Views on News
David Lammers looks at the stories behind the news shaping the semiconductor industry, including analysis, personality profiles, and quirky happenings.
Peering into Nanocrystal NAND
Freescale Semiconductor’s assertion that nanocrystal (NC) NOR flash will go into manufacturing next year raises the question: Can nanocrystals be employed to extend NAND flash scaling? NAND is a much bigger market than NOR now, and its potential is nearly as limitless as the data we store. However, NAND faces the same scaling and reliability challenges that NOR faces. As the polysili ...... Read More
Comments (0)Otellini and Intel’s EU Appeal
The $1.45B fine levied by the European Commission on Intel Corp. for alleged anti-competitive practices brings to mind a similarly important anti-trust case, one where the fine was never paid. In a Chicago district court in 1907, Judge Kenesaw M. Landis (later to become the commissioner of baseball) fined the Standard Oil Company $29,240,000, the maximum possible, for allegedly driving out competi ...... Read More
Comments (1)Done Deals, and Those Not Taken
Will the planned mega-merger between NEC Electronics and Renesas Technology work out? The deal creates a $13B semiconductor company a year from now, one that is about the same size as current No. 3 Texas Instruments and No. 4 Toshiba Corp. That $13B is an impressive number. But asTom Starnes, an analyst who follows the MCU market at Objective Analysis, points out, bigger is not necessarily better. ...... Read More
Comments (1)Whither Goest Sokudo?
Will Sokudo Co. Ltd. (Kyoto, Japan) continue to compete in the track business dominated by Tokyo Electron Ltd.? (Update: The company announced its twin-track Sokudo Duo system on April 21st, after this blog was first published.) Formed three years ago, on July 3, 2006, Sokudo is 52% owned by Dai Nippon Screen and 48% by Applied Materials. The two companies signed a deal to attack the track ...... Read More
Comments (0)Cheering for the Home Team
Do U.S. foundry customers care if their chips are Made In the U.S.A.? Doug Grose, CEO of the new foundry GlobalFoundries, thinks so. Asked if big fabless companies such as Qualcomm really care if their chips are made in New York or in Hsinchu, Taiwan, Grose answered, “I think they do. They are American-based companies, and they want to see the United States regain its t ...... Read More
Comments (3)The $300B Jinx
Whatever happened to the $300B semiconductor industry? Gartner Inc. analysts today (Feb. 25) issued a report worth noting, predicting that semiconductor revenues will decline between 24.1% and 33% this year. If the optimistic minus 24.1% scenario holds up, semiconductor revenues will be $194.5B this year. The veteran Gartner analyst Bryan Lewis warned, “Semiconductor supp ...... Read More
Comments (1)Considering the Options at Intel
Mark Bohr, as the Intel senior fellow in charge of pathfinding R&D at Intel’s Logic Technology Development Group (Hillsboro, Ore.), is in a job where he must balance cost concerns with technology considerations. The use of silicon carbon to create a tensile stress in the NMOS transistors is a good example. The appeal stems in part from the game-saving success of silicon germanium ...... Read More
Comments (0)IEDM and the Intel Replacement Gate Update
Already, rumors are swirling at the 2008 International Electron Device Meeting, which kicked off Sunday with two short courses here in cold and rainy San Francisco. A high-k expert said he has heard that Intel Corp. may shift its high-k/metal gate process for the 32 nm node, using a gate-first flow for the nFET and the replacement metal gate (RMG) approach for the pFET. Maintaining the work ...... Read More
Comments (1)Mark Bohr and the Drive Current Debate
It’s IEDM time, and tis the season for Intel and IBM to throw snowballs at the competition. Intel senior fellow Mark Bohr got in the spirit the other day while briefing reporters about Intel’s 32 nm technology. Bohr claimed that Intel was “more than a generation ahead of the competition.” Asked what he meant, Bohr said his assessment was not simply the two- ...... Read More
Comments (0)Luther Forest, Just in Time
As the Thanksgiving holiday approaches in the United States, people in the U.S. chip manufacturing business should make a quick bow towards Abu Dhabi and take another moment to sing a bar or two of Billy Joel’s joyful New York State of Mind. The Luther Forest fab which Advanced Micro Devices (AMD, Sunnyvale, Calif.) and the Abu Dhabi Technology Investment Co. (ATIC) plan to build near ...... Read More
Comments (0)Big Wafers, Big Prices
Dean Freeman, the Gartner semiconductor equipment analyst, threw out a zinger when he came to Austin for a SEMI market outlook gathering. The early 450 mm wafers will be in the $15-20,000 dollar range, Freeman said in a matter-of-fact tone. After his presentation, he said large wafer customers such as Intel Corp. may get a break, paying $10-15,000 in the early going when pilot 450 mm production is ...... Read More
Comments (2)Three Innovations to Watch
Innovation is the fourth great economic input, along with labor, capital, and machines, and the hardest to predict. Three innovations which may pay off involve the semiconductor manufacturing and equipment industries: new transistors, printed electronics, and single electron trapping (SET) medical devices. Yale Professor T.P. Ma has suggestedUnipolar CMOS, which could be a game changer. The ...... Read More
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