tag: economics

Executive Insight: Prakash Narain
By Ed Sperling - 27 May, 2014 - Comments: 0

SE: What’s your biggest concern? Narain: We are a smaller company, and ultimately we compete on the basis of the quality of the solutions we provide to customers. What’s the value proposition? How many X better will our solution be compared to the existing solutions that are in deployed in the market? You make a projection about it in your mind, and you make investments, and until they�... » read more

Test Challenges Grow
By Mark LaPedus - 27 May, 2014 - Comments: 3

Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss current and future test challenges with Dave Armstrong, director of business development at Advantest; Steve Pateras, product marketing director for Silicon Test Solutions at Mentor Graphics; Robert Ruiz, senior product marketing manager at Synopsys; Mike Slessor, president of FormFactor; and Dan Glotter, chief executive of Optimal+. SE: In our ... » read more

Follow The Investments
By Ed Sperling - 24 Apr, 2014 - Comments: 0

Where is design heading over the next few years. The best way to tell that is to find out where the development dollars are going, and foundries and tools always precede actual designs. The foundries are starting to spend money—lots of it—on finFETs and 28nm. And while they’re talking about 2.5D and 3D, the money isn’t going there just yet. In fact, there are two different processes ... » read more

What Are EDA’s Big Three Thinking?
By Ed Sperling - 24 Apr, 2014 - Comments: 4

Over the past six weeks, the CEOs of Cadence, Synopsys and Mentor Graphics—in that order—have delivered top-down visionary messages to their user groups. Semiconductor Engineering had the opportunity to attend all three sessions, and has compiled comments from each on a variety of subjects. In some cases, all the CEOs were in sync. In others, they were not. In still others, it was difficult... » read more

Executive Insight: CH Wu
By Ed Sperling - 21 Apr, 2014 - Comments: 0

Semiconductor Engineering sat down with CH Wu, president and CEO of Advantest Taiwan, to talk about business, politics, and his philosophy on what really motivates people. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: Tell us a little about who you are and your background. Wu: I graduated from college with a degree in electrical engineering and started at Philips Electric, then moved ... » read more

Real Countries Have Fabs
By Ed Sperling - 17 Apr, 2014 - Comments: 3

Persistent rumblings about the sale of IBM’s semiconductor unit might have seemed absurd a couple decades ago—before IBM sold off its PC unit to Lenovo and lost the gaming chip business to AMD’s x86 chips—but no one is scoffing at the possibility these days. The reality is that IBM will never reach the volume necessary to be the No. 1 or No. 2 player in its segment. It’s not even i... » 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

Time To Revisit 2.5D And 3D
By Mark LaPedus - 17 Apr, 2014 - Comments: 2

Chipmakers are reaching various and challenging inflection points. In logic, many IC makers face a daunting transition from planar transistors at 20nm to finFETs at 14nm. And on another front, the industry is nearing the memory bandwidth wall. So perhaps it’s time to look at new alternatives. In fact, chipmakers are taking a hard look, or re-examining, one alternative—stacked 2.5D/3D chi... » read more

EDA Sales Up Again
By Ed Sperling - 01 Apr, 2014 - Comments: 0

EDA continued to post strong growth, setting records as an industry and proving the resilience of the tools industry, which has been showing positive numbers for 16 consecutive quarters. Revenue for Q4 of 2013 were $1.881 billion, up from $1.779 billion in the same period in 2012, according to numbers provided by the EDA Consortium. For the year, revenue hit $6.932 billion, up 6.1% from annu... » read more

How Much Will That Chip Cost?
By Ed Sperling - 27 Mar, 2014 - Comments: 1

From the most advanced process nodes to the trailing edge of design there is talk about the skyrocketing cost of developing increasingly complex SoCs. At 16/14nm it’s a combination of multi-patterning, multiple power domains and factoring in physical and proximity effects. At older nodes, it’s the shift to more sophisticated versions of the processes and new tools to work within those proce... » read more

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