Synopsys has a long history of being a thought leader and it’s not surprising to see the company jumping into the forefront of new technologies. For decades, I’ve been steeped in electronic IC design and it caught me by surprise to find that Synopsys had been quietly working on filling out their portfolio in the optical design solutions… Read More
Author: Daniel Nenni
Speak N Spell
This is the ninth in the series of “20 Questions with Wally Rhines”
Success has many authors and the Speak & Spell product from Texas Instruments generated lots of write-ups to demonstrate this. For most of the semiconductor industry, results of innovation were not apparent to the masses but, for the consumer … Read More
Deep learning fueling the AI revolution with Interlaken IP Subsystem
AI is revolutionizing and transforming virtually every industry in the digital world. Advances in computing power and deep learning have enabled AI to reach a tipping point toward major disruption and rapid advancement. However, these applications require much higher performance and bandwidth requiring new kinds of IP and… Read More
Stubbornness Captures an Entire Disruptive Technology and Leads to an Academy Award
This is the eighth in the series of “20 Questions with Wally Rhines”
In 1972, I joined TI and was assigned to work on a new contract that had just been awarded and badly needed staffing. The U.S. Department of Defense had decided that solid-state charge-coupled device (CCD) image sensors were going to be a strategic technology… Read More
Maximize Bandwidth in your Massively Parallel AI SoCs?
Artificial Intelligence is one of the most talked about topics on the conference circuit this year and I don’t expect that to change anytime soon. AI is also one of the trending topics on SemiWiki with organic search bringing us a wealth of new viewers. You may also have noticed that AI is a hot topic for webinars like the one I am writing… Read More
TI Patent Priorities
This is the seventh in the series of “20 Questions with Wally Rhines”
Probably the most innovative person I met at Texas Instruments, other than Jack Kilby, was Ken Bean. Ken had a list of patents that would impress even the most skeptical. He started his career at Eagle Picher and came to TI in the mid 1960s. He was a warm,… Read More
SEMICON West Intel 10nm and GF 7nm Update
SEMICON West seemed a little slow last week but maybe it was just me. I’m sure SEMI will come out with record breaking numbers but I did not see it in the exhibit hall (see the video). What I did see was hundreds of exhibitors but I had no idea what they did. San Francisco again was very congested and smelly. I talked to a friend who is in public… Read More
Black Scholes and IC Design
This is the sixth in the series of “20 Questions with Wally Rhines”
From the earliest days of my childhood, I was always trying to find ways to make money – paper routes, lawn mowing, coke sales at football games – I did it all. And, except for a motorcycle I bought during junior high school when, at age 14, I could get a driver’s… Read More
55DAC Trip Report IP Quality
This year I signed books in the Fractal booth (compliments of Fractal) and let me tell you it was quite an experience. IP quality is a very touchy subject and the source of many more tape-out delays than I had imagined. As it turns out, commercial IP is the biggest offender which makes no sense to me whatsoever. Even more shocking, one… Read More
TI: Semiconductor Industry History of Innovation
This is the fifth in the series of “20 Questions with Wally Rhines”
Texas Instruments is a remarkable company founded by remarkable people. And Eric Jonsson was one of the most remarkable visionaries of the 20[SUP]th[/SUP] century. He was a renaissance man who created an industry and a fortune by following the needs… Read More
cHBM for AI: Capabilities, Challenges, and Opportunities