One of the greatest hockey players of all time, Wayne Gretzky, provided a quote that has also been applied to the business world — “I skate to where the puck will be, not to where it has been.” It strikes me that this philosophy directly applies to IP development, as well. Engineering firms providing IP must anticipate… Read More
Semiconductor Intellectual Property
The Year of the eFPGA
The start of the new year is typically a time for annual predictions. Prognostications are especially difficult in our industry, due to the increasing difficulty in Moore’s Law technology scaling and greater design complexity challenges. There is one sure prediction, however — this year will see the emergence … Read More
Making the Move from 28nm to FinFET!
If you click FinFET in the SemiWiki.com Latest News: navigation bar at the top of this page you will get a list of 86 blogs that have been viewed more than 600,000 times. If you go to the last blogs on the list, meaning the first blogs to be published, you will see a three part series, “Introduction to FinFET Technology” written by Tom Dillinger… Read More
Netspeed Gemini NoC Provides Coherent Fabric in Mobileye’s Next-generation EyeQ5 SoC
Last week I wrote about NetSpeed’s network on chip (NoC) IP technology and design environment NocStudio. This week we see a real life application of this technology announced at CES by Imagination Technologies and NetSpeed. The companies have announced that Mobileye will use Imagination and NetSpeed IP in their next-generation… Read More
Analog Bits and TSMC!
As a long time semiconductor IP professional I can tell you for a fact that it is one of the most challenging segments of semiconductor design. Given the growing criticality of semiconductor IP, the challenges of being a leading edge IP provider are increasing and may be at a breaking point. The question now is: What does it take to … Read More
Intelligent Vision in (almost) Every Application
Let’s take a look at the tremendous penetration of intelligent vision in so many and various applications. A few years ago, computer vision algorithms were implemented in applications directly linked with imaging, like computational photography for smartphones and cameras. We can mention today a bunch of segments like automotive,… Read More
Webinar: Hassle-Free Bluetooth 5 SoC Design
Bluetooth has always been a popular communication protocol for short-range applications, but now anticipating BT5 it’s really moving into the big leagues as a significant option for IoT applications. The new standard combines ultra-low power with significantly higher range and higher performance. Ultra-low power is always… Read More
Dassault Systemes Hosts New Microsite Focused on IP Reuse Challenges
I recently wrote an article about networks-on-chip (NoC) and how Systems-On-Chip integrated circuits (SoCs) are becoming increasingly more complex and heterogeneous in nature. While researching for that article I came upon a new micro-site by Dassault Systemes that goes into great detail about the operational challenges… Read More
Executive Interview: Joe Rowlands, Chief Architect at NetSpeed Systems
Joe has devoted his career to understanding and designing cache coherent systems and has been granted over 95 patents on the subject. For the past four years, he has been Chief Architect at NetSpeed, a developer of network-on-chip SoC interconnect.… Read More
Intel Spreadtrum ARM SoCs
In June of 2013 Edward Snowden copied and leaked classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA). His actions exposed numerous surveillance programs that many governments around the world reacted to, including China. In September of 2013 China Vice Premier Ma Kai declared semiconductors a key sector for the … Read More
Rapidus, IBM, and the Billion-Dollar Silicon Sovereignty Bet