In 2003, legendary computer architect Michael J. Flynn issued a warning that most of the industry wasn’t ready to hear. The relentless march toward more complex CPUs—with speculative execution, deep pipelines, and bloated instruction handling—was becoming unsustainable. In a paper titled “Computer Architecture … Read More
Artificial Intelligence
DAC News – A New Era of Electronic Design Begins with Siemens EDA AI
AI is the centerpiece of DAC this year. How to design chips to bring AI algorithms to life, how to prevent AI from hacking those chips, and of course how to use AI to design AI chips. In this latter category, there were many presentations, product announcements and demonstrations. I was impressed by many of them. But an important observation… Read More
Arteris Expands Their Multi-Die Support
I am tracking the shift to multi-die design, so it’s good to see Arteris extend their NoC expertise, connecting chiplets across an interposer. After all, network connectivity needs don’t stop at the boundaries of chiplets. A multi-die package is at a logical level just a scaled-up SoC for which you still need traffic routing and… Read More
Caspia Technologies at the 2025 Design Automation Conference #62DAC
Security will be an important topic at DAC this year. The hardware root of trust is the foundation of all security for complex systems implementing AI workloads. Thanks to new and sophisticated techniques the hardware root of trust is now vulnerable and must be protected. But adding deep security verification to existing design… Read More
A Novel Approach to Future Proofing AI Hardware
There is a built-in challenge for edge AI intended for long time-in-service markets. Automotive applications are the obvious example, while aerospace and perhaps medical usage may impose similar demands. Support for the advanced AI methods we now expect – transformers, physical and agentic AI – is not feasible without dedicated… Read More
Siemens EDA Outlines Strategic Direction for an AI-Powered, Software-Defined, Silicon-Enabled Future
In a keynote delivered at this year’s Siemens EDA User2User event, CEO Mike Ellow presented a focused vision for the evolving role of electronic design automation (EDA) within the broader context of global technology shifts. The session covered Siemens EDA’s current trajectory, market strategy, and the changing landscape … Read More
Arm Reveals Zena Automotive Compute Subsystem
Last year Arm announced their support for standards-based virtual prototyping in automotive, along with a portfolio of new AE (automotive enhanced) cores. They also suggested that in 2025 they would be following Arm directions in other LOBs by offering integrated compute subsystems (CSS). Now they have delivered: their Zena… Read More
Anirudh Fireside Chats with Jensen and Lip-Bu at CadenceLIVE 2025
Anirudh (Cadence President and CEO) had two fireside chats during CadenceLIVE 2025, the first with Jensen Huang (Founder and CEO of NVIDIA) to kick off the show, and later in the day with Lip-Bu Tan (CEO of Intel). Of course Jensen and Lip-Bu also turn up for other big vendor shows but I was reminded that there is something special about… Read More
The SemiWiki 62nd DAC Preview
After being held in San Francisco since the pandemic the beloved Design Automation Conference will be on the move again. In 2026 DAC will be held in Huntington Beach. For you non-California natives, Huntington Beach is a California city Southeast of Los Angeles. It’s known for surf beaches and its long Huntington Beach Pier.… Read More
Anirudh Keynote at CadenceLIVE 2025 Reveals Millennium M2000
Another content-rich kickoff covering a lot of bases under three main themes: the new Millennium AI supercomputer release, a moonshot towards full autonomy in chip design exploiting agentic AI, and a growing emphasis on digital twins. Cadence President and CEO Anirudh Devgan touched on what is new today, and also market directions… Read More
Flynn Was Right: How a 2003 Warning Foretold Today’s Architectural Pivot