I have shared with you the most interesting I have heard during IP-SoC 2010, in two blogs, Part I was about IP market forecast(apparently my optimistic view was quite different from the rather pessimistic vision shared by SC analysts) and Part II, named “System Level Mantra”, was strongly influenced by Cadence clever presentation,… Read More
Semiconductor Intellectual Property
MCU Performance Customers: The Cavalry is Coming Over The Hill
The under the radar, sleepy microcontroller market is about to undergo a rapid transformation the next several years with new entrants and the rise of 32 bit cores that will redefine the parameters for success. This will revive growth and result in new winners and losers. But lots of questions remain.
My first job out of college in… Read More
Cache Coherency and Verification Seminar
At DAC Jasper presented a seminar with ARM on cache coherency and verification of cache coherency. The seminar is now available online for those of you that missed DAC or missed the seminar itself.
Cache architectures, especially for multi-core architectures, are getting more and more complex. Techniques originally pioneered… Read More
Intel’s Mobile Deja Vu All Over Again Moment
We have been here before… and when I say “we” I do include myself. Back in 1997, I joined a secretive company called Transmeta. The company was two years old and working on a new x86 microprocessor to challenge Intel. The original focus of the company was not to build a lower power processor, but one that was faster. As with… Read More
Synopsys MIPI Webinar
Synopsys MIPI Webinar: MIPI is really getting traction
Synopsys last two acquisitions of IP vendors, former ChipIdea in 2009 (Mixed-signal product line of MIPS) and Virage Logic in 2010, have allowed to built a stronger, diversified IP port-folio. Amazingly, Synopsys has found MIPI IP product line in the basket in both cases.… Read More
Intel’s Barbed Wire Fence Strategy
Analysts tend to make judgments regarding Intel based on an existing conventional wisdom (CW) and projecting straight line into the future. As a former Intel, Cyrix, and Transmeta processor marketing guy I would like to offer a different perspective as I have been both inside the tent looking out and outside looking in.
The current… Read More
Silicon IP to take over CAE in EDAC results… soon but not yet!
Very interesting results launched by EDAC for Q1 2011, if Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) is still the largest category with $530.6M, the second category is Silicon IP (SIP) with $371.4M, followed by IC Physical Design & Verification at $318.5M. Even more significant is the four quarter moving average results, showing … Read More
Intel Briefing: Tri-Gate Technology and Atom SoC
Sorry to disappoint but my 2 hours at the Intel RNB was a very positive experience. It is much more fun writing negative things about industry leaders because I enjoy the resulting hate mail and personal attacks, but the candor and transparency of the Intel guys won me over. They even asked ME questions which was a bit telling. I also… Read More
And it’s Intel at 22nm but wait, Samsung slips ahead by 2nm…
Another announcement of interest, given all the discussion of Intel’s 22nm process around here, is that Samsung (along with ARM, Cadence and Synopsys) announced that they have taped out a 20nm ARM test-chip (using a Synopsys/Cadence flow).
An interesting wrinkle is that at 32nm and 28nm they used a gate-first process but… Read More
On-chip supercomputers, AMBA 4, Coore’s law
At DAC I talked with Mike Dimelow of ARM about the latest upcoming revision to the AMBA bus standards, AMBA 4. The standard gets an upgrade about every 5 years. The original ARM in 1992 ran at 10MIPS with a 20MHz clock. The first AMBA bus was a standard way to link the processor to memories (through the ARM system bus ASB) and to peripherals… Read More
The Intel Common Platform Foundry Alliance