Atmel Tightens Automotive Focus with Three New Cortex-M7 MCUs

Atmel Tightens Automotive Focus with Three New Cortex-M7 MCUs
by Majeed Ahmad on 05-31-2015 at 11:30 am

Atmel Corp., a lead partner for the ARM Cortex-M7 processor launch in October 2014, has unveiled three new M7-based microcontrollers with a unique memory architecture and advanced connectivity features for the connected car market.

According to the company spokesman, E70, V71 and V70 chips are the industry’s highest performing… Read More


Why Design Data Management: A View from CERN

Why Design Data Management: A View from CERN
by Majeed Ahmad on 05-27-2015 at 10:00 pm

On July 4, 2012, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, announced that the ATLAS and CMS experiments had each observed a new particle, which is consistent with the Higgs boson predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) is a general-purpose detector with a broad physics… Read More


CEVA DSPs and the Tale of Two Chip Underdogs from China

CEVA DSPs and the Tale of Two Chip Underdogs from China
by Majeed Ahmad on 05-25-2015 at 1:30 pm

Leadcore Technology Co. Ltd, a subsidiary of Datang Group, is a silicon success story from China. It recently made waves by snatching the baseband socket from Qualcomm in Xiaomi’s sub-$100 LTE smartphone Redmi 2A. Leadcore’s L1860C chipset included quad-core 1.5GHz CPU and Mali-T628MP2 GPU from ARM and LTE modem… Read More


S2C’s Virtex UltraScale Prototyping Provides Designers Much Needed Flexibility

S2C’s Virtex UltraScale Prototyping Provides Designers Much Needed Flexibility
by Majeed Ahmad on 05-18-2015 at 12:00 pm

The advent of large system-on-chip (SoC) designs has brought FPGA prototyping hardware into the limelight and the launch of S2C Inc.’s Single VU440 Prodigy Logic Module just shows how far off-the-shelf prototyping has come in a bid to complement hardware verification and software development. Hardware verification… Read More


MediaTek Breaks the ‘Core’ Barrier, Again

MediaTek Breaks the ‘Core’ Barrier, Again
by Majeed Ahmad on 05-16-2015 at 7:00 am

Who says Asian companies can’t innovate? Just look at how Taiwan’s MediaTek Inc. has conceived a 64-bit system-on-chip (SoC) that features 10 Cortex-A cores in a tri-cluster configuration. MediaTek’s Helio X20 processor is also the first mobile SoC that boasts ARM’s latest CPU and GPU cores. Moreover,… Read More


End of the Road for Micrel

End of the Road for Micrel
by Majeed Ahmad on 05-10-2015 at 7:00 pm

Micrel Inc., one of the oldest chipmakers in Silicon Valley, has been acquired by Chandler, Arizona–based Microchip Technology Inc. for $839 million. A pure-play analog chip house will go to one of the leading microcontroller suppliers after regulatory approval amid the consolidation wave that has engulfed the semiconductor… Read More


The Curious Case of Samsung’s Shannon Chips

The Curious Case of Samsung’s Shannon Chips
by Majeed Ahmad on 05-03-2015 at 1:00 pm

The recent teardowns of Samsung Galaxy S6 smartphone have one thing written all over them: Samsung is doubling down on its logic business. Although most of the technology press coverage went to Exynos 7420, the first mobile SoC manufactured at the 14nm FinFET process, Samsung’s other logic chips inside the S6 handset equally… Read More


Automating Timing Closure Using Interconnect IP, Physical Information

Automating Timing Closure Using Interconnect IP, Physical Information
by Majeed Ahmad on 04-29-2015 at 1:00 pm

Timing closure is a “tortoise” for some system-on-chip (SoC) designers just the way many digital guys call RF design a “black art”. Chip designers often tell horror stories of doing up to 20 back-end physical synthesis place & route (SP&R) iterations with each iteration taking a week or more. “Timing closure”, a largely… Read More


Four Reasons Why Atmel is Ready to Ride the IoT Wave

Four Reasons Why Atmel is Ready to Ride the IoT Wave
by Majeed Ahmad on 04-27-2015 at 1:00 pm

In 2014, a Goldman Sachs’ report took many people by surprise when it picked Atmel Corp. as the company best positioned to take advantage of the rising Internet of Things (IoT) tsunami. At the same time, the report omitted tech industry giants like Apple and Google from the list of companies that could make a significant impact… Read More


Managing Design Flows in RF Modules

Managing Design Flows in RF Modules
by Majeed Ahmad on 04-24-2015 at 7:00 pm

The semiconductor industry is expected to grow at a reasonable pace in 2015 and beyond, with the biggest market being compute applications followed by wireless and consumer applications. The highest growth, however, is expected to be in application-specific products for devices such as smartphones, wearables, memories, … Read More