Shifting Chip Design Left!

Shifting Chip Design Left!
by Daniel Nenni on 03-15-2015 at 7:00 am

In the traditional sense “Shift Left” is the process of making things simpler in an effort to make things faster. Shift Left was the theme of theDVCon keynote last week delivered by Synopsys co-founder and co-CEO Aart de Geus which is right on topic when it comes to modern semiconductor design and manufacturing, absolutely.

KEYNOTE:Read More


Altera 14nm and 10nm Update!

Altera 14nm and 10nm Update!
by Daniel Nenni on 03-10-2015 at 7:00 pm

In preparation for this blog I Googled around to get the latest information made available by Altera to see if it matches up with what I know from discussions amongst the fabless semiconductor ecosystem companies. Unfortunately when I Googled Altera+20nm+14nm the first three entries from the Altera website were Error 404 PageRead More


Why did Mentor Acquire Tanner EDA?

Why did Mentor Acquire Tanner EDA?
by Daniel Nenni on 03-09-2015 at 11:30 pm

You have to love when a professional journalist leaks a story and cites a “source close to the acquisition.” News flash: Anyone “close” to the acquisition is under NDA which is a legally binding agreement, not very professional if you ask me. Bloggers however can write whatever they want but since I was actually “close” to … Read More


Is Cadence the Best EDA Company to Work for?

Is Cadence the Best EDA Company to Work for?
by Daniel Nenni on 03-08-2015 at 7:00 am

Apparently that is the case. Honestly my choice would have been Mentor but I can easily make an argument for Cadence based on my discussions with the foundries and their top customers but more on that later.

Fortune Magazine last week added Cadence to the 2015 list of “100 Best Companies to Work For” citing a cultural transformation… Read More


CDN is Live in Silicon Valley!

CDN is Live in Silicon Valley!
by Daniel Nenni on 03-03-2015 at 10:00 pm

As big of a fan as I am of Social Media there is still nothing like getting up close and personal when collaborating with the fabless semiconductor ecosystem. After 30+ years in Silicon Valley if there is one thing I have learned it’s that “showing up” is the #1 key to success, absolutely.

Speaking of showing up, each year there are three… Read More


Sonics vs Arteris Lawsuit Update!

Sonics vs Arteris Lawsuit Update!
by Daniel Nenni on 02-27-2015 at 3:00 pm

As strange as it may seem one of my hobbies is reading case law. It’s not only interesting to see what the human race is really up to, it is also good to know your rights in regards to things like defamation, especially when you are a New Media mogul like myself. Some of the funnier defamation cases are called “Twibel” as in libel on Twitter.… Read More


Samsung 14nm IS in Production!

Samsung 14nm IS in Production!
by Daniel Nenni on 02-24-2015 at 10:00 pm

There is quite a debate raging on whether Samsung Foundry is truly in production at 14nm. The word amongst the fabless semiconductor ecosystem is yes and this comes from two very large fabless companies that are reportedly using Samsung for 14nm and have even started looking at Samsung 10nm. Of course you can Google for stories by… Read More


Advantages when Designing with FD-SOI

Advantages when Designing with FD-SOI
by Daniel Nenni on 02-23-2015 at 7:00 pm

In total we have blogged 41 times about FD-SOI on SemiWiki which has drawn an audience of 202,960 thus far. Of that traffic 31.68% came directly to SemiWiki (Newsletter), 30.13% came from search, 26.17% from social media (LinkedIn, FaceBook, Twitter, Google+, Reddit, etc…), and 11.99% came from other referring sites. The most… Read More


Synchronizer Optimization 101

Synchronizer Optimization 101
by Daniel Nenni on 02-22-2015 at 9:00 pm

A webinar presented Last week introduced two free aids to evaluating synchronizer Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF). The first, MetaACE LTD, is used to characterize the intrinsic parameters needed to calculate MTBF (tau and Tw). This limited version of MetaACE supports up to 250 circuit nodes, which is enough for a typical C-only-extracted… Read More


TSMC 20nm Essentially Worthless?

TSMC 20nm Essentially Worthless?
by Daniel Nenni on 02-15-2015 at 7:00 am

It happens at every process node, professional journalists write that something is broken and blames TSMC like a worn out record. To be fair they are not semiconductor professionals with access to the fabless semiconductor rank and file and are easily manipulated which is what happened again at 20nm. Remember when NVIDIA suggested… Read More