Plumbing is important
Plumbing for Semis – Arm and SiFive are M&A targets, they provide crucial plumbing for almost all chips today, and their ultimate fate will have a big impact on the industry.
Category Archives: Silicon
Roll Your Chips – What Could Go Wrong?
Roll Your Own Chips – When you design products that someone else is going to manufacture using processes that trip against quantum physics effects, no one is cool enough to not be a little worried that something will go wrong.
Let’s Build a Chip – With Math
Let’s Build a Chip – We lay out the costs of building a chip – with spreadsheets!
Google BigChip?
Google BigChip? – Google has its own semis design tool, called Taffel, this speaks to larger ambitions in rolling their own chips, but if they ever pen sourced them it could spark a lot of change in how we design chips.
Who wants to build a chip?
Pretty much everyone. We have been doing a lot of work lately on in-house silicon, most recently with our post on Google’s VCU. And it got us thinking about who […]
Google’s VCU – A New Chip Enters the Fray
Google’s VCU – A New Chip Enters the Fray – No one is talking about the fact that Google just launched a new chip, essentially inventing a new category. Again. Probably because this is really scary for all the chip companies.
The 5-Year Plan for Semis
The 5-Year Plan for Semis – the whole debate about industrial policy for the US semis industry is muddled. One clue – whenever people start talking about Shenzhen it means they are focused on some other problem.
Where did Apple’s margins come from?
Where did Apple’s margins come from? – The M1 probably added only $300m to Apple’s gross margins this quarter, but it probably also helped them sell a lot more MacBooks, the benefit of Apple Silicon is strategic not cost savings.
SLAB Bets the House on IoT
SLAB Bets the House on IOT – Silicon Labs’ IoT business could be immensely valuable, if it works. And they seem to think it really will work.
Intel 2.0’s customer dilemma
Intel 2.0’s Customer Dilemma – If Intel can sort out its manufacturing process, if it can find the funds it needs, if it can build up a true customer service capability, and if can do all this in under three years, then IFS may be viable.
