Category Archives: semiconductor

Jerry Sanders, the erstwhile CEO of AMD, was famous for saying that “real men have fabs.” So of course it was interesting that AMD should be just about the first integrated device manufacturer (IDM) to go fabless when it sold … Continue reading →

What is a MID? It’s a Mobile Internet Device also known as a netbook. A huge battle is brewing as to whether a MID is more like a smartphone or more like a PC. It has major implications in the … Continue reading →

There has been a lot of speculation about what will happen to the Japanese electronics companies, and in particular their semiconductor divisions, all of which are bleeding money. If you visit Japan you get some idea of the problem. Everything … Continue reading →

One potential change to the way chips are designed is for EDA to become internal to the semiconductor companies. In the early days of the industry it always was. Until the early 1980s there wasn’t really any design automation. There were … Continue reading →

Of arms and the man I sing1. ARM is the leading microprocessor vendor in the world, at least if you count the right way. Over 10 billion processors have been shipped and the 1.5 billion mobile phones per year must … Continue reading →

For some time I have been talking about the semiconductor industry as the Fab 5, since there have been five process “clubs”. A few players hedge their bets and are in more than one club. The fab five are Intel … Continue reading →

Semiconductor technology is a mass-production technology. Enormous functionality can be delivered in a chip that costs a few dollars. But only if you want to buy a lot of them. Further, to keep Moore’s Law on track, the scale of … Continue reading →

You probably already know that designs are transferred onto chips using a photographic process. The wafer is coated in a solution called photoresist and then exposed to light passed through a “mask” which alters its chemical composition. The exposed (or … Continue reading →