Andes: the Biggest Microprocessor IP Company You’ve Never Hear Of

Andes: the Biggest Microprocessor IP Company You’ve Never Hear Of
by Paul McLellan on 10-16-2013 at 3:06 pm

I wrote in April about Andes Technology, a microprocessor IP licensing company that even the person sitting next to me, a strategic marketing guy from Qualcomm had never heard of. So, OK, if you read that earlier article you had at least heard of them.

Part of the reason you haven’t heard of them is that they are in Taiwan (in Hsinchu)… Read More


Using HLS to Turbocharge Verification

Using HLS to Turbocharge Verification
by Paul McLellan on 10-16-2013 at 8:23 am

One of the benefits of using high-level synthesis is obviously the ease of writing some algorithms in SystemC since it is at a higher level than RTL (that’s why we call it high-level synthesis!). But a second benefit is at the verification level. Since a lot of the verification gets done at the SystemC level, less needs to be done at … Read More


Always-on Context-aware Sensors in Your Phone

Always-on Context-aware Sensors in Your Phone
by Paul McLellan on 10-16-2013 at 8:00 am

Smartphones are smart but they are about to get smarter. The next big thing in mobile phones is to have a rich sensor environment: proximity, temperature and humidity, atmospheric pressure, light color, cover, gyroscope, magnetometer, accelerometer, ambient light, gesture and more. Some of these are already here, of course,… Read More


How Asia Works, phase 1

How Asia Works, phase 1
by Paul McLellan on 10-15-2013 at 9:00 pm

This is not too much about semiconductors so consider this an “off-topic” warning. But I think you should read on anyway.

TSMC will show up eventually but not yet.

I was in Asia at last week. Coincidentally, I had a book to read on the plane called How Asia Works by Joe Studwell. It looks at what has made Japan, Korea, Taiwan… Read More


Yes, Intel 14nm Really is Delayed…And They Lost $600M on Mobile

Yes, Intel 14nm Really is Delayed…And They Lost $600M on Mobile
by Paul McLellan on 10-15-2013 at 6:01 pm

Intel server profits are growing, which isn’t a big suprise. But mobile losses are high. Although the amount lost by the Other Intel Architecture Group had a loss of $606M, that is actually down slightly from Q2 but up a lot from last year when they lost “only” $235M. This group includes Atom, the Infineon Wireless… Read More


SEMI Smart Technology Conference

SEMI Smart Technology Conference
by Paul McLellan on 10-15-2013 at 9:40 am

I should start by saying that SEMI Smart Technology is not technology that is only half as smart as our phones, it is a conference on smart technology organized by SEMI. Officially it is called the International Technology Partners Conference with a sort of subtitle of From Smart Cars to Smart Cities: Shaping the Future of MicroelectronicsRead More


Enter the Warrior

Enter the Warrior
by Paul McLellan on 10-14-2013 at 11:57 am

Since Imagination’s acquisition of MIPS at the end of last year, the MIPS product line has been given a new lease of life. There are two things driving this. The first is simply that with its new home, the MIPS architecture has a solid future whereas before it was uncertain. Secondly, Imagination moved their own general purpose… Read More


Managing Multi-site Design with Cliosoft at LBNL

Managing Multi-site Design with Cliosoft at LBNL
by Paul McLellan on 10-08-2013 at 11:40 pm

With the award of the Nobel prize for physics to Higgs (who used to work in the same building at Edinburgh as I did, reflected glory) and Englert yesterday, CERN has been in the news. ClioSoft has an interesting presentation given at CERN about designing a detector chips. The work was done two or three years ago, managed from Lawrence… Read More


Atrenta Japan Technoloogy Forum

Atrenta Japan Technoloogy Forum
by Paul McLellan on 10-08-2013 at 12:27 am

As they have done for the last few years, Atrenta held its fifth annual user group meeting at the Shin Yokohama Kokusai Hotel on September 13. The attendees are a mixture of customers and other interested members of the semiconductor supply chain. There were nearly 90 people there representing 48 different companies in Japan.

The… Read More


Floorplanning Merged With Synthesis

Floorplanning Merged With Synthesis
by Paul McLellan on 10-02-2013 at 2:45 pm

One area of iteration that is becoming more problematic is between floorplanning and synthesis. So much of timing is driven by placement that fixing timing and even power often involves not just re-synthesis and re-placement but alterations to the floorplan. The Achilles heel of existing methods is that floorplanning tools … Read More