Cadence Expands Integrated Photonics Beachhead

Cadence Expands Integrated Photonics Beachhead
by Mitch Heins on 03-30-2017 at 4:00 pm

In November of 2016, I made a bold statement that October 20, 2016 would stand as a watershed day in integrated photonics. The reason for this claim was that GLOBALFOUNDRIES proclaimed that integrated photonics was real and here to stay. The same week I wrote an article about Cadence Design Systems securing a photonic beachhead … Read More


Synopsys and PhoeniX Demo Photonic IC Flow Using AIM PDK at OFC

Synopsys and PhoeniX Demo Photonic IC Flow Using AIM PDK at OFC
by Mitch Heins on 03-08-2017 at 12:00 pm


Synopsys has long been known for its leading position in the digital logic synthesis world. More recently however, the company started delving into the world of photonic integrated circuit (PIC) design. Synopsys started down this path from the system level with a 2010 acquisition of Optical Research Associates and their CODE… Read More


Automotive OEMs Get Boost as NetSpeed NoC is Certified ISO 26262 Ready

Automotive OEMs Get Boost as NetSpeed NoC is Certified ISO 26262 Ready
by Mitch Heins on 03-07-2017 at 12:00 pm


I read with great interest today news from NetSpeed Systems that both their Gemini and Orion NoC IPs have been certified ISO 26262 ASIL D ready. They were certified by SGS-TUV Saar GmbH, an independent accredited assessor. This is a big deal as up till now, it was left up to the OEMs to do most of the heavily lifting to qualify their IC’s… Read More


IoT Device Designers Get Help from ARMv8-M Cores

IoT Device Designers Get Help from ARMv8-M Cores
by Mitch Heins on 03-06-2017 at 12:00 pm

Someone once said that IoT devices live in the wild. They must be able to withstand any number of attacks, whether they be communication, physical or software based attacks. The threats are real and the consequences can range from simple irritants to life threatening situations.

It’s because of these threats that IoT device designers… Read More


Plasmonics Integrates Photonics and Electronics

Plasmonics Integrates Photonics and Electronics
by Mitch Heins on 02-21-2017 at 7:00 am

In the last year we have seen a marked increase in activity around the integrated photonics space, especially around silicon-based photonics. Last year the American Institute for Manufacturing of Photonics (better known as AIM Photonics) was started to boot-strap U.S. efforts in integrated photonics. We also saw multiple … Read More


Qorvo Uses ClioSoft to Bring Design Data Management to RF Design

Qorvo Uses ClioSoft to Bring Design Data Management to RF Design
by Mitch Heins on 02-13-2017 at 12:00 pm

A couple weeks ago I gave a heads-up about a webinar that was being hosted by ClioSoft, Qorvo and Keysight. The topic of the webinar was how to manage custom RF designs across multiple design teams and CAD flows. The webinar was held on February 1st and included presentations by Marcus Ray of Qorvo and Michele Azarian of Keysight.

Much… Read More


Qorvo and KeySight to Present on Managing Collaboration for Multi-site, Multi-vendor RF Design

Qorvo and KeySight to Present on Managing Collaboration for Multi-site, Multi-vendor RF Design
by Mitch Heins on 01-23-2017 at 12:00 pm

Over the last several weeks I’ve been having a lot of discussions with colleagues around IP reuse and design data management. This led me to a discussion with Ranjit Adhikary, Marketing Vice President for ClioSoft.

ClioSoft is best known for their design collaboration software platform called SOS. They also sell an enterprise… Read More


Fan-Out Wafer Level Processing Gets Boost from Mentor TSMC Collaboration

Fan-Out Wafer Level Processing Gets Boost from Mentor TSMC Collaboration
by Mitch Heins on 01-20-2017 at 12:00 pm

I caught up with John Ferguson of Mentor Graphics this week to learn more about a recent announcement that TSMC has extended its collaboration with Mentor in the area of Fan-Out Wafer Level Processing (FOWLP).

In March of last year Mentor and TSMC announced that they were collaborating on a design and verification flow for TSMC’s… Read More


Netspeed Gemini NoC Provides Coherent Fabric in Mobileye’s Next-generation EyeQ5 SoC

Netspeed Gemini NoC Provides Coherent Fabric in Mobileye’s Next-generation EyeQ5 SoC
by Mitch Heins on 01-11-2017 at 7:00 am

Last week I wrote about NetSpeed’s network on chip (NoC) IP technology and design environment NocStudio. This week we see a real life application of this technology announced at CES by Imagination Technologies and NetSpeed. The companies have announced that Mobileye will use Imagination and NetSpeed IP in their next-generation… Read More


CES: Carnival Corp Personifies Key to Monetizing IoT

CES: Carnival Corp Personifies Key to Monetizing IoT
by Mitch Heins on 01-09-2017 at 12:00 pm

When one thinks of CES, one typically thinks of the latest in virtual reality or huge super high resolution televisions, sophisticated drones and robots. However, what caught my eye this year came from a company you don’t typically associate with high tech gadgets and that was Carnival Corporation. Yep, the company with all of … Read More