The Design Automation Conference (DAC) is the must-see, annual event for semiconductor professionals that design chips, use EDA software, and buy semiconductor IP. Like all conferences there’s an entrance fee, but for the 11th year now you can get a free pass, courtesy of three sponsors: Avatar Integrated Systems, ClioSoft… Read More
Surviving in the Age of Digitalization
There was an interesting keynote at DVCon last month. It was titled “Thriving in the Age of Digitalization” which introduced the concept of digital twins for design and production. It was presented by Fram Akiki who is a relative newcomer to EDA but has an interesting history so I will start there.
Fram and I got started in the semiconductor… Read More
FCMN 2019 Coming up Next Month
On April 2 – 4, the 2019 International Conference on Frontiers of Characterization and Metrology for Nanoelectronics (FCMN) will be held at the Monterey Marriott in Monterey, CA. The 2019 FCMN is the 12th in the series that began in 1995 with a keynote talk by Craig Barrett, ex-CEO of Intel.… Read More
China Innovation Forum and ES DESIGN West
I had a chat with Bob Smith, Executive Director of ESD Alliance, about the upcoming SEMI conference in China. More than 100,000 people are expected to attend which is beyond my comprehension. SEMICON in San Francisco is maybe 20,000 people which is the largest conference I attend. I’m not sure if the Design Automation Conference… Read More
Silvaco WEBINAR: Nanometer Library Characterization Challenges and Solutions
As you may know, Silvaco has done some very clever acquisitions to fuel their unprecedented growth over the last five years. We have a wiki that tracks EDA Mergers and Acquisitions, Silvaco included, and it is the most viewed wiki on SemiWiki.com with 102,005 views thus far.
Silvaco acquired Nangate in March of 2018. NanGate got … Read More
eSilicon Bucking the Trend at OFC with 7nm SerDes
A recent press release from eSilicon caught my eye. The company has been touting their 7nm SerDes quite a bit lately – reach, power, flexibility, things like that. While those capabilities are important, any high-performance chip needs to work in the context of the system, which usually contains technology from multiple sources.… Read More
A Preview of Spring Symposium on AIoT
The trend of AI augmentation into many facets of silicon based hardware applications is on the rise. During the CASPA press conference in Santa Clara last week, Silvaco CEO David Dutton and SiFive VP, GM Christopher Moezzi were present to share their insights.
Silvaco CEO David Dutton mentioned that we are in new era in which many… Read More
SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference 2019 Overall Impressions
Last week I attended the 2019 SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference. I gave two presentations, attended dozens of papers and conducted three interviews. I will be doing some detailed write ups particularly on EUV but I am waiting for the presentations from several of the papers. In the mean time I thought I would put some overall … Read More
LithoVision 2019 – Semiconductor Technology Trends and their impact on Lithography
I was asked to present at Nikon’s LithoVision event again this year. LithoVision is held the day before the SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference also in San Jose. The following is a write up of my talk.… Read More
Interview with Bob Smith, Executive Director of the ESD Alliance
Bob Smith is executive director of the ESD (for electronic system design) Alliance that many Semiwiki readers will remember as the EDA Consortium. As Bob explains, the semiconductor industry is changing and evolving, and the electronic system design ecosystem with it. I encourage you to take a break from what you’re doing and … Read More
Rapidus, IBM, and the Billion-Dollar Silicon Sovereignty Bet