Carl Icahn Activist Activities

Carl Icahn Activist Activities
by Daniel Nenni on 10-26-2018 at 7:00 am

The “20 Questions with Wally Rhines” series continues

Carl Icahn is a remarkably charming person. You might expect him to be a mean, aggressive adversary but he actually jokes about his foibles, tells stories about interesting people and gently poses questions. “I thought Jerry Yang just didn’t want to sell his Yahoo… Read More


TSMC Q3 2018 Earnings Call Discussion!

TSMC Q3 2018 Earnings Call Discussion!
by Daniel Nenni on 10-22-2018 at 7:00 am

The TSMC OIP Forum was very upbeat this year and now we know why. It wasn’t long ago that some media outlets and a competitor said 7nm would not be a popular node because it is too expensive blah blah blah. People inside the fabless semiconductor ecosystem however know otherwise. As I have said before, 7nm will be another strong node … Read More


Honey I Shrunk the EDA TAM

Honey I Shrunk the EDA TAM
by Daniel Nenni on 10-19-2018 at 7:00 am

The “20 Questions with Wally Rhines” series continues

Throughout the history of the EDA industry, pricing models have caused discontinuities in the way the industry operates. For a variety of competitive reasons, individual companies have developed ways to change the pricing model in an attempt to secure competitive… Read More


Technology Behind the Chip

Technology Behind the Chip
by Daniel Nenni on 10-15-2018 at 7:00 am

Tom Dillinger and I attended the Silvaco SURGE 2018 event in Silicon Valley last week with several hundred of our semiconductor brethren. Tom has a couple blogs ready to go but first let’s talk about the keynote by Silvaco CEO David Dutton. David isn’t your average EDA CEO, he spent the first 8 years of his career at Intel then spent … Read More


ARM TechCon 2018 is Upon Us!

ARM TechCon 2018 is Upon Us!
by Daniel Nenni on 10-12-2018 at 12:00 pm

ARM TechCon is one of the most influential conferences in the semiconductor ecosystem without a doubt. This year ARM TechCon has moved from the Santa Clara Convention Center to the much larger convention center in San Jose. Last year the conference seemed to be busting at the seams so this move makes complete sense. A little less … Read More


EDA Cost and Pricing

EDA Cost and Pricing
by Daniel Nenni on 10-12-2018 at 7:00 am

This is the nineteenth in the series of “20 Questions with Wally Rhines”

When I moved from the semiconductor industry to Mentor, I expected most of my technology and business experience to apply similarly in EDA software. To some extent, that was correct. But there was a fundamental difference that required a change… Read More


Crossfire Baseline Checks for Clean IP Part II

Crossfire Baseline Checks for Clean IP Part II
by Daniel Nenni on 10-10-2018 at 7:00 am

In our previous article bearing the same title, we discussed the recommended baseline checks covering cell and pin presence, back-end, and some front-end checks related to functional equivalency. In this article, we’ll cover the extensive list of characterization checks, that include timing arcs, NLDM, CCS, ECSM/EM, and … Read More


TSMC and Synopsys are in the Cloud!

TSMC and Synopsys are in the Cloud!
by Daniel Nenni on 10-08-2018 at 7:00 am

EDA has been flirting with the cloud unsuccessfully for many years now and it really comes down to a familiar question: Who can afford to spend billions of dollars on data center security? Which is similar to the question that started the fabless transformation: Who can afford to spend billions of dollars on semiconductor manufacturing… Read More


AVANTI: The Acquisition Game

AVANTI: The Acquisition Game
by Daniel Nenni on 10-05-2018 at 7:00 am

This is the eighteenth in the series of “20 Questions with Wally Rhines”

Gerry Hsu’s departure from Cadence to form Avanti (originally named ArcSys) is chronicled in legal testimony as accusations of theft of software were followed by legal battles, financial awards and even prison terms. Mentor and Synopsys were… Read More


AI and the Domain Specific Architecture

AI and the Domain Specific Architecture
by Daniel Nenni on 10-03-2018 at 7:00 am

Last month I attended the 2018 U.S. Executive Forum where Wally Rhines was one of the keynotes. I was also lucky enough to have lunch with Wally afterwards and talk about his presentation in more detail and he sent me his slides which are attached to the end of this blog.

The nice thing about Wally’s presentations is that they are not … Read More