Fabless semiconductor ecosystem bellwethers, TSMC and ARM, buck the trend reporting solid second quarters. Following “TSMC Reports Second Highest Quarterly Profit“, the British ARM Holdings “Outperforms Industry to Beat Forecasts“. Clearly the tabloid press death of the fabless ecosystem claims… Read More
Semiconductor Intellectual Property
Shorter, better and easier PCIe and NVM Express Verification flow with advanced technologies
We have talked about Cadence subsystem IP strategy, illustrated by NVM Express subsystem IP, in a previous blog. What we said was that “A subsystem IP based approach will also speed up the software development and validation phase: if the IP provider is able to propose the right tools, like the associated Verification IP (VIP), … Read More
CEVA-XC4000 new DSP IP core
The CEVA-XC4000 offers unparalleled, scalable performance capabilities and innovative power management to address the most demanding communication standards, including LTE-Advanced, 802.11ac and DVB-T2, on a single architecture. Building upon its highly successful predecessors, the CEVA-XC4000 architecture sets… Read More
It Takes a Village: Mentor and ARM Team Up on Test
Benjamin Franklin, “I didn’t fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong.” I was reminded of this line during a joint Mentor-ARM seminar yesterday about testing ARM cores and memories. The complexity of testing modern SoC designs at advanced nodes, with multiple integrated ARM cores and other IP, opens up plenty of room for… Read More
Testing ARM Cores – Mentor and ARM Lunch Seminar
If you are involved in testing memory or logic of ARM-based designs, you’ll want to attend this free seminar on July 17, 2012 in Santa Clara. Mentor Graphics and ARM have a long standing partnership, and have optimized the Mentor test products (a.k.a Tessent) for the ARM processors and memory IP.
The lunch seminar runs from 10:30-1:00… Read More
Mind the Gap — Overcoming the processor-memory performance gap to unlock SoC performance
Remember the processor-memory gap— a situation where the processor is forced to stall while waiting for a memory operation to complete? This was largely a result of the high latency required for off chip memory accesses. Haven’t we solved that problem now with SoCs? SoCs are typically architected with their processors … Read More
IC Design at Novocell Semiconductor
In my circuit design past I did DRAM work at Intel, so I was interested in learning more about Novocell Semiconductor and their design of One Time Programmable (OTP) IP. Walter Novosell is the President/CTO of Novocell and talked with me by phone on Thursday.… Read More
Cadence’s NVM Express: fruit from subsystem IP based strategy
If we look at SoC design evolution, we have certainly successfully passed several steps: from transistor by transistor IC design using Calma up to design methodology based on the integration of 500K + gates IP like PCIe gen-3 Controller, one out of several dozens of IP integrated in today’ SoC for Set-Top-Box or Wireless Application… Read More
Synopsys IP Strategy 2012
Synopsys is the dominant player in the commercial EDA and semiconductor IP markets so it is always interesting to hear what John Koeter, Vice President of Marketing for IP, Services and System Level Solutions, has to say. John presented “The Role of IP in a Changing Landscape” at the SemiCO IMPACT Conference and I talked to him again… Read More
FinFET Standard Cells at DAC
Rajiv Bhateja, Dhrumil Gandhi and Neal Carney met with me at DAC on Wednesday to give an update on what’s new in 2012 for Tela Innovations, a provider of lithography optimized IP and tools. This team has a rich history in EDA and IP from companies like: ARM, Artisan, Mentor Graphics and Silicon Compilers.… Read More
RISC-V Virtualization and the Complexity of MMUs