Design IP is going well, with 12% YoY growth in 2017, even if the market is about $3.5B. But Design IP is serving a $400B semiconductor market. Can you imagine the future of the semi market if the chip makers couldn’t have access to Design IP? The same is true for EDA: it’s a niche market (CAE revenues was about $3B and IC Physical Design… Read More
Imec technology forum 2018 – the future of memory
At the Imec technology forum in Belgium Gouri Sankar Kar and Arnaud Furnemont presented memory and storage perspectives and I also got to interview Arnaud. Arnaud leads overall memory development at Imec and personally leads NAND and DNA research.
Memory research is focused on power, energy, speed and cost with energy and throughput… Read More
The Dawn of a New RISC
The 8[SUP]th[/SUP] RISC-V Workshop was held in Barcelona May 7-10 with 325 attendees from 150+ companies and was the biggest RISC-V event outside of Silicon Valley, demonstrating the momentum of the RISC-V Foundation and the growth of the ecosystem in Europe.… Read More
Imec Technology Forum: Gary Patton of GLOBALFOUNDRIES
The imec technology forum was held in Belgium last week. At the forum I had a chance to sit down with Gary Patton the CTO of GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF) for an interview and he also presented “Enabling Connected Intelligence – Technology innovation: Enablers for an intelligent future” at the forum. In this article … Read More
Webinar: RISC-V IoT Security IP
Disruptive technology and disruptive business models are the lifeblood of the semiconductor industry. My first disruptive experience was with Artisan Components in 1998. The semiconductor industry started cutting IP groups which resulted in a bubble of start-up IP companies including Artisan, Virage Logic, Aspec Technologies,… Read More
UBER car accident: Verifying more of the same versus the long-tail cases
The recent fatal accident involving an UBER autonomous car, was reportedly not caused – as initially assumed – by a failure of the many sensors on the car to recognize the cyclist. It was instead caused by a failure of the software to take the right decision in regard to that “object”. The system apparently… Read More
TSMC Technologies for IoT and Automotive
At TSMC 2018 Silcon Valley Technology Symposium, Dr Kevin Zhang, TSMC VP of Business Development covered technology updates for IoT platform. The three growth drivers in this segment namely TSMC low power, RF enhancement and embedded memory technology (MRAM/RRAM) reinforced both progress and growth in global semiconductor… Read More
Webinar: Thermal and Reliability for ADAS and Autonomy
OK, so maybe the picture here is a little over the top, but thermal and reliability considerations in automotive in general and in ADAS and autonomy in particular, are no joke. Overheating, thermal-induced EM and warping at the board-level, in the package or interposers, are concerns in any environment but especially when you’re… Read More
TSMC Technologies for Mobile and HPC
During TSMC 2018 Technology Symposium, Dr. B.J. Woo, TSMC VP of Business Development presented market trends in the area of mobile applications and HPC computing as well as shared TSMC progress in making breakthrough efforts in the technology offerings to serve these two market segments.
Both 5G and AI are taking the center stage… Read More
Semiconductor Specialization Drives New Industry Structure
When traveling the world there are the things that you see and the people that you meet. I have been very fortunate to meet some of the most amazing people and one of those people is Dr. Walden Rhines. Wally spent the first half of his career in semiconductors at TI and the second half in EDA with Mentor Graphics which gives him a cyborg … Read More


Quantum Computing Technologies and Challenges