Earlier this month I blogged about Power Management Policies for Android Devices, so this blog is part two in the series and delves into the details of using ESL-level tools for simulation and analysis. The motivation behind all of this is to optimize a power management system during the early design phase, instead of waiting until… Read More
Electronic Design Automation
Make Semiconductor IP Reuse Successful?
As I have mentioned before, Apple has changed the way we live on many different levels (iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad, etc…) and the Apple Ax SoC series is no different. You have to ask yourself how is Apple able to churn out a new industry leading SoC EVERY year? I can assure you design reuse is a big part of that answer.
One of the companies… Read More
Invionics: a New EDA Company is Born
Something happened this morning that doesn’t happen too much any more: a new EDA company came out of stealth mode and announced its product line. The company is Invionics, and they are based in Vancouver BC. The CEO is Brad Quinton who largely funded the company himself, although with some grants from the Canadian government.… Read More
Analyzing Cortex-A53 octa-core on Linux
Octa-core sells smartphones and tablets. 64-bit ARM Cortex-A53 implementations are available from Huawei, MediaTek, Qualcomm, Samsung, and now Marvell, with Rockchip and others on the way. Suddenly, almost everyone planning to run Linux is being asked for octa-core designs.
If it were easy, anyone could do it. Increasing … Read More
Semiconductor IP Make the World Go Round!
Semiconductor IP really does make the life of a semiconductor professional much easier which is why Google brings us so much IP traffic. If you look at the SemiWiki analytics, IP has always been a top draw. In comparison to standard EDA traffic, IP gets about 25% more views per blog on average. Synopsys is not only the leading EDA company… Read More
Complete SoC Debugging & Integration in a Single Cockpit
These days it’s common to expect large digital designs, analog blocks, custom IPs, glue logic, interfaces and interconnects all developed separately, perhaps by different vendors / teams, but integrated together in a single environment forming an SoC. The SoC can have multiple clock domains and can work in multiple modes of … Read More
Are you SmarCoT or IoT?
No need to explain the IoT acronym (Internet of Things) except that IoT doesn’t really describe a reality: do you really know about any “Thing” being directly connected to the Internet? In fact, there is probably some intermediate system linking this thing with the Cloud, like a smartphone, an Internet box, a PC, etc. Just take a … Read More
Semiconductor IP Information Flow!
One of the biggest challenges in the IP business, or any other business for that matter, is managing the information flow. Semiconductor IP is a critical piece of the fabless semiconductor ecosystem so anybody and everybody can write about it. Unfortunately, anybody and everybody ARE writing about it. From day one IP has been a … Read More
How many 28nm FDSOI SoC Design Starts in 2015? In 2020?
I would like to further discuss this graphic (presented during IP-SoC 2014 by John Koeter, VP of Marketing IP and prototyping, Synopsys) and focus on Active Design and Tapeouts at 28nm. In fact the very first activity appeared in Q1 2007, but it was only during 2010 that 28nm become popular, after the first Tapeouts coming in Q1 and… Read More
IP-SoC 2014 Top Class Presentations…
… were given to an ever shrinking audience. This is IP-SoC paradox: audience has enjoyed very good presentations made by Cadence, Synopsys or ST-Microelectronic, to name just a few. As far as I am concerned, I was happy to present the “Interface IP Winners and Losers (Protocols)” in the amphitheater during the first day, enjoying… Read More
Rapidus, IBM, and the Billion-Dollar Silicon Sovereignty Bet