http://www.sikod.com/blog Commentary on Semiconductor News Tue, 05 Aug 2008 09:25:51 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Over the last two days, the PC industry was quite excited about Intel's forthcoming high end discrete graphic chips, Larrabee, which are scheduled to launch some time in end of 2009 or early 2010. Larrabee is expected to compete head on with the GeForce and Radeon graphics chips from NVIDIA ... http://www.sikod.com/blog/2008/08/05/intel-takes-on-amd-and-nvidia-with-new-graphic-chips-larrabee/ According to NanoMarkets newest report "Thin Film Photovoltaics Markets: 2008 and Beyond", thin-film photovoltaic (TFPV) market will grow from almost $2.4 billion ($US) in revenues in 2008 to over $12 billion in 2013. By 2015, NanoMarkets expects that TFPV will have a market opportunity of over $22 billion (Ref). The ... http://www.sikod.com/blog/2008/07/29/explosive-growth-for-thin-film-photovoltaic-tfpv-market/ The biggest semiconductor trade show in North America, SEMICON WEST 2008 has concluded couple of days ago (15-17 July). One of impending issues facing the semiconductor industry is the lithography solutions for 32nm and 22nm. It is pretty obvious now that EUV lithography will not be deployed for 32nm, and ... http://www.sikod.com/blog/2008/07/23/semicon-west-double-patterning-for-32nm-and-22nm/ The world's second largest microprocessor maker, AMD, has announced their earnings this morning. The company reported a revenue of $1.35 billion, and a net loss of $1.19 billion, in the quarter that ended June 28. A substantial chunk of the loss is the result of a goodwill impairment charge the ... http://www.sikod.com/blog/2008/07/18/amd-change-chief/ iPhone 3G was launched over the last weekend. Within 3 days, more than a million iPhone 3G have been sold (Ref). The iPhone 3G manic is simply amazing and Apple has demonstrated once again its unbeatable marketing prowess. Minutes after the launch, the Internet has published a couple of articles ... http://www.sikod.com/blog/2008/07/15/iphone-3g-teardown/ Amid the soaring oil prices and impending energy crisis, more semiconductor companies are investing in solar. For examples, the world number one microprocessor maker, Intel capital has announcement its $38 million investment in Berlin-based solar module manufacturer Sulfurcell GmbH (Ref). This investment follows Intel last month surprising announcement to ... http://www.sikod.com/blog/2008/07/10/more-semicon-companies-switch-gear-to-solar/ On one hand, the soaring oil price produces many challenges to the world such as higher inflation, slower economy and more political turmoils due to oil price hike. On the other hand, it also creates many opportunities for a number of emerging markets and technology such as energy-efficient chips, ... http://www.sikod.com/blog/2008/07/03/singapore-solar-industry-soars-with-oil-price/ I have captured some of the highlights of 2008 Symposium on VLSI Technology here: Continuously driving incremental performance improvement in planar CMOS transistor performance is always one of the themes in VLSI Technology Symposium. This year, a number of companies have reported such efforts. For example, Toshiba reported that F and ... http://www.sikod.com/blog/2008/06/30/hightlights-of-vlsi-symposium-2008/ The Siltronic Samsung Wafer, a $1 billion joint venture between Samsung Electronics and Germany's Siltronic, was officially opened last week by Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. This is one of the largest 300mm silicon wafers plant in the world. The plant, located at Tampines high tech park, will gear ... http://www.sikod.com/blog/2008/06/24/siltronic-samsung-wafer-official-opening-in-singapore/ Imagine the ability to look around the environments in a sci-fi movie, put yourself in the driver’s seat in a race scene, use your PC to simulate extremely complicated protein folding to help find a cure for debilitating diseases, produce movie-grade blockbuster animation films like "Finding Nemo" and "Kung Fu ... http://www.sikod.com/blog/2008/06/18/cinematic_graphic_chips/