Last month I had the pleasure of meeting Mr Wonyoung Kim, a PhD candidate from Harvard University. Like many candidates, Wonyoung is shopping his thesis for capital in hopes of starting a semiconductor IP company. Here is a brief summary of the technology, please provide appropriate feedback and let’s see if we can get him… Read More
Semiconductor Intellectual Property
Yalta in EDA: but Synopsys ultra dominant in Interface IP territory…
If Cadence is making money with large VIP port-folio, Synopsys has successfully deployed an acquisition strategy to build a large Design IP port-folio. Looking at these acquisitions will help understanding Synopsys positioning in the IP market. When they have started this acquisition campaign, back in 2002, their market share… Read More
Smartphones shipments, Sky is the limit…
…or a global recession, but that’s not the purpose of this blog. As everybody knows, Apple is designing and selling smartphones, only. Does it mean that only smartphones are generating profit in the mobile industry? As we have seen recently in Semiwiki, Apple makes 2/3 of profit of entire mobile industry.
Let’s have a look (below)… Read More
Apple Strength Will Compel ARM to Trim its Sails
ARM’s move into the broad Tablet and PC space is based on lining up as many partners as possible to attack Intel from multiple angles. It’s a strategy not so different from what Intel employed in the early PC days. However, the strategy is unraveling as Apple and Samsung have reached market share domination without ARM’s merchant… Read More
Has IP moved to Subsystem? Will IP-SoC 2011 bring answers?
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
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
Unlocking the cloud: A new era for post-tapeout flow for semiconductor manufacturing