There are few companies that impact the overall mobile supply chain more than Samsung. They are one of Apple’s largest suppliers, fabbing the processor and LCDs in the iPhone and iPad. They also design and fab the Exynos SoC at the heart of their own Galaxy line of phones and tablets.… Read More
Semiconductor Intellectual Property
The Carbon Decade
Carbon Design Systems celebrates its 10th anniversary this month. It is a celebration that the company has survived a decade but also bittersweet that the company hasn’t been acquired for a juicy premium. But we just have to accept that EDA is not a business where you can throw together a company in 18 months and sell it for $1B… Read More
Linley Tech Mobile Conference
I went to part of the Linley Tech Mobile Conference. This is the current incarnation of what started life as Michael Slater’s Microprocessor Report, and the twice-yearly Microprocessor Forum. These very technical analysis organizations seem to work well when they are a small group of analysts working together to cover… Read More
ARM Seahawk
I wrote on Monday about ARM’s Processor Optimization Packs (POPs). In Japan they announced yesterday the Seahawk hard macro implementation in the TSMC 28HPM process. It is the highest performance ARM to date, running at over 2GHz. It is a quad-core Cortex A15.
The hard macro was developed using ARM Artisan 12-track libraries… Read More
Smart mobile SoCs: Qualcomm
In the opener to this series, I alluded to a company designing their own approach, and it goes way beyond the graphics core in their solution. Qualcomm is unique in a holistic approach to a smart mobile device with their vertically integrated chipset, the Snapdragon S4.… Read More
Making your ARMs POP
Just in time for TSMC’s technology symposium (tomorrow) ARM have announced a whole portfolio of new Processor Optimization Packs (POPs) for TSMC 40nm and 28nm. For most people, me included, my first question was ‘What is a POP?’
A POP is three things:
- physical IP
- certified benchmarking
- implementation knowledge
Arteris evangelization High Speed Interfaces!
Kurt Shuler from Arteris has written a short but useful blog about the various high speed interface protocols currently used in the wireless handset (and smartphone) IP ecosystem. Arteris is well known for their flagship product, the Network-on-Chip (NoC), and the Mobile Application Processor market segment represent the … Read More
Cadence support for the Open NAND Flash Interface (ONFI) 3.0 controller and PHY IP solution + PCIe Controller IP opening the door for NVM Express support
The press release about ONFI 3.0 support was launched by Cadence at the beginning of this year. It was a good illustration of Denali, then Cadence, long term commitment to Nand Flash Controller IP support. The ONFI 3 specification simplifies the design of high-performance computing platforms, such as solid state drives and enterprise… Read More
The best graphics chip is the one seen the most
If I say “graphics chip”, most techies will say NVIDIA or AMD. But in the new post-PC world , neither of these players holds the key to the future. One that does is a little company making 43 cents on every latest version iPad and iPhone. Another is designing their own approach. Should you care what graphics is in your phone?… Read More
IP-SoC day in Santa Clara: prepare the future, what’s coming next after IP based design?
D&R IP-SoC Days Santa Clara will be held on April 10, 2012 in Santa Clara, CA and if you plan to attend, just register here. IP market is a small world, and EDA a small market if you look at the generated revenue… but both are essential building blocks for the semiconductor industry. It was not clear back in 1995 that IP will become … Read More
Flynn Was Right: How a 2003 Warning Foretold Today’s Architectural Pivot