EDA needs more CEOs like Amit Gupta. Solido, which is now profitable, is his second AMS EDA company. The first, Analog Design Automation (ADA), was purchased by Synopsys for a hefty multiplier. Prior to becoming an EDA entrepreneur, Amit was product manager for the wireless group at Nortel and a hardware engineer for the RF communications… Read More
Author: Daniel Nenni
Accelerating Design Debug in an ASIC Prototype
ASIC prototyping in FPGAs is starting to trend on SemiWiki. As FPGA technology becomes more advanced customers tell me that the traditional debug tools are inadequate. Faced with the very restrictive debugging capabilities and very long synthesis/place/route times the debugging cycle in these prototype platforms are quite… Read More
Hot Topic – CMOS Image Sensor Verification!
Mobile applications require CMOS image sensor devices that have a low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), low power, small area, high resolution, high dynamic range, and high frame rate. CMOS image sensor imaging performance is noise limited requiring accurate noise analysis on the pixel array electronics and column readout circuitry.… Read More
MOS-AK/GSA Munich Workshop
The MOS-AK/GSA Modeling Working Group, a global compact modeling standardization forum, completed its annual spring compact modeling workshop on April 11-12, 2013 at the Institute for Technical Electronics, TUM, Munich. The event received full sponsorship from leading industrial partners including MunEDA and Tanner EDA.… Read More
TSMC ♥ Solido
Process variation has been a top trending term since SemiWiki began as a result of the articles, wikis, and white papers posted on the Solido landing page. Last year Solido and TSMC did a webinar together, an article in EETimes, and Solido released a book on the subject. Process variation is a challenge today at 28nm and it gets worse… Read More
Mentor CEO Wally Rhines U2U Keynote
You will never meet a more approachable CEO in the semiconductor ecosystem than Dr. Walden C. Rhines. The first time I met Wally was way back when I blogged for food and he invited me over for lunch. Even better, a year or two later I was having dinner with a friend at the DBL Tree in San Jose. Wally was waiting for his flight home so he joined… Read More
Morris Chang on Altera and Intel
If you want to know why I have written so much about TSMC in the past five years here it is: TSMC executives are approachable, personable, answer questions straight on, and have yet to lead me astray. If you want an example of this read the Chairman’s comments on the TSMC Q1 2013 earnings call transcript.
“On 16-nanometer FinFET, we … Read More
FinFET Day Presentations at EDPS Monterey!
If you are ever asked to organize a conference session do not hesitate, accept immediately and jump right in. When John Swan, EDPS General Chair, asked me to organize a day I hesitated. Fortunately he is not one to take no for an answer. It was an unforgettable experience on many levels and I hope to be involved with EDPS again next year.… Read More
A Brief History of Methodics
Methodics was founded in 2006 by 2 ex-Cadence experts in the Custom IC design tools space, Simon Butler and Fergus Slorach. They had a consulting company called IC Methods, active in Silicon Valley from 2000-2006, and when they needed to create a new company to service a consulting engagement that had turned into a product, they … Read More
Cadence ♥ TSMC
TSMC has been investing in the fabless semiconductor ecosystem for 25+ years and that is why they are the #1 foundry and lead this industry (my opinion). I’m a big fan of joint webinars. Not only is it collaboration open to the masses, it is a close collaboration between the two sponsoring companies. Having worked on the TSMC… Read More
Flynn Was Right: How a 2003 Warning Foretold Today’s Architectural Pivot