Google Datacenter

Google Datacenter
by Paul McLellan on 10-22-2012 at 5:42 pm

In my blog about Intel’s latest results I linked to an interesting article in Wired about Google’s datacenters.

I happened to be browsing some websites in the Netherlands (actually I don’t speak a word of Dutch, a Dutch friend pointed it out to me) and there is an article showing how the pictures that accompany… Read More


DAC: It’s the Last Week for Many Submissions

DAC: It’s the Last Week for Many Submissions
by Paul McLellan on 10-19-2012 at 2:36 pm

The deadline is coming up at the end of next week (technically on Monday October 29th for those of you who like real brinkmanship) for several aspects of DAC (not submission of papers for the conference itself) but most of the less academic-oriented things.

Proposals for:

  • Special Sessions
  • Tutorials
  • Panel sessions (in the conference
Read More

Intel Quarterly Report: Needs to Do Better

Intel Quarterly Report: Needs to Do Better
by Paul McLellan on 10-19-2012 at 11:51 am

Intel announced its quarterly results a couple of days ago. They had previously downgraded 3rd quarter sales estimates but they managed to beat the downgraded numbers. If you look at the transcript of the call (I didn’t listen live) you’ll see very little mention of mobile and Atom. This is bad news for Intel. Its core… Read More


A Brief History of Mobile: Generations 3 and 4

A Brief History of Mobile: Generations 3 and 4
by Paul McLellan on 10-18-2012 at 8:30 pm

The early first generation analog standards all used a technique known as Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA). All this means is that each call was assigned its own frequency band in the radio spectrum. Since each band was only allocated to one phone, there was no interference between different calls. When a call finished… Read More


Virtuoso Has Twins

Virtuoso Has Twins
by Paul McLellan on 10-18-2012 at 6:01 pm

Cadence has apparently announced that going forward the Virtuoso environment is going to be split into two and offered as two separate code-streams, the current IC6.x and a new IC12.x. The idea is to introduce a new product with features that were specifically developed for new technologies such as double patterning aware layout… Read More


iPhone5 Versus Samsung S3: the Key Question

iPhone5 Versus Samsung S3: the Key Question
by Paul McLellan on 10-18-2012 at 8:29 am

In all the discussion about iPhone versus Samsung, the profit leader and the volume leader in the handset business, there is way too much discussion about boring stuff like how many MIPS the A6 chips has and whether the maps are any good on iPhone (no) and is there enough 28nm capacity for Qualcomm. Boring.

The real question that everyone… Read More


Xilinx Programmable Packet Processor

Xilinx Programmable Packet Processor
by Paul McLellan on 10-17-2012 at 5:19 pm

At the Linley conference last week I ran into Gordon Brebner of Xilinx. He and I go a long way back. We had adjacent offices in Edinburgh University Computer Science Department back when we were doing our PhDs and conspiring to network the department’s Vax into the university network over a two-week vacation. We managed to … Read More


Laker3 in TSMC 20nm Reference Flow

Laker3 in TSMC 20nm Reference Flow
by Paul McLellan on 10-16-2012 at 8:10 pm

SpringSoft, soon to be part of Synopsys but officially still a separate company for now, just announced that Laker[SUP]3[/SUP], the third generation of their layout product family, is featured in TSMC’s 20nm Custom Reference Flow.

Laker 20nm advancements include new double patterning-aware design and voltage-dependent… Read More


Kaufman Award Dinner at 50th DAC in Austin

Kaufman Award Dinner at 50th DAC in Austin
by Paul McLellan on 10-16-2012 at 8:05 pm

In past years the Kaufman award, the most prestigious in EDA, has been announced around September and presented during a dinner in October or November in Silicon Valley. EDAC and CEDA, the sponsors of the award, have just announced that this time the award dinner will take place in Austin at the 50th DAC following the early Sunday … Read More


A brief History of Mobile: Generations 1 and 2

A brief History of Mobile: Generations 1 and 2
by Paul McLellan on 10-14-2012 at 9:00 pm

Mobile is one of the biggest markets for semiconductor, especially if you count not just mobile handsets but also the base-station infrastructure. No technology has ever been adopted so fast and so completely. There are approximately the same number of mobile phone accounts as there are people in the world. A few people have more… Read More