Unlock the Key to Ultra-Low Power Design

Unlock the Key to Ultra-Low Power Design
by Tom Simon on 06-20-2015 at 7:00 am

We have been hearing about low power for a long time. Fortunately, low power chip operation has come about through a large number of innovations. Key among these is clock gating, frequency and voltage scaling, managing leakage with lower threshold voltage, HKMG, and many other techniques. But we are entering the age of ultra low… Read More


ARM and frog Team up with UNICEF to Foster Creation of Wearables for the Developing World

ARM and frog Team up with UNICEF to Foster Creation of Wearables for the Developing World
by Tom Simon on 06-11-2015 at 5:00 pm

When the term wearables is mentioned most people’s first thoughts go to devices like the Apple Watch, Fitbit Flex, or Nike Fuel Band. Wearables such as these solve first-world problems like how much exercise am I getting, or what is my heart rate. The developed world drives the development of new technology in most cases, and wearables… Read More


ESD Protection Network Checking is Difficult But Necessary

ESD Protection Network Checking is Difficult But Necessary
by Tom Simon on 06-06-2015 at 6:00 pm

I’ve written before about anti-fuse non-volatile memory, where the gate oxide is intentionally damaged in order to create a readable bit of data, but this is what most circuit designers never want to have happen to their logic gates. However, since the advent of MOS transistors the issue of Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) and the… Read More


Ultra-Low Power Non-Volatile Memory Solutions for the Smart Connected Universe

Ultra-Low Power Non-Volatile Memory Solutions for the Smart Connected Universe
by Tom Simon on 06-01-2015 at 6:00 pm

DAC is a great place to gather information about products and technologies. However it can be difficult to chase down the information you need because you may need to cover a lot of ground to hear or talk to the people with the right knowledge. Fortunately there are a few places you can go to learn about a number of products at one place.… Read More


Will Dark Silicon Dictate Server Blade Architecture?

Will Dark Silicon Dictate Server Blade Architecture?
by Tom Simon on 05-27-2015 at 7:00 pm

Does the evil sounding phenomenon known as Dark Silicon create a big opportunity for FPGA vendors as was predicted recently by Pacific Crest Securities? John Vinh posits that using multiple cores as a method of scaling throughput is flattening out, and the use of FPGA’s to perform computation can help off-load and thus overcome… Read More


How Microtechnology Will Change Just About Everything

How Microtechnology Will Change Just About Everything
by Tom Simon on 05-20-2015 at 1:00 pm

When I hear the term micro-technology my first thought is of accelerometers and gyroscopes. However as I’ll explain shortly, micro technology is being applied to a lot more than smartphones and quadcopters. The fruits of development in this area will affect industry, medical, energy, transportation and many other sectors. … Read More


How Sidense Sees The Smart Connected Universe

How Sidense Sees The Smart Connected Universe
by Tom Simon on 05-17-2015 at 7:00 am

Sidenserecently conducted a webinar on what they call the Smart Connected Universe. They consider the Smart Connected Universe as something that includes a collection of market segments that are both smart and connected. This casts a big net, and includes what many are calling IoT, but goes further into medical, automotive and… Read More


Calibre xACT Shakes Up 16nm and Below Extraction Game

Calibre xACT Shakes Up 16nm and Below Extraction Game
by Tom Simon on 05-09-2015 at 8:00 am

Mentor Graphics made a big announcement regarding SOC extraction at their User2User conference in San Jose during April. Before I get to the meat of the announcement, I’d like to reflect back on the early days of Calibre-DRC at Mentor. I was in Sales at Mentor around 1999, and Calibre-DRC was the new kid on the block. We had to go convince… Read More


TSV Modeling Key for Next Generation SOC Module Performance

TSV Modeling Key for Next Generation SOC Module Performance
by Tom Simon on 04-20-2015 at 1:00 pm

The use of silicon interposers is growing. Several years ago Xilinx broke new ground by employing interposers in their Virtex®-7 H580T FPGA. Last August Samsung announced what they say is the first DDR4 module to use 3D TSV’s for enterprise servers. Their 64GB double data rate-4 modules will be used for high end computing where … Read More


Sidense NVM Scores Qualification on GLOBALFOUNDRIES 28nm SLP and HPP

Sidense NVM Scores Qualification on GLOBALFOUNDRIES 28nm SLP and HPP
by Tom Simon on 04-12-2015 at 7:00 am

A tremendous number of chips being designed for today’s products require some sort of onboard data storage. The size of these needs range from a handful of bytes, for trim and calibration storage, to something much more substantial like boot code storage. In both of these examples the storage ideally should be nonvolatile, with… Read More