I wrote earlier about how deep expertise, say for high-quality RTL design or verification, must be extracted from in-house know-how and datasets. In general, such methods start with one of many possible pre-trained models (GPT, Llama, Gemini, etc.). To this consultants or in-house teams add fine-tuning training, initially… Read More
Artificial Intelligence
Lessons from the DeepChip Wars: What a Decade-old Debate Teaches Us About Tech Evolution
The competitive landscape of hardware-assisted verification (HAV) has evolved dramatically over the past decade. The strategic drivers that once defined the market have shifted in step with the rapidly changing dynamics of semiconductor design.
Design complexity has soared, with modern SoCs now integrating tens of billions… Read More
TSMC Kumamoto: Pioneering Japan’s Semiconductor Revival
In the lush landscapes of Kumamoto Prefecture, on Japan’s Kyushu Island, TSMC is etching a new chapter in global chip production. The TSMC Kumamoto facility, operationalized through its wholly-owned subsidiary Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing (JASM), represents the Taiwanese giant’s bold foray… Read More
AI RTL Generation versus AI RTL Verification
I should admit up front that I don’t have a scientific answer to this comparison, but I do have a reasonably informed gut feel, at least for the near-term. The reason I ask the question is that automated RTL generation grabs headlines with visions of designing chips through natural language prompts, making design widely accessible.… Read More
A Compelling Differentiator in OEM Product Design
Jennifer, an OEM hardware designer, is planning a product around a microcontroller she thinks will meet her needs and wants to supply power from a 3V coin cell battery which she must connect though a boost controller. Jennifer searches a rough description of the part she needs, generating a long list of component manufacturers … Read More
Synopsys and NVIDIA Forge AI Powered Future for Chip Design and Multiphysics Simulation
In a landmark announcement at NVIDIA’s GTC Washington, D.C. conference Synopsys unveiled deepened collaborations with NVIDIA to revolutionize semiconductor design and engineering through agentic AI, GPU-accelerated computing, and AI-driven physics simulations. This partnership, building on over three decades… Read More
Intel to Compete with Broadcom and Marvell in the Lucrative ASIC Business
The second chapter of our book “Fabless: The Transformation of Semiconductor Industry” describes the ASIC business and how important it is. That was more than 10 years ago and the ASIC business is still at the forefront of the Semiconductor industry and is a key enabler of the AI revolution we are experiencing today.
First let’s … Read More
Quadric: Revolutionizing Edge AI
In the rapidly evolving landscape of AI, Quadric stands out as a pioneering force in edge computing. Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Burlingame, California, Quadric is a technology company focused on developing high-performance, energy-efficient processors for AI workloads at the edge devices like smartphones, IoT … Read More
Inference Acceleration from the Ground Up
VSORA, a pioneering high-tech company, has engineered a novel architecture designed specifically to meet the stringent demands of AI inference—both in datacenters and at the edge. With near-theoretical performance in latency, throughput, and energy efficiency, VSORA’s architecture breaks away from legacy designs optimized… Read More
Emulator-Like Simulation Acceleration on GPUs. Innovation in Verification
GPUs have been proposed before to accelerate logic simulation but haven’t quite met the need yet. This is a new attempt based on emulating emulator flows. Paul Cunningham (GM, Verification at Cadence), Raúl Camposano (Silicon Catalyst, entrepreneur, former Synopsys CTO and lecturer at Stanford, EE292A) and I continue our series… Read More


ASML High-NA EUV is Not Ready for High-Volume Production