It’s probably the first time that Synopsys is offering such a direct access to free and open source software. The goal is to support customers developing application code for IoT and embedded devices based on ARC IP core family. The designer can select the Real Time Operating System (RTOS) which best meet the system requirements,… Read More
Semiconductor Intellectual Property
CEVA Eyes DSP Scale in China’s $65 LTE Handsets
China Mobile’s bid to go for 3-mode Long-Term Evolution (LTE) has led to the first major breakthrough, $65 LTE handsets, and here baseband and application processors provided by chipmakers like Leadcore Technology, MediaTek and Spreadtrum Communications have all one thing in common: DSP cores from CEVA Inc.
The advent… Read More
25 Years of SNUG; 50 Years of Moore’s Law
Earlier this week it was the Synopsys user group meeting SNUG. Not just any old SNUG but the 25th Annual SNUG. The first one was 15th March 1991 and was attended by 100 people. At the time, Synopsys had annual revenues of $22M. This year, the various SNUGs around the world will have a total attendance of 10,000 people and Synopsys revenue… Read More
Innovative MIPI Display Solution for UHD Mobile Devices
Today an SoC cannot be without multiple IP blocks integrated together in the most optimal manner. In such an environment, it’s natural that interoperability and configurability of an IP get prime considerations to achieve the best PPA (Power, Performance and Area) for the SoC containing that IP. While PPA is a basic criterion … Read More
Apple’s ARMed History
Apple has redefined three industries within a decade: media player with the iPod, mobile handset with the iPhone and portable computers with the iPad. If there is anything common in these three game-changing product development stories other than Apple, it’s the ARM footprint. Even now the technology media is abuzz with speculation… Read More
This Market worth $1,465.62M by 2020!!
This is exactly what you will never see in IPnest surveys (and written in Semiwiki):“Advanced Process Control Market worth $1,465.62 Million by 2020” …sorry for you if you like very precise figure (like $ 1, 465.62 million) but you will NEVER see such insane forecast in any of our surveys or blogs. Building a forecast is a difficult… Read More
A Brief History of Kilopass
Kilopass was founded back in 2001 by Jack Peng, whose background was in FPGAs with his most recent position being manager of technology development at Actel (now part of Microsemi). The idea was to build a company making one-time-programmable (OTP) memories using anti-fuse technology. Fuses in home-wiring (OK, I know, we all … Read More
Closure: Kilopass v. Sidense
The long running legal action between the top two NVM IP companies is now finished after close to five years of lawyering. By the way, I write about this stuff in hopes of limiting the future earning power of lawyers that prey on our R&D budgets. This one is significant because Kilopass was not successful in a patent infringement… Read More
SystemC Co-Simulation of NoCs and IP Blocks
Verification in general suffers from a couple of fundamental problems. Availability of models and performance of different levels of representation.
The first problem, availability of models, is that you would like to start verification as soon as possible but all the representations are not ready early enough. Obviously … Read More
ARM & Cadence IP Partnership for Faster SoC Design
IP vendors always try to create differentiation, especially when designing protocol based IP. You can differentiate by building the most performing controller but you will probably miss the expectation of these customers who don’t search for performance but just compliance to a specific standard. Or the vendor may want to design… Read More
Facing the Quantum Nature of EUV Lithography