EDA Appears to Have COVID Immunity – ESD Alliance Reports Strong Q2 2020

EDA Appears to Have COVID Immunity – ESD Alliance Reports Strong Q2 2020
by Daniel Nenni on 10-05-2020 at 10:00 am

EDA Appears to Have COVID Immunity – ESD Alliance Reports Strong Q2 2020

The ESD Alliance tracks revenue growth for a large number of EDA companies. Their recent report paints a positive picture in a landscape dotted with challenges and not-so-good news. The report cites 12.6% overall revenue growth for Q2 2020 vs. Q2 2019. Furthermore, the overall most recent four quarter revenue average has increased… Read More


Will the U.S. and China go to War for TSMC?

Will the U.S. and China go to War for TSMC?
by Daniel Nenni on 10-05-2020 at 4:00 am

Will the U.S. and China go to War over TSMC

The semiconductor industry has never been more exciting than it is today and that is a mouthful given what we have accomplished over the last 50 years. From mainframe computers to a supercomputer in our pockets or on our wrists. Even if you don’t believe in miracles, semiconductor technology comes really close, absolutely.

U.S.Read More


CEO Interview: Dean Drako of IC Manage

CEO Interview: Dean Drako of IC Manage
by Daniel Nenni on 10-02-2020 at 6:00 am

Dean Drako CEO Interview SemiWiki 1

Dean founded IC Manage in 2003, a company that he has helped expand to become the IC/SoC design and IP management technology leader. Dean was also founder, President and CEO of Barracuda Networks from 2003 to 2012, where he built and expanded Barracuda from a spam and virus firewall provider to a broad line enterprise technology … Read More


Webinar: Static Verification for RISC-V Cores and SoCs

Webinar: Static Verification for RISC-V Cores and SoCs
by Daniel Nenni on 09-28-2020 at 6:00 am

Aldec RISC V Webinar SemiWiki 1

RISC-V has been trending ever since it landed on SemiWiki in 2016.  Even more so now that Arm is in flux with the Nvidia acquisition. Verification is a fast growing EDA challenge with the number of verification engineers steadily outpacing design, so this webinar is a best case scenario for SemiWiki traffic, absolutely.

Two thingsRead More


Don’t You Forget About “e”

Don’t You Forget About “e”
by Daniel Nenni on 09-25-2020 at 10:00 am

e Flow Vert

I imagine that the title of this post will remind many of 80s synth-pop, or perhaps the movie The Breakfast Club. But my topic is the venerable hardware verification language (HVL) known simply as e. It has quite an interesting history and it played a key role in the development of the modern testbench methodology that most chip verification… Read More


Update on Mentor’s Acquisition of Avatar Integrated Systems

Update on Mentor’s Acquisition of Avatar Integrated Systems
by Daniel Nenni on 09-23-2020 at 10:00 am

route centric architecture

Mentor Graphics, a Siemens Business, has completed their acquisition of EDA company Avatar Integrated Systems.  I recently spoke with Joe Sawicki, Executive VP of the Mentor IC EDA segment, about the acquisition strategy and IC Design platform goals for integration of the Avatar products.

Avatar (formerly ATopTech) focused… Read More


Executive Interview: Vic Kulkarni of ANSYS

Executive Interview: Vic Kulkarni of ANSYS
by Daniel Nenni on 09-23-2020 at 6:00 am

Ansys Ideas 1

On the eve of the Innovative Designs Enabled by Ansys Semiconductor (IDEAS) Forum I spoke with Vic on a range of topics including his opening keynote: Accelerating Moore and Beyond Moore with Multiphysics. You can register here

Vic Kulkarni is Vice President and Chief Strategist, Semiconductor Business Unit, Ansys, San Jose.… Read More


CEO Interview: Murilo Pilon Pessatti of Chipus Microelectronics

CEO Interview: Murilo Pilon Pessatti of Chipus Microelectronics
by Daniel Nenni on 09-21-2020 at 6:00 am

MuriloPessatti Photo

Murilo Pilon Pessatti is an Electrical Engineer with a MSEE in Analog IC design. He studied in Brazil at São Paulo University (USP) and earned a masters at Campinas State University (UNICAMP). Murilo then moved to Lisbon in Europe to work for ChipIdea, in the early 2000’s when the smartphone era was just taking off.

“I… Read More


WEBINAR: Design Adaptive eFPGA IP

WEBINAR: Design Adaptive eFPGA IP
by Daniel Nenni on 09-18-2020 at 10:00 am

Menta Adaptive Design eFPGA Webinar 1

Since the start of PROMS, PLDs and FPGAs we have learned the importance of programmability in modern semiconductor design. Today we have eFPGAs for “design adaptive” embedded programmability and that is what this webinar is all about.

Several key points are discussed starting with the Law of Accelerating Returns as it applies… Read More


GLOBALFOUNDRIES Goes Virtual with 2020 Global Technology Conference Series!

GLOBALFOUNDRIES Goes Virtual with 2020 Global Technology Conference Series!
by Daniel Nenni on 09-15-2020 at 10:00 am

GTC 400x400 1

GlobalFoundries is one of the more interesting semiconductor stories of this decade. They started as a spinout of the AMD fabs then acquired Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing in 2009 and the IBM Microelectronics business in 2014.

Now that events are virtual it is a great time for my fellow semiconductor professionals to

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