To ensure the reliability of automotive electronics, standards like AEC-Q100 and ISO 26262 have helped tremendously. They have created rational and explicit steps for developing and testing the electronic systems that go into our cars. These are not some abstract future requirement for fully autonomous cars, rather they are… Read More
Semiconductor Intellectual Property
RISC-V Business
I was at the 7[SUP]th[/SUP] RISC-V Workshop for two days this week. It was hosted by Western Digital at their headquarters in Milpitas. If you have not been following RISC-V, it is an open source Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) for processor design. The initiative started at Berkeley, and has been catching on like wildfire. … Read More
IP-SoC 2017: IP Innovation, Foundries, Low Power and Security
The 20[SUP]th[/SUP] IP-SoC conference will be held in Grenoble, France, on December 6-7, 2017. IP-SoC is not just a marketing fest, it’s the unique IP centric conference, with presentations reflecting the complete IP ecosystem: IP suppliers, foundries, industry trends and applications, with a focus on automotive. It will … Read More
CEVA and Local AI Smarts
When we first started talking about “smart”, as in smart cars, smart homes, smart cities and the like, our usage of “smart” was arguably over-generous. What we really meant was that these aspects of our daily lives were becoming more computerized and connected. Not to say those directions weren’t useful and exciting, but we weren’t… Read More
Worldwide Interface IP Revenue Grew by 13.5% in 2016 (Source: IPnest)
IPnest has released the 9[SUP]th[/SUP] version of the Interface IP Survey, ranking by protocol the IP vendors addressing the Interface segments: USB, PCI Express, (LP)DDRn, MIPI, Ethernet & SerDes, HDMI/DP and SATA. When the 1[SUP]st[/SUP] version has been issued in 2009, the IP segment was weighting $225 million and the… Read More
7nm SERDES Design and Qualification Challenges!
Semiconductor IP is the fastest growing market inside the fabless ecosystem, it always has been and always will be, especially now that non-traditional chip companies are quickly entering the mix. Towards the end of the year I always talk to the ecosystem to see what next year has in store for us and 2018 looks to be another year of … Read More
Tensilica Vision P6 DSP is Powering Huawei Kirin 970 Image
Cadence has recently announced two key design-in for their Vision DSP IP family: MediaTek’s Helio P30 integrates the Tensilica Vision P5 DSP and HiSilicon has selected the Cadence® Tensilica® Vision P6 DSP for its 10nm Kirin 970 mobile application processor. The Kirin 970 being integrated into Huawei’s new Mate 10 Series mobile… Read More
Arm and Mentor Use DesignStart Program to Accelerate Proof-of-Concept for IoT Designs
Sometimes the hardest thing about bringing a new idea to fruition is overcoming the inertia to get started with a proof-of-concept. You must be able to put together enough parts of the solution to prove to those controlling budgets that an idea has merit and is worth taking to the next level. It’s a bit of a chick-vs-egg scenario as … Read More
Finding the Right Needle in the IP Haystack
As the percentage of pre-configured IP increases in semiconductors, so design teams are able to reduce design cycle times. But one of the challenges for design teams is the inability to quickly and easily find IP because it’s incorrectly classified, sat in a designer’s home directory, or it’s been put into the ‘repository’ by an… Read More
High performance processor IP targets automotive ISO 26262 applications
The reason you are seeing a lot more written about the ISO 26262 requirements for automotive electronics is, to put it bluntly, this stuff is getting real. Driver assist systems are no longer only found in the realm of Mercedes and Tesla, almost every car in every brand offers some driver assist features. However, the heavy lifting… Read More
Rapidus, IBM, and the Billion-Dollar Silicon Sovereignty Bet