7nm SERDES Design and Qualification Challenges!

7nm SERDES Design and Qualification Challenges!
by Daniel Nenni on 11-22-2017 at 7:00 am

Semiconductor IP is the fastest growing market inside the fabless ecosystem, it always has been and always will be, especially now that non-traditional chip companies are quickly entering the mix. Towards the end of the year I always talk to the ecosystem to see what next year has in store for us and 2018 looks to be another year of … Read More


Mentor FINALLY Acquires Solido Design

Mentor FINALLY Acquires Solido Design
by Daniel Nenni on 11-20-2017 at 5:00 pm

I say finally because it was a long time coming… almost ten years to be exact. I started doing business development work for both Solido and Berkeley Design Automation about ten years ago and have been trying to put them together ever since. The synergy was obvious, like peanut butter and jelly. In fact, this is my third time … Read More


ASIC and TSMC are the AI Chip Unsung Heroes

ASIC and TSMC are the AI Chip Unsung Heroes
by Daniel Nenni on 11-20-2017 at 7:00 am

One of the more exciting design start market segments that we track is Artificial Intelligence related ASICs. With NVIDIA making billions upon billions of dollars repurposing GPUs as AI engines in the cloud, the Application Specific Integrated Circuit business was sure to follow. Google now has its Tensor Processing Unit, Intel… Read More


Finding the Right Needle in the IP Haystack

Finding the Right Needle in the IP Haystack
by Daniel Nenni on 11-13-2017 at 7:00 am

As the percentage of pre-configured IP increases in semiconductors, so design teams are able to reduce design cycle times. But one of the challenges for design teams is the inability to quickly and easily find IP because it’s incorrectly classified, sat in a designer’s home directory, or it’s been put into the ‘repository’ by an… Read More


Free PDF Version of PROTOTYPICAL for SoC Design

Free PDF Version of PROTOTYPICAL for SoC Design
by Daniel Nenni on 11-12-2017 at 7:00 am

In our quest to further enlighten the masses SemiWiki has published four books, we have two more eBooks in post production due out in Q1 2018 and two more topics in research. All of the books are available free for PDF versions or you can get printed versions on Amazon.com or free printed versions at book signings or if you happen to meet… Read More


DesignShare is all About Enabling Design Wins!

DesignShare is all About Enabling Design Wins!
by Daniel Nenni on 11-08-2017 at 7:00 am

One of the barriers to silicon success has always been design costs, especially if you are an emerging company or targeting an emerging market such as IoT. Today design start costs are dominated by IP which is paid at the start of the project and that is after costly IP evaluations and other IP verification and integration challenges.… Read More


Deep Learning and Cloud Computing Make 7nm Real

Deep Learning and Cloud Computing Make 7nm Real
by Daniel Nenni on 11-05-2017 at 7:00 am

The challenges of 7nm are well documented. Lithography artifacts create exploding design rule complexity, mask costs and cycle time. Noise and crosstalk get harder to deal with, as does timing closure. The types of applications that demand 7nm performance will often introduce HBM memory stacks and 2.5D packaging, and that creates… Read More


Arm 2017 TechCon Keynote Simon Segar!

Arm 2017 TechCon Keynote Simon Segar!
by Daniel Nenni on 10-27-2017 at 7:00 am

Now that the dust has settled with the Softbank acquisition I must say that Arm is truly a different company. There are now a lot of new faces from outside the semiconductor industry, which is a good thing, and a lot less stress from Wall Street which is an even better thing. Simon can now wear whatever he wants without the worry of lowering… Read More


Arm TechCon Preview with the Foundries!

Arm TechCon Preview with the Foundries!
by Daniel Nenni on 10-23-2017 at 9:00 am

This week Dr. Eric Esteve, Dr. Bernard Murphy, and I will be blogging live from Arm TechCon. It really looks like it will be a great conference so you should see some interesting blogs in the coming days. One of the topics I am interested in this year is foundation IP and I will tell you why.

During the fabless transformation of the semiconductor… Read More


TSMC: Semiconductors in the next ten years!

TSMC: Semiconductors in the next ten years!
by Daniel Nenni on 10-23-2017 at 6:00 am

The TSMC 30th Anniversary Forum just ended so I will share a few notes before the rest of the media chimes in. The forum was live streamed on tsmc.com, hopefully it will be available for replay. The ballroom at the Grand Hyatt in Taipei was filled with cameras, semiconductor executives, and security personnel.

Here is the replay

The… Read More