By now, you’ve probably read about the Imagination Technologies acquisition of MIPS somewhere, hopefully in the Eric Esteve article here. There’s an interesting side effect not being talked about much.… Read More
Author: Don Dingee
Beneath the Surface lies the first real test
At CES 2011, Steven Sinofsky of Microsoft stepped on the stage and went off the map of proven Windows territory. Announcing the next version of Windows would support the ARM Architecture, including SoCs from Qualcomm, NVIDIA, and TI, set a new course for Microsoft.
But Windows, being the battleship-sized behemoth that it is, would… Read More
SoC emulation syncs up with SuperSpeed USB
They say what adds value is to take something difficult and make it look simple. USB looks so simple when it is done right, but designers know it can be one of the more tempermental features in an SoC, especially in the latest SuperSpeed incarnation.… Read More
Hybrids on BeO then, 3D-IC in silicon now
Once upon a time (since every good story begins that way), I worked on 10kg, 70 mm diameter things that leapt out of tubes and chased after airplanes and helicopters. The electronics for these things were fairly marvelous, in the days when surface mount technology was in its infancy and having reliability problems in some situations.… Read More
12m FPGA prototyping sans partitioning
FPGA-based prototyping brings SoC designers the possibility of a high-fidelity model running at near real-world speeds – at least until the RTL design gets too big, when partitioning creeps into the process and starts affecting the hoped-for results.
The average ASIC or ASSP today is on the order of 8 to 10M gates, and that includes… Read More
The Middle is A Bad Place to Be if You’re a CPU Board
In a discussion with one of my PR network recently, I found myself thinking out loud that if the merchant SoC market is getting squeezed hard, that validates something I’ve been thinking – the merchant CPU board market is dying from the middle out.… Read More
Hand-crafted for horsepower: Apple A6 SoC
For all the raving and ranting and hand-wringing about the iPhone 5, the centerpiece of the device – the new A6 SoC – is proving to be a marvelous piece of engineering.… Read More
Over-under: Apple, 52M iPhones in 4Q
I’m in a Twitter conversation with some friends, with the subject: how many phones can Apple ship in the 4th quarter?
A respected analyst said 52M is “an easy mark” for Apple; others are saying 58M is the target for just the iPhone 5 in 4Q. However, the start for the iPhone 5 has been anything but easy. Oh, the orders… Read More
Is DDR4 a bridge too far?
We’ve gone through two decades where the PC market made the rules for technology. The industry faces a question now: Can a new technology go mainstream without the PC?
By now, you’ve certainly read the news from Cadence on their DDR4 IP for TSMC 28nm. They are claiming a PHY implementation that exceeds the data rates specified for … Read More
Built to last: LTSI, Yocto, and embedded Linux
The open source types say it all the time: open is better when it comes to operating systems. If you’re building something like a server or a phone, with either a flexible configuration or a limited lifetime, an open source operating system like Linux can put a project way ahead.
Linux has always started with a kernel distribution,… Read More
Will 50% of New High Performance Computing (HPC) Chip Designs be Multi-Die in 2025?