Recently I had a chance to chat with Arasan Ganesan, CEO at Arasan Chip Systems in San Jose, CA. Arasan Chip Systems has provided Silicon interface IP and supporting hardware and software to the semiconductor industry for more than 15 years. The headquarters are in San Jose and engineering offices in Bangalore and Tuticorin, India.… Read More
Semiconductor Intellectual Property
Should an IP vendor become a PHY IP Dealer?
This is not a theoretical question. Imagine that you are developing and selling digital IP, like Interface Controller, PCI Express or USB 2.0 or 3.0, or MIPI Camera Serial Interface (CSI) or Display Serial Interface (DSI). If you look at companies like Synopsys, they have built their success on the “Integrated Interface IP” concept.… Read More
Smartphone Shipment Explosion Sustained by $50-$75 devices, Mostly in China
Until recently, talking about smartphone incredible shipment growth was understood as shipments of A5 iPhone or Galaxy Note, and this was true. Devices priced at $500 or more are shipping like baguette in Paris, but this fact is only true in Europe, Korea, Japan or USA. Does that means that people living populated countries like… Read More
MIPS Warrior Goes Into Battle
You are probably aware that Imagination Technologies, perhaps most well known for creating the GPU that is in the iPhone and iPad, acquired MIPS, which was originally a spinout from Silicon Graphics and licenses a line of general purpose microprocessors.
MIPS considers that they have a purer implementation of the RISC philosophy… Read More
Can we really find a way to speed-up Processor & DSP core designs?
Once upon a time, ASIC designers involved in Processor design, like I was, for the first time in 1987 for Thomson CSF and again in 1994 for Texas Instruments, at that time supporting height (8) ASIC designed by another French company, the Advanced Computer Research Institute (ACRI), had to re-invent the wheel almost every day. When… Read More
Physical IP Update at DAC
Last year at DAC I visited this little-known physical IP company called DXCorr, so I decided to visit them again this year and get an update.… Read More
Should You Buy All Aspects of Your IP From a Single Supplier?
Interface IP typically consists of multiple layers, most importantly a PHY (level 1) analog (or mixed signal) block that handles the interface to the outside world and a number of levels of digital controllers. The interfaces between all these levels, especially between the PHY and the controller, is often defined by the interface… Read More
Swap and Play Extended To Chip Fabric and Memory Controllers
Virtual platforms enable software development to take place on a model of an electronic system. What everyone would like is models that are fast and accurate but that is simply not possible. Fast models are fast because they don’t model everything at the signal level. And accurate models get to be accurate by handling a lot of detail… Read More
Tela Innovations, DAC Update
Lawsuits in EDA are common, and Tela Innovationsfiled a huge complaint back in February with the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) against HTC Corporation; HTC America, Inc.; LG Electronics, Inc.; LG Electronics U.S.A., Inc.; LG Electronics MobileComm U.S.A., Inc.; Motorola Mobility LLC; Nokia Corporation; Nokia,… Read More
A Call to ARMs!
It sure has been an interesting experience watching Intel enter the semiconductor foundry business! While I credit Intel for increasing the exposure of the fabless semiconductor ecosystem to the financial markets, the attention from the Intel biased press is a bit overwhelming. The TSMC and ARM bashing is reaching new levels… Read More
RISC-V Virtualization and the Complexity of MMUs