Mentor Acquires BDA!

Mentor Acquires BDA!
by Daniel Nenni on 03-23-2014 at 7:00 am

Mentor Graphics acquired Berkeley Design Automation this morning. The details of the deal were unannounced. This is a strong move by Mentor to challenge Cadence and Synopsys in the nanometer analog/mixed-signal market and nanometer memory characterization market, respectively. Mentor not only acquires the technology and… Read More


Cadence is all about Semiconductor IP!

Cadence is all about Semiconductor IP!
by Daniel Nenni on 03-16-2014 at 9:00 am

Cadence continues on its quest to be a top semiconductor IP supplier which is a good thing since the semiconductor world now revolves around IP. Cadence CEO Lip-Bu Tan mentioned IP 14 times during his keynote and he was followed by the president of Imagination Technologies and the CEO of recently acquired Tensilica. I was not afforded… Read More


Designing for Wearables!

Designing for Wearables!
by Daniel Nenni on 03-13-2014 at 5:30 pm

Wearables are going to be a real game changer for the fabless semiconductor ecosystem, absolutely. What other high volume semiconductor market segment has such a low barrier of entry? Speaking of low barrier of entry, the first stop on my Southern California trip last week was Monrovia, the home of Tanner EDA. Tanner is already … Read More


The Infamous Intel FPGA Slide!

The Infamous Intel FPGA Slide!
by Daniel Nenni on 03-11-2014 at 10:30 am

As I have mentioned before, I’m part of the Coleman Research Group so you can rent me by the hour to better understand the semiconductor industry. Most of the conversations are by phone but sometimes I do travel to the East Coast, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China for face-to-face meetings. Generally the calls are the result of an event … Read More


Internet of Things and the Wearable Market

Internet of Things and the Wearable Market
by Daniel Nenni on 03-09-2014 at 8:00 pm

My wife and I drove to Southern California last week in search of information on the wearable computing market. After stops in Irvine, San Diego, and some play time in La Jolla we returned in time for the CASPA Symposium: “The Wearable Future: Moving Beyond the Hype; the Search for the Holy Grail and Practical Use Cases”Read More


On-Chip Clock Generation beyond Phase Locked Loop

On-Chip Clock Generation beyond Phase Locked Loop
by Daniel Nenni on 03-07-2014 at 8:00 am

Inside a today’s typical VLSI system, there are millions of electrical signals. They make the system perform what it is designed to do. Among those, the most important one is the clock signal. From an operational perspective, clock is the timekeeper of the electrical world inside the chip/system. From a structural perspective,… Read More


Sir Hossein Yassaie, CEO of Imagination Technologies, Keynote!

Sir Hossein Yassaie, CEO of Imagination Technologies, Keynote!
by Daniel Nenni on 03-02-2014 at 12:00 pm

Semiconductor IP is a focus of this year’s Design Automation conference and I’m excited to see a keynote by one of the leaders of this market segment. Even more interesting, Dr. Hossein Yassaie was knighted by the Queen in Her Majesty’s New Year Honours 2013. The award was given in recognition of his services to technology… Read More


Effect of Inductance on Interconnect

Effect of Inductance on Interconnect
by Daniel Nenni on 03-02-2014 at 11:00 am

In previous design generations interconnect could safely be modeled by extraction using just R and C values. Parasitics in interconnect are important because they can affect the operating frequency or phase error in circuits like VCO’s. The need to model parasitics properly in wires is just as applicable in PA’s, LNA’s and for… Read More


Celebrating 50 Billion ARM Powered Chips!

Celebrating 50 Billion ARM Powered Chips!
by Daniel Nenni on 02-27-2014 at 12:00 pm

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In case you have not seen it yet there is a website named 50BillionChips where you can follow the journey of ARM. This goes quite well with the brief history of ARM we wrote last year in preparation for our bookFabless: The Transformation of the Semiconductor Industry. ARM was a big part of that transformation of course.… Read More