Once upon a time, ASIC designers were integrating memories in their design (using a memory compiler being part of the design tools provided by the ASIC vendor), then they had to make the memory observable, controllable… and start developing the test program for the function, not a very enthusiastic task (“AAAA” and “5555” and other… Read More
Semiconductor Intellectual Property
Here to make my stand, with a chipset in my hand
Yesterday, I clicked “like” on a LinkedIn post with the title “TI Cuts 1,700 Jobs”. Today, I read the analysis and pulled out Social Distortion’s “Still Alive” for inspiration. I’ve been through this more than once. For them it’s not like-worthy, and I feel their sting.
The part of the post I liked was the comment: “This is good for … Read More
Adesto Acquisition of Atmel Serial Flash: Strange Bedfellows?
On October 1, Adesto Technologies announced that it had acquired Atmel’s DataFlash and Serial Flash business groups. At first sight, this seemed a rather counter intuitive move for one of the most aggressive (and visible) companies in the emerging memory field. The purchase raised many questions to those, not least the moderator… Read More
Cadence sets the Global Standards in VIP for AMBA based SoC
We have shown in Semiwiki how strong Cadence position was in Verification IP (VIP) in a previous post focusing on Interface standards like SuperSpeed USB or PCI Express. But IP based functions are used everywhere in a SoC, not only to interface with the external world, and need to be verified, as well, like for AMBA based functions.… Read More
Carbon has Six Weeks of ARM, not to Mention Imagination and MIPS
As George E.P. Box said, “essentially all models are wrong but some are useful.” That is certainly the case with Carbon’s models. For processors they have two models, one that is fast (but not timing-accurate) and one that is accurate (but not fast). But both are useful.
Carbon attended the ARM TechCon in Santa… Read More
Did the MIPS acquisition just doom Vivante?
By now, you’ve probably read about the Imagination Technologies acquisition of MIPS somewhere, hopefully in the Eric Esteve article here. There’s an interesting side effect not being talked about much.… Read More
Should ARM care about MIPS acquisition?
It was not really a surprise to learn that, finally, MIPS have been sold, as the company was officially for sale since April 2012. Nevertheless, the interesting part of this news comes from the buyer’ identity: Imagination Technologies. Imagination is an UK based company, like ARM, selling processor IP cores, like ARM, but the … Read More
Waiting or EUV – Another View on the ReRAM Roadmap
It is ‘Quarterly’ financial report time for many companies and one can occasionally find some interesting snippets in the transcripts of the calls which normally accompany these announcements. For example, SanDisk appear to have an encouraging quarter, reversing sales declines seen through Q1 and Q2. However, what caught … Read More
ARM TechCon 2012 Trip Report
I must say the ARM conference gets better every year, as do the attendance numbers. More than 4,000 people showed up including 5 SemiWiki bloggers, two of which I had not yet had the pleasure of meeting.
First I have to mention my favorite vendor booth. I don’t remember what company it was but the girls in fishnet stockings giving out… Read More
Internet of Things
Another announcement from the Warren East’s ARM keynote this morning was the creation of a SIG within Weightless, which is an organization responsible for delivering royalty-free open standards to enable the Internet of Things (IoT). The SIG is focused on accelerating the adoption of Weightless as a wireless wide area… Read More
Will 50% of New High Performance Computing (HPC) Chip Designs be Multi-Die in 2025?