How Will China Spend $120B?


It's daunting to consider how much Chinese VC and government money is ready for investment around the globe. With the total now estimated somewhere in the neighborhood of $120 billion, that's a huge stockpile of cash. Just to put that in perspective, roughly $48.3 billion was invested by U.S. investors in 2014, according to a report issued by the National Venture Capital Association and Pricewa... » read more

What China Is Planning


Over the years, China has unveiled several initiatives to advance its domestic semiconductor industry. China has made some progress at each turn, although every plan has fallen short of expectations. But now, the nation is embarking on several new and bold initiatives that could alter the IC landscape. China’s new initiatives address at least three key challenges for its IC industry: 1. C... » read more

New Metrics For The Cloud


Data centers are beginning to adjust their definition of what makes one server better than another. Rather than comparing benchmarked performance of general-purpose servers, they are adding a new level of granularity based upon what kind of chips work best for certain operations or applications. Those decisions increasingly include everything from the level of redundancy in compute operations, ... » read more

Software Driving More Hardware Designs


The influence of software engineers is growing inside of chip and systems companies, reversing a decades-old trend of matching the software to the fastest or most power-efficient hardware and raising as-yet unanswered questions about what will change in SoC design. The shift is particularly evident in chips developed for high-volume markets such as mobile phones and tablets. It's also happen... » read more

2.5D Creeps Into SoC Designs


A decade ago top chipmakers predicted that the next frontier for SoC architectures would be the z axis, adding a third dimension to improve throughput and performance, reduce congestion around memories, and reduce the amount of energy needed to drive signals. The obvious market for this was applications processors for mobile devices, and the first companies to jump on the stacked die bandwag... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


According to Strategy Analytics, global mobile phone shipments grew a lackluster 2% annually to reach 435 million units in the second quarter of 2015. China’s Huawei was the star performer, as it captured a 7% share and overtook Microsoft to become the world’s third largest mobile phone vendor for the first time ever. Samsung remains in first place, while Apple is second. Remember when t... » read more

Blog Review: July 22


It's been a hot summer for high-level synthesis, says Cadence's Dave Pursley in a collection of the season's HLS highlights spanning DAC to SystemC Japan. Mentor's Harry Foster continues his survey of functional verification with a look at the adoption trends of various verification technologies, and the reasons one-third of projects use emulation or FPGA prototyping. Synopsys' Navraj Nan... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


GlobalFoundries completed its acquisition of IBM’s Microelectronics Group, creating a behemoth that is expected to extend well beyond the combined footprint of the existing companies. As part of the deal, GlobalFoundries will get two additional fabs, one of which makes RF SOI chips. But while IBM was hesitant to expand that business by adding new fab capacity, GlobalFoundries already has t... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC), Huawei, Imec and Qualcomm have announced the formation of the SMIC Advanced Technology Research & Development (Shanghai) Corp., an equity joint venture company. Located in China, the joint venture company will focus on R&D towards next-generation CMOS logic technology. The current focus will be on developing 14nm logic technology, ... » read more

Week 49: Are We There Yet?


When I was a little kid my parents would pack me and my sister into the car and drive to the Mediterranean for our summer camping vacation. It was quite a haul from our home on the west side of Germany near the border with Belgium to the south of France, and as is true of any long car trip, the last stretch was the hardest. After hours in the backseat, my sister and I would be craning our necks... » read more

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