We wrote about the history of Cadence in preparation for our book “Fabless: The Transformation of the Semiconductor Industry” in 2012. EDA played a key role in enabling the fabless semiconductor revolution and Cadence was right there at the beginning. Famed EETimes editor Richard Goering helped us with the book and the Cadence… Read More
Author: Daniel Nenni
TSMC 2016 Technology Symposium and Apple SoCs!
It is that time again, time for the originators of the pure-play foundry business to update their top customers and partners on the latest process technology developments and schedules. More specifically, all of the TSMC FinFET processes (16nm, 10nm, 7nm, and beyond), TSMC IP portfolio (CMOS image sensor, Embedded Flash, Power… Read More
Dr. Walden Rhines on the Past Present and Future!
Who can present seventy six slides in sixty minutes, still have time for questions, AND make it interesting? Dr. Walden Rhines that’s who. Here is a link to the presentation but I have to warn you, it is a 100MB PDF file:
Design Verification Challenges: Past, Present, and Future
The DVCon conference was well attended again this year… Read More
Start Your HBM 2.5D Design Today!
Next week there is a live seminar at the famed Computer Museum in Silicon Valley that you won’t want to miss. If you haven’t been to the Computer Museum here is what you are missing:… Read More
Solving the Next Big SoC Challenges with FPGA Prototyping
The health of the semiconductor industry revolves around the “start”. Chip design starts translate to wafer starts, and both support customer design wins and product shipments. Roadmaps develop for expanding product offerings, and capital expenditures flow in to add capacity enabling more chip designs and wafer starts. If… Read More
Design Verification Challenges: Past, Present and Future!
Next week I will be at DVCON which is not to be confused with DEFCON the community of black and white hat hackers that challenge our online privacy on a daily basis. DVCON is the premier conference for the functional design and verification of our beloved electronic devices. The big draw next week of course is the keynote by Dr. Walden… Read More
Apple Google FaceBook and Person of Interest!
Apple, Google, and FaceBook are making significant investments in artificial intelligence (deep learning) and other advertising (snooping) enabling technology to better serve (exploit) their customers (us) and make trillions of dollars for their offshore accounts. This reminds me (in a very creepy way) of the TV series “Person… Read More
FinFET For Next-Gen Mobile and High-Performance Computing!
Evolving opportunities call for new and improved solutions to handle data, bandwidth and power. Moving forward, what will be the high-growth applications that drive product and technology innovation? The CAGRs for smartphone and data center continue to be very strong and healthy. … Read More
To EUV, or not to EUV, that is the question!
SPIE is next week so if you would like to meet me in person that is where I will be. SPIE is the big lithography and patterning conference for semiconductor professionals. Since I work with the foundries during my day job, SPIE is an important conference. SemiWiki blogger Scott Jones will also be there. During the day Scott does semiconductor… Read More
ARM POPs Another One!
ARM announced a new POP deal with UMC 28nm last week. POP stands for Processor Optimized Package meaning physical IP libraries (logic and memory) are customized for ARM processor cores and mainstream EDA tools creating a platform for optimized chip design. POP is a much bigger deal than most people realize so let’s get into a little… Read More







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