category: Piecing It Together

category: IoT, Security & Automotive

Drowning In Choices
By Ed Sperling - 15 May, 2014 - Comments: 0

There are at least half a dozen possible options for 28nm process technologies. There will be even more for the finFET generation. And that’s just the beginning of how complicated things will become over the next few years. There are multiple ways to test, seemingly infinite numbers of IP offerings—even from the same IP providers—and even more packaging options to put them together. Th... » read more

Living On The Edge
By Ed Sperling - 17 Apr, 2014 - Comments: 0

Looking around the globe at the big foundries these days, many of them are in danger zones—geopolitical, seismological, or areas that have been the incubators for public health disasters in recent years. This is one of the risks of a global supply chain, and it’s one that should cause ulcers for any supply chain management executive. South Korea’s Samsung is within a short missile laun... » read more

Litho Is Out Of Sync
By Ed Sperling - 20 Mar, 2014 - Comments: 0

EUV’s repeated missed deadlines, and the slow-motion response by the rest of the industry to fill the void with alternatives, is having ripple effects in every facet and corner of the semiconductor industry. It’s making design harder and more expensive, introducing potential errors into the DFM flow, and greatly increasing the amount of time it takes to process wafers. It’s also adding a ... » read more

Why Would IBM Sell Its Semi Group?
By Ed Sperling - 20 Feb, 2014 - Comments: 1

Rumors are always just rumors until proven otherwise in business, but in the case of IBM’s semiconductor business, hints about the sale of its semiconductor business are particularly noteworthy. Much has changed since the days when IBM—as International Business Machines—went head-to-head with AT&T’s quasi-public Bell Labs and Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). The breakup of... » read more

What’s The Backup Plan?
By Ed Sperling - 23 Jan, 2014 - Comments: 0

Over the past dozen years we have witnessed two major breakdowns in the global semiconductor supply chain. The first occurred in 2002, when an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) basically closed off Chinese manufacturing for several months. The second major problem occurred in 2011, when the Tohoku earthquake and a devastating tsunami shut down a good portion of Japanese produ... » read more

Different Economies Of Scale, And Lots Of Questions
By Ed Sperling - 12 Dec, 2013 - Comments: 0

Being able to shrink features and reach the next node is already an exclusive club. It will become more exclusive at 16/14nm, which is expected to hit volume production in 2015, and even more exclusive still at 10nm. In fact, it may begin to look like a semi-private affair. The argument being presented is that economies of scale will still exist for those companies with pockets deep enough ... » read more

The Next Dimension
By Ed Sperling - 14 Nov, 2013 - Comments: 0

It’s hard to say definitively whether this is a trend or an aberration, but after what appears to have been a slam-dunk sprint to the finish line with finFETs some companies are re-evaluating their alternatives based upon return on investment. In place of perpetually shrinking features—and looming multipatterning at the next node—there is renewed interest in staying at 28nm with FDSOI,... » read more

Standards Watch
By Ed Sperling - 17 Oct, 2013 - Comments: 0

This may sound odd to anyone outside of the SoC world, but as more functionality and more components move from PCB to chip—or at least the same package—what’s happening in the standards world is mirroring what’s going on in semiconductor design and manufacturing. The rule of thumb in the standards world is that as new techniques and technologies are introduced, the number of standard... » read more

Risk Vs. Reward
By Ed Sperling - 19 Sep, 2013 - Comments: 0

One of the most persistent business myths is that deep pockets in challenging times always win in the end. While that has proven a successful model in many industries where the barrier to entry is enormous and rising, in the technology world the outcome isn’t always what you’d expect even with those same variables. In fact, the history of technology is littered with former business giant... » read more

Layers Of Business And Tech Issues
By Ed Sperling - 15 Aug, 2013 - Comments: 0

Slice an onion in half and one onion pretty much looks like any other onion. Peel it back, layer by layer, and put it under a powerful microscope, and each layer suddenly looks very different. The same is true for semiconductors. To the outside world, a chip is a chip and an interconnect is an interconnect. Each one has different specs, but even the parts that make up those chips look remar... » read more

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