This was my first SNUG (Synopsys User Group) meeting as media so it was a ground breaking event. Media was still barred from some of the sessions but hey, it’s a start. The most blog worthy announcement on day 1 was that Synopsys signed a deal with Amazon to bring the cloud to mainstream EDA!
Even more blog worthy was a media roundtable… Read More
Author: Daniel Nenni
Moore’s Law and Semiconductor Design and Manufacturing
The semiconductor design and manufacturing challenges at 40nm and 28nm are a direct result ofMoore’s Law, the climbing transistor count and shrinking geometries. It’s a process AND design issue and the interaction is at the transistor level. Transistors may be shrinking, but atoms aren’t. So now it actually matters when even… Read More
TSMC 2011 Technology Symposium Theme Explained
The 17[SUP]th[/SUP] Annual TSMC Technology Symposium will be held in San Jose California on April 5[SUP]th[/SUP], 2011. Dr. Morris Chang will again be the keynote speaker. The theme this year is “Trusted Technology and Capacity Provider”and I think it’s important to not only hear what people are saying but also understand why… Read More
Mentor Graphics 1 : Carl Icahn 0!
This is just another blog about Carl Icahn and his quest to conquer EDA, when in fact EDA is conquering him. It includes highlights from my dinner with Mentor Graphics and Physicist Brian Greene, the Mentor Q4 conference call, and meeting Mentor CEO Wally Rhines at DvCon 2011.
It wasn’t just the free food this time, dinner with Brian… Read More
Semiconductor Power Crisis and TSMC!
Power grids all over the world are already overloaded even without the slew of new electronic gadgets and cars coming out this year. At ISSCC, Dr. Jack Sun, TSMC Vice President of R&D and Chief Technology Officer made the comparison of a human brain to the closest thing available in silicon, a graphical processing unit (GPU).… Read More
Intel Sandy Bridge Fiasco and EDA
I purchased two Toyotas last year and both have since been recalled. Why has Toyota spent $1B+ on recalls in recent years? Same reason why it will cost Intel $700M (which does not include reputation damage) to recall Sandy Bridge chip sets, because someone did not do their job! The WHAT has been discussed, lets talk about HOW it happened.… Read More
ISSCC Semiconductors for Healthy Living
Not only do I enjoy San Francisco, I really enjoy the International Solid-State Conference that was held in San Francisco again last week. This was ISSCC #57 I believe. ISSCC attracts a different crowd than other semiconductor conferences, probably because there are no exhibits and no sales and marketing nonsense, just serious… Read More
Semiconductor Ecosystem Collaboration
After 27 years in semiconductor design and manufacturing I actually had to look up the word collaboration. Seriously, I did not know the meaning of the word.
Collaboration:a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals, (this is more than the intersection of common goals seen… Read More
Wally Rhines DvCon 2011 Ketnote: From Volume to Velocity
Abstract:
There has been a remarkable acceleration in the adoption of advanced verification methodologies, languages and new standards. This is true across all types of IC design and geographic regions. Designers and verification engineers are surprisingly open to new approaches to keep pace with the relentless rise in design… Read More
Mentor Graphics Should Be Acquired or Sold: Carl Icahn COUNTERPOINT
Daniel,
On Jan 20th, you criticized that the EDA models are all broken and need to change. Ridiculing Synpsys, Cadence, Mentor and Magma for not agreeing to ‘pay for success’ type of model (some form of royalties).
On Feb 14th, you state thatIcahn doesn’t understand EDA and should stay out. Maybe he is seeing … Read More









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