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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
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
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
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
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
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
One of the comments to previous installments of this series was that there isn’t much left for the merchant suppliers of smart mobile SoCs, considering Apple and Samsung have majority share and design their own parts. The theory is this makes it hard for many suppliers to continue investing at the resource levels needed to bring … Read More
At a dinner table a couple years ago, someone quietly shared their biggest worry in EDA. Not 2GHz, or quad core. Not 20nm, or 450mm. Not power, or timing closure. Call it The Rollover. It’s turned out to be the right worry.
Best brains spent inordinate hours designing and verifying a big, hairy, heavy breathing processor core to do … Read More
Many of the audience here are involved in standards bodies and specification development, so the news from the Apple v. Samsung on the invocation of ex ante in today’s testimony is useful.
I worked with VITA, the folks behind the VME family of board-level embedded technology, on their ex ante policy several years ago, and … Read More
Big processors get all the love, it seems. It’s natural, since they are highly complex beasts and need a lot of care and feeding in the EDA and fab cycle. But the law of large numbers is starting to shift energy in the direction of optimizing microcontrollers.
I mulled the math in my head for a while. In a world with 7 billion people and … Read More
TSMC N3 Process Technology Wiki