Node Skipping Reaches New Heights


By Mark LaPedus For years, silicon foundries have rolled out their respective leading-edge processes roughly on a two-year cadence. The long-standing goal has been to keep foundry customers on a competitive price, power and performance curve. But as leading-edge chipmakers move from the 28nm node and beyond, the predictable process progression is changing. And the phenomenon of “node skip... » read more

Intel Turns Up Heat in Silicon Foundry Business


By Mark LaPedus Intel Corp. continues to make waves in the foundry arena. The chip giant has recently announced three new and major customers within its embryonic foundry business. Some speculate there are more customers on the horizon, reportedly including a rumored on-and-off again foundry deal with Apple Inc. At this point, Intel is a niche player in the foundry business, as the compan... » read more

Performance Plus Lower Power


By Pallab Chatterjee Power and performance often have been seen as something of a tradeoff. Chipmakers focus on one or the other, or they extract a little improvement in both at each new process node. That way of thinking is changing, though. At the recent Linley processor conference, the central theme for both standalone and embedded processors was that architectures have to optimized for ... » read more

Energy Star Meets Data Security


By Pallab Chatterjee Security technology and low power typically don’t go together in the same sentence, let alone the same device. All of that is starting to change, though. With 2% of the world’s energy being consumed by data centers, the new Energy Star guidelines and their associated tax incentives have been driving IT updates and upgrades since 2009 . The security industry is n... » read more

Newer posts →