Qualcomm Hit With $853M Penalty for Patent Licensing Practices

Qualcomm Hit With $853M Penalty for Patent Licensing Practices
by Tom Simon on 01-02-2017 at 12:00 pm

Qualcomm was hit in December with a $853M fine by the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) for not fairly sharing patents related to mobile phone chipsets. In setting the standards for CDMA, WCDMA and LTE, agreements were struck that enable sharing technology to advance the standard. Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND)… Read More


CEO Interview: Dündar Dumlugöl of Magwel

CEO Interview: Dündar Dumlugöl of Magwel
by Tom Simon on 12-19-2016 at 7:00 am

Magwel CEO Dündar Dumlugöl is well known from his days at Cadence, where I first met him, and for his more recent tenure at Magwel. At Cadence he led the team that first developed Spectre. He has come a long way from the start of his career at IMEC in Belgium. He and I had a chance to have a conversation recently where he offered insights … Read More


Building a Solar Powered Ice Freezer

Building a Solar Powered Ice Freezer
by Tom Simon on 12-18-2016 at 4:00 pm

My vacation is your worst nightmare. Well, at least that is what the bumper sticker says – it’s referring to Burning Man. It’s well known that among the tens of thousands of people attending this arts festival in Nevada at the end of each Summer there are lots of high tech luminaries. I also have gone many times – not to say that I am a luminary.… Read More


Performance Analysis for ARM Based SOC’s

Performance Analysis for ARM Based SOC’s
by Tom Simon on 12-12-2016 at 4:00 pm

ARM estimates that many SOC’s designed today have over 200 IP components. This statistic comes from a recent white paper ARM published addressing the topic of system performance analysis. This number is only going to go up. According the ARM this creates a huge challenge in ensuring the system is designed with adequate performance… Read More


Nvidia Drives into New Market with Deep Learning and the Drive PX 2

Nvidia Drives into New Market with Deep Learning and the Drive PX 2
by Tom Simon on 12-03-2016 at 7:00 am

Nvidia has found that video games are the perfect metaphor for autonomous driving. To understand why this is so relevant you have to realize that the way self-driving cars see the world is through a virtual world created in real time inside the processors used for autonomous driving – very much like a video game. It’s a little bit like… Read More


ISO 9001:2015 – Not Just for the Big Guys

ISO 9001:2015 – Not Just for the Big Guys
by Tom Simon on 12-02-2016 at 7:00 am

If you are like me, you remember the banners that large companies put up years ago when they achieved ISO 9001 compliance. It seemed at the time that this was something only for large companies. Since its introduction in 1987 ISO 9001 has both evolved as a standard and has become an achievement that not just large manufacturing companies… Read More


eSilicon Demonstrates Potent Memory IP Evaluation Platform

eSilicon Demonstrates Potent Memory IP Evaluation Platform
by Tom Simon on 11-18-2016 at 4:00 pm

With memories taking up in some cases over 50% of the area of many ASIC designs, their selection and implementation can affect everything from power and timing to the choice of packaging. As a result, the process of deciding among all the options for ASIC memories becomes time and energy intensive. Memory selection even affects … Read More


Ford Motors Discusses Future Mobility Trends at Synopsys Seminar

Ford Motors Discusses Future Mobility Trends at Synopsys Seminar
by Tom Simon on 11-17-2016 at 4:00 pm

Five or ten years ago it would have been hard to imagine someone from Ford Motors giving the keynote at a technology summit at a major EDA company like Synopsys. However, on November 2[SUP]nd[/SUP], Synopsys hosted a seminar on the topic of Automotive Architecture Design and System Testing, and Ford Technical Fellow Jim Buczkowski… Read More


New Cortex-M7 Chip to Help Power Sophisticated IoT Solutions

New Cortex-M7 Chip to Help Power Sophisticated IoT Solutions
by Tom Simon on 11-01-2016 at 4:00 pm

IoT architects face a dilemma in partitioning the compute power of their systems between the cloud and the edge. The cloud offers large storage and heavy duty compute power, making it an attractive place to perform the computation needed for IoT tasks. However, moving large amounts of data from the edge to the cloud servers, can … Read More


Webinar on Revolutionary Changes in SOC IP Access

Webinar on Revolutionary Changes in SOC IP Access
by Tom Simon on 10-22-2016 at 7:00 am

Knowledge is power, and I’ve seen the trend over time of people getting more and deeper access to knowledge as each year goes by. I remember, as a student in high school back the in 70’s, the first time I wanted to buy stock in a company. You could only get a quote by calling a broker or visiting the broker’s office. Today you can get real … Read More