It is hard not to be impressed by Intel’s stunning financial performance since the 2008 downturn. They are on track to post revenue of $55B this year or 50% higher than 2008 while nVidia and AMD will be flat to less than 10% better. More significantly, earnings will be 3X that of 2008. More significantly, in the past 12 months they have… Read More
Semiconductor Intellectual Property
USB 3.0 PHY Verification: how to manage AMS IP verification?
Very interesting question from Zahrein in this thread: “how to manage an embedded USB 3.0 PHY Verification”? To clearly position the problem, Zahrein need to run the RTL verification of a complete SoC integrating an USB 3.0 function, that is the Controller (digital) and the PHY (Analog Mixed Signal) embedded in the SoC. The question,… Read More
SuperSpeed USB finally take off! Synopsys claim over 40 USB 3.0 IP sales…
SuperSpeed USB specification was released in November 2008! Even if we can see USB 3.0 powered peripherals shipping now, essentially external HDD, connected to PC equipped with Host Bus Adaptors (as PC chipset from Intel or AMD were not supporting USB 3.0), it will take up to the second quarter of 2012 before PC will be shipped with… Read More
Amazon’s Kindle Fire Spells Trouble for nVidia, Qualcomm and Intel
With the introduction of the Kindle Fire, it is now guaranteed that Amazon has the formula down for building the new, high volume mobile platform based on sub $9 processors. In measured fashion, Amazon has moved down Moore’s Law curve from the initial 90nm Freescale processor to what is reported to be TI’s OMAP 4 in order to add the … Read More
Cadence VIP Enables Users to be First-to-Market with Mobile Devices Leveraging Latest MIPI, LPDDR3 and USB 3.0 OTG Standards
The mobile devices market is simply exploding, with smartphones shipmentgoing up to the sky, tabletsemerging so fast that some people think it will replace PC (but this is still to be confirmed…). This lead mobile SoC designs to integrate increasingly more features, to support customer needs for more computing power and sophisticated… Read More
Synopsys STAR Webinar, embedded memory test and repair solutions
The acquisitions of Virage Logic by Synopsys in 2010, have allowed building a stronger, diversified IP port-folio, including the embedded SRAM, embedded non-volatile memory and embedded test and repair solution. Looking back in time, I remember the end of the 80’s: at that time the up-to-date solution to embed SRAM in your ASIC… Read More
What changes to expect in Verification IP landscape after Synopsys acquisition of nSys?
Even if nSys acquisition by Synopsys will not have a major impact on Synopsys’ balance sheet, it is a kind of earthquake in the Verification market landscape. After the Denali acquisition by Cadence in 2010, nSys was most probably the market leader in verification IP, if we look at the independent VIP providers (excluding Cadence).… Read More
I love you, you love me, we’re a happy family…
The CEO panel at the 2nd GTC wasn’t especially enlightening. The theme was that going forward will require cooperation for success and everyone was really ready to cooperate.
The most interesting concept was Aart talking about moving from what he called “scale complexity” aka Moore’s law to what he … Read More
Will AMD and Samsung Battle Intel and Micron?
We received some good feedback from our article on Intel’s Back to the Future Buy of Micron and I thought I would present another story line that gives readers a better perspective of what may be possibly coming down the road. In this case, it is the story of AMD and Samsung partnering to counter Intel’s platform play with Micron. The… Read More
Cadence Verification IP Technical Seminar!
According to trusted sources it costs upwards of $50M to design a 40nm SoC down to the GDS. Semiconductor IP is a fast growing part of that equation and functional verification of that IP is critical. Hardware complexity growth continues to follow Moore’s Law but verification complexity is even more challenging. In fact, IP verification… Read More
Intel Ushers a New Era of Advanced Packaging with Glass Substrates