Industry Expert Blogs

Our industry is difficult to understand. Most of us resort to imperfect analogies to explain it when we have to. Some of this is because we have a complex supply chain for creation. It is easy to get confused between an instruction set architecture (ISA, like x86), microprocessor IP (like Arm processors), an SoC containing a microprocessor (any smartphone application processor), a chip that is an entire microprocessor (many Intel products), a fabless semiconductor company (say NVIDIA), a foundry (GlobalFoundries), a fab (like Fab 1 in Dresden), subcontract manufacturing (like Foxconn in Shenzhen). And confusingly, some companies do multiple things: for example, Samsung is a foundry, has fabs, is in the memory business, sells smartphones, TVs, solid-state disks (SDD), and more.

Click here to read more ...