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Commentary / Analysis

• Indian Wafer Fab Will be Specialty Foundry (Monday Jul. 13, 2015)
  Cricket Semiconductor—a company set up with the purpose of building and operating $1 billion analog and power semiconductor wafer fab in India—will operate as a specialty foundry, according to Lou Hutter, one of two former Texas Instruments executives who formed the company.
  
  
• Drop in Foundry Sales Sends a Warning Signal (Monday Jul. 13, 2015)
  For the first time in more than three years, the world’s two biggest foundries have posted negative monthly revenue figures at the same time.
  
  
• Gartner Says Worldwide Semiconductor Sales Expected to Reach $348 Billion in 2015, a 2.2 Percent Increase From 2014 (Thursday Jul. 09, 2015)
  Worldwide semiconductor revenue is forecast to reach $348 billion in 2015, a 2.2 percent increase from 2014, but down from the previous quarter's forecast of 4.0 percent growth, according to Gartner, Inc.
  
  
• IoT Opportunity Drives IP Grab (Thursday Jul. 09, 2015)
  While mergers and acquisitions are always justified for financial reasons, they are often initiated for strategic reasons.
  
  
• EDA Consortium Reports EDA Industry Revenue Increase For Q1 2015 (Tuesday Jul. 07, 2015)
  The EDA Consortium (EDAC) Market Statistics Service (MSS) today announced that the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry revenue increased 7.5 percent for Q1 2015 to $1877 million, compared to $1746.1 million in Q1 2014. The four-quarters moving average, which compares the most recent four quarters to the prior four quarters, increased by 8.0 percent.
  
  
• ARM's Wish List for IoT (Tuesday Jul. 07, 2015)
  With his company dominating the market for processor cores in mobile systems, ARM chief executive Simon Segars has his eyes set on the Internet of Things.
  
  
• TSMC overtakes Intel in chip capex ranking (Monday Jul. 06, 2015)
  Intel, the world's largest chip company, is set slip to third place in a ranking of chip companies compiled by Semico Research, based on forecast capital expenditure in 2015.
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Sales Increase Five Percent in May (Monday Jul. 06, 2015)
  SIA today announced worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $28.2 billion for the month of May 2015, an increase of 5.1 percent from May 2014 when sales were $26.8 billion.
  
  
• Will Globalfoundries be More Successful than IBM with Its Foundry Business? (Monday Jul. 06, 2015)
  Now that the dust has settled on the whether or not regulatory approval would be granted to Globalfoundries’ takeover of IBM’s struggling semiconductor manufacturing division, will the foundry be able to accomplish what Big Blue was unable to do and make a successful business out of what it gained?
  
  
• Could India's Analog Wafer Fab be Moving South? (Monday Jul. 06, 2015)
  Cricket Semiconductor, a company set up with the purpose of building and operating $1 billion analog and power semiconductor wafer fab in India has been in talks with state government of Telangana, according to a report in the New Indian Express.
  
  
• FinFETs + FD-SOI Proposition: May Save Power (Monday Jul. 06, 2015)
  Ron Martino, vice president of application processors and advanced technology for Freescale's MCUs says there is room both both FinFETs, FD-SOI and combinations of the two.
  
  
• RISC vs CISC: What's the Difference? (Wednesday Jul. 01, 2015)
  A new study comparing the Intel X86, the ARM and MIPS CPUs finds that microarchitecture is more important than instruction set architecture, RISC or CISC.
  
  
• 8 FD-SOI Questions You're Afraid to Ask (Tuesday Jun. 30, 2015)
  Paul Boudre, CEO of Soitec, told us last week in Grenoble, "Evidence [for FD-SOI's advantages] is there. But some choose not to see it."
  
  
• DAC Trip Report: Expanding EDA's Charter & Topical Hardware Emulation (Tuesday Jun. 30, 2015)
  Dr. Lauro Rizzatti paid close attention to trends at DAC two weeks ago and wrote them up in a trip report.
  
  
• Startup's Tech is Intel's Quark Neural Network (Friday Jun. 26, 2015)
  The pattern-classification technology inside the Quark SE system chip from Intel is the same as that being offered for license and in chip form by startup NeuroMem Inc. (Petaluma, Calif.).
  
  
• Leti's FD-SOI Lesson: Build Ecosystems (Friday Jun. 26, 2015)
  Annual open-house events hosted by the two premier R&D centers in Europe — CEA-Leti (Grenoble, France) and IMEC (Leuven, Belgium) — collided this year on the same dates in June.
  
  
• PCIe 16G May Take Until 2017 (Wednesday Jun. 24, 2015)
  Engineers have 16 GTransfers/second up and running in the lab for PCI Express 4.0, aka Gen 4. The bad news is this is the last turn of the crank for a copper version of the interconnect and, despite progress, a final 1.0 version of the spec may not be ready until early 2017.
  
  
• GlobalFoundries' FD-SOI Revolution (Wednesday Jun. 24, 2015)
  The appearance of Gerd Teepe, director and design engineering at GlobalFoundries, at a CEA-Leti-sponsored FD-SOI workshop here has confirmed, once again, rumors surrounding the company’s upcoming “big announcement” about FD-SOI.
  
  
• ASICs for the IoT Cross the Horizon (Friday Jun. 19, 2015)
  The recent burst of activity in the EDA, foundry, and contract chip design industries indicates that they have joined the scramble to stake out territory in the Internet of Things (IoT) market.
  
  
• IBM Demos III-V FinFETs on Silicon (Friday Jun. 19, 2015)
  The entire semiconductor industry is trying to find a way to exploit the higher electron mobility of indium, gallium and arsenide (InGaAs) without switching from silicon substrates, including the leaders at Intel and Samsung. IBM has demonstrated how to achieve this with standard CMOS processing.
  
  
• North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts May 2015 Book-to-Bill Ratio of 0.99 (Friday Jun. 19, 2015)
  North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $1.56 billion in orders worldwide in May 2015 (three-month average basis) and a book-to-bill ratio of 0.99, according to the May EMDS Book-to-Bill Report published today by SEMI.
  
  
• Silicon Nanowire Remains Favorite to Replace FinFET (Thursday Jun. 18, 2015)
  Silicon-based nanowire transistors (NWTs)—otherwise known as gate-all-around transistors—are getting ready to replace FinFETs at the 7nm or 5nm integrated circuit (IC) manufacturing nodes, according to experts in the field.
  
  
• IC Manufacturers Close or Repurpose 83 Wafer Fabs from 2009-2014 (Wednesday Jun. 17, 2015)
  Since the global economic recession of 2008-2009, the IC industry has been on a mission to pare down older capacity (i.e., ≤200mm wafers) in order to produce devices more cost-effectively on larger wafers. From 2009-2014, semiconductor manufacturers have closed or repurposed 83 wafer fabs, according to data compiled, updated, and now available in IC Insights’ Global Wafer Capacity 2015-2019 report.
  
  
• Software Development: Not Written Here Is New Norm (Tuesday Jun. 16, 2015)
  The new norm in the world of computing is code reuse, much of it proprietary third party or open source. Due to pressures of the market to produce software as fast as possible and at a low cost, many programmers are not doing what even a few years ago would be normal: writing their own original source code.
  
  
• Chip, PC Demand Continues Decline (Monday Jun. 15, 2015)
  Demand for semiconductors continued to weaken in the second quarter with some PC assemblers in Asia suggesting a decline in purchases of some parts of as much as 15-20% from the second quarter of 2014, according to a report from Wall Street analysts at Deutsche Bank.
  
  
• 10nm Chips Promise Lower Costs (Monday Jun. 15, 2015)
  The challenges in the supply chain logistics for semiconductors continue to increase, but the 10nm node will give one more opportunity to gain large benefits from technology scaling.
  
  
• Does Hardware Even Matter Anymore? (Monday Jun. 15, 2015)
  We are in the midst of a technological revolution that is every bit as profound as the impact of cheap computing power, but it’s subtler and harder to notice. It will ease the way for companies launching and updating digital products, but it presents steep new learning curves that companies will have to master if they are to be successful.
  
  
• Has FD-SOI Hit Its Tipping Point? (Friday Jun. 12, 2015)
  As a reporter, I sometimes come across a thread — often consisting of offhand comments, random facts, tweets, tradeshow panels or p.r. propaganda — that actually, eventually, helps me connect the dots.
  
  
• Using Wi-Fi to Power IoT (Friday Jun. 12, 2015)
  An article in the MIT Technology Review presents a power-over-Wi-Fi system that uses existing Wi-Fi chipsets in wireless routers to deliver far-field wireless power to various sensors as well as to recharge coin cell batteries at distances up to 28 feet.
  
  
• Engineering Shortage Persists (Friday Jun. 12, 2015)
  Lower engineering salaries means managers should brace themselves for the revolving door, especially when 3-7-year itch kicks in.