 64-bit microprocessor. The project would become the second in India to design a CPU based on the RISC-V instruction set, following the Shakti designs in the works at the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras.
  
  
• FDSOI carries on despite ST re-org, says COO (Thursday Jan. 28, 2016)
  STMicroelectronics' withdrawal from the set-top-box business and the transfer of engineers to microcontroller and digital automotive work will not stop the adoption of fully-depleted silicon-on-insulator (FDSOI) manufacturing process, according to Jean-Marc Chery, ST's chief operating officer.
  
  
• Samsung and Apple Continue to Lead as Top Global Semiconductor Customers in 2015, According to Gartner (Wednesday Jan. 27, 2016)
  Samsung Electronics and Apple remained the top semiconductor buyers in 2015, representing 17.7 percent of the market, according to Gartner, Inc. Samsung Electronics and Apple together consumed $59.0 billion of semiconductors in 2015, an increase of $0.8 billion from 2014.
  
  
• North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts December 2015 Book-to-Bill Ratio of 0.99 (Wednesday Jan. 27, 2016)
  North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $1.34 billion in orders worldwide in December 2015 (three-month average basis) and a book-to-bill ratio of 0.99, according to the December EMDS Book-to-Bill Report published today by SEMI.
  
  
• More Downside than Upside Risk to IC Insights' 2016 IC Market Growth Forecast (Tuesday Jan. 26, 2016)
  Worldwide GDP growth and currency exchange rate fluctuations expected to have a major impact on the forecast.
  
  
• Security Outlook Bleak, Improving (Monday Jan. 25, 2016)
  The short term outlook for security is bleak, but a combination of better engineering and more spending should reap long-term benefits, said Paul Kocher, a security expert in a keynote at DesignCon here.
  
  
• Rumor: Imagination may sell Pure (Monday Jan. 25, 2016)
  Imagination Technologies is considering a sale of its Pure digital radio business, a cut-back in its R&D spend and a sale and leaseback of its HQ, reports The Sunday Times.
  
  
• Sony To Use FD-SOI in Stacked Image Sensors (Friday Jan. 22, 2016)
  For chip designers pondering the next-node choices for their new SoCs, the FD-SOI Forum held here Thursday (Jan. 21) yielded news they could use.
  
  
• Will Xilinx Join the M&A Party? (Friday Jan. 22, 2016)
  Could market-leading programmable logic vendor Xilinx Inc. be positioning itself as an acquisition target?
  
  
• Consolidation Redrawing Microcontroller Landscape (Friday Jan. 22, 2016)
  Microchip's proposed acquisition of Atmel would shake up the top three microcontroller vendors for the second time in a matter of months.
  
  
• Semiconductor R&D Growth Slows in 2015 (Thursday Jan. 21, 2016)
  Semiconductor industry spending on research and development grew by just 0.5% in 2015, which was the smallest increase since the 2009 downturn year and significantly below the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.0% in R&D expenditures during the last 10 years.
  
  
• China's Chip Jackpot Teases (Wednesday Jan. 20, 2016)
  What does China's Big Fund to grow a national semiconductor industry and Powerball have in common?
  
  
• Samsung's 14 nm LPE FinFET Transistors (Tuesday Jan. 19, 2016)
  As Samsung prepares to launch its 14 nm Low Power Plus (LPP) process used in the Exynos 8 SoC, TechInsights anticipates what changes we should expect.
  
  
• NXP Embraces 28nm FDSOI for MCUs (Tuesday Jan. 19, 2016)
  NXP is set to extend the use of 28nm fully-depleted silicon-on-insulator (FDSOI) process technology down to its low-power LPC microcontrollers, according to Goeff Lees, newly installed as general manager of MCU business at NXP Semiconductors NV.
  
  
• Has Samsung Snagged Qualcomm Business with New Process? (Monday Jan. 18, 2016)
  Samsung Electronics, which has been in a nip-and-tuck race with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) to win foundry orders with the world’s most advanced fabrication technology, may have grabbed all of Qualcomm’s business with a second-generation version of its 14nm FinFET process.
  
  
• TSMC Boosts 2016 Capex to About $9.5 Billion (Friday Jan. 15, 2016)
  Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world’s largest foundry, said it will increase its capital expenditure in 2016 to an amount ranging from $9 billion to $10 billion as it aims for a bigger share of finer geometry chips.
  
  
• IFI CLAIMS Announces 2015 U.S. Patent Rankings (Wednesday Jan. 13, 2016)
  After seven straight years of increases, 2015 is the first year since 2007 to show a downturn in U.S. patent activity. IFI CLAIMS says there were 299,365 utility patents granted for the calendar year, which is down just less than 1% compared to 2014.
  
  
• Will Apple Drive Analog ICs? (Monday Jan. 11, 2016)
  Analog expert Stephan Ohr turns his oscilloscope on the possible impact Apple could have with its new fab in San Jose.
  
  
• Gartner Says Worldwide Semiconductor Capital Spending to Decline 4.7 Percent in 2016 (Monday Jan. 11, 2016)
  Worldwide semiconductor capital spending is projected to decline 4.7 percent in 2016, to $59.4 billion, according to Gartner, Inc.. This is down from the 3.3 percent growth predicted in Gartner's previous quarter's forecast.
  
  
• Tech Tour of Metal Gate I/O Transistors (Monday Jan. 11, 2016)
  No one talks about the workhorse of the metal gate CMOS transistors -- the input/output (I/O) transistor. TechInsights thinks they are worth a look.
  
  
• ARM Exec's Straight Car Talk at CES (Friday Jan. 08, 2016)
  Ian Drew, ARM’s executive vice president of marketing and business development, posed five questions that the automotive industry — or the tech industry in general — would rather not hear.
  
  
• Free Core, Some Assembly Required (Thursday Jan. 07, 2016)
  It’s early days for RISC-V -- a free, open-source core seen as the Linux of microprocessors. On its long to-do list, engineers still need to define basic pieces of the instruction set architecture including its memory model, how it will speak to the external world of I/Os and how to debug it.