It is easy to forget the importance of academia’s role in the semiconductor ecosystem but it is important not to. If you look at the DNA of the semiconductor industry you will see how dependent we are on academic research for innovation and the necessary disruption that keeps us all gainfully employed. FinFETs are the first things… Read More
Semiconductor Intellectual Property
10 signs on the neural-net-based ADAS road
Every day I read stuff about the coming of fully autonomous vehicles, and it’s not every day we get a technologist’s view of the hurdles faced in getting there. Chris Rowen, CTO of Cadence’s IP group, gave one of the best presentations I’ve seen on ADAS technology and convolutional neural networks (CNNs) at #53DAC, pointing… Read More
ARM and Mentor Enabling the Ecosystem for the Backbone of IoT
Charlene Marini (VP of ARM Segment Marketing) did a nice presentation at the ARM/Mentor Summit last month at the Mentor HQ in Fremont. I just got the slides so let me give you a quick summary from my notes. It was a very good presentation on IoT and emulation which in my mind is the new simulation. I also attended an IoT panel at #53DAC that… Read More
Webinar alert – ARM and Enea explore NFV
In the Open Source IP panel at 53DAC, we explored the idea of workload-optimized servers. One panelist observation stuck with me: if one chooses to deviate from the Intel-based norm in a data center, you essentially have to spray paint a line around any boxes that don’t comply.… Read More
Which CEVA DSP to use to Support Multimode Connectivity Requirements of IoT and M2M?
The definition of IoT systems is moving fast: the simple definition of a connected (to Internet) device in the early days is becoming more complex and also more precise. IoT or M2M devices are expected to support the full range of emerging cellular protocols such as LTE MTC Cat-1, Cat-0 or Cat-M, as well as the suite of Low Power Wide… Read More
The Business of the Semiconductor Business, Part One: What Happened?
This is the first of an occasional series of articles on the semiconductor industry. Many column inches have covered industry consolidation and in this first article, I aim to explain how the industry reached this point. Later articles will cover subjects including China, joint ventures, emerging players like Brazil and Vietnam,… Read More
Because that is where the SoC power is
Still thinking of Sonics as just a network-on-chip company? They are pivoting to become an SoC realization company, and in their seminar at #53DAC in Austin we saw an entirely new plan focused on heisting an extremely valuable commodity everyone else is missing.… Read More
Is the Intel Cash Cow in Danger?
There was an interesting panel at the Silicon Summit sponsored by the Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA) on “Designing for the Cloud.” It was led by Linley Gwennap (The Linley Group) with Ivo Bolsons (Xilinx), Ian Ferguson (ARM), and Steve Pawloski (Micron). Missing of course was Intel which derives close to 30% of its revenue… Read More
ARM sets up quagmire-free ecosystem for IoT
Wandering around DAC this week, I found much of the discussion focused on the EDA community being at an inflection point. How do we get more design starts from new places with new ideas without jeopardizing existing business? It’s not as simple a transition as it sounds.… Read More
Highlights of the 22nm FD-SOI San Jose Presentations
This is part 2 (of 2) of my coverage of the recent FD-SOI Symposium in San Jose (April 2016), this time looking at the 22nm presentations by GlobalFoundries, ARM (finally!!), VLSI Research Inc and Sigma Designs. (Part 1 looked at the 28nm presentations.) Most are now available on the SOI Consortium website – click here to see the full… Read More
Rapidus, IBM, and the Billion-Dollar Silicon Sovereignty Bet