GLOBALFOUNDRIES will show off its 28nm design ecosystem at #48DAC next week in San Diego. The company will feature a full design ecosystem for its 28nm High-k Metal Gate (HKMG) technology, including silicon-validated flows, process design kits (PDKs), design-for-manufacturing (DFM), and intellectual property (IP) in partnership… Read More
Semiconductor Intellectual Property
Intel’s 22nm Process. Atom, ARM, Apple
Intel had a big press event yesterday at which they announced details of their 22nm process. In a change from their current processes, it goes with a vertical gate. In fact 3 gates which gives them much better control of leakage through transistors that are switched off, along with more transmission through the on transistors. They… Read More
Intel Buys an ARMy. Maybe
Is Intel in trouble? Since it is the #1 semiconductor company and, shipping 22nm in Q4 this year with 14nm in 2013, it is two process generations ahead of everyone else it is hard to see why it would be. Intel, of course, continues to dominate the market for chips for notebooks, desktops and servers. But therein lies the problem. Pads… Read More
ARM vs Intel…Performance? Power? OS support? Or ubiquity?
This blog was posted 10 months ago, and the comments have made it much more interesting! Don’t miss the various comments at the back. Also feel free to let us know if you think the status, in this ARM vs Intel “war” has changed a lot since March 2011. Do you really think Intel has catch up with ARM in the mobile industry?… Read More
How much IP & reuse in this SoC?
According with the survey from GSA-Wharton design IP blocks reuse in a new IC product is 44% in average. Looking at the latest Wireless platform from TI, OMAP5, we have listed the blocks which have been (or will be) reused, coming from internal (or external) IP sourcing. For a license cost evaluation of -at least- $10M!
For those who… Read More
Semiconductor IP would be nothing without VIP…
…but what is the weight of the Verification IP market?
If the IP market is a niche market (see: **) with revenue of about 1% of the overall semiconductor business, how could we qualify the VIP market? Ultra-niche market? But the verification of the IP integrated into the SoC is an essential piece of the engineering puzzle when you are… Read More
The Looming IP Explosion
There has been a lot of talk about the fluid role of IP in semiconductor design. With the Synopsys acquisition of Virage Logic the playing field has tilted substantially in favor of Synopsys… or maybe not!
At first glance this acquisition appears to be a huge threat to EDA and IP companies allowing Synopsys to “throw in” IP as… Read More
DRC+, DFM, CMP, Variablility
When I worked at Intel as a circuit design engineer I could talk directly with the technology development engineers to understand how to really push my DRAM designs and get the smallest possible memory cell layout that would still yield well, provide fast access time, and long refresh cycles.
(United States Patent 6661699. Inventor:… Read More
Intel versus ARM (Linaro)
More than 2,500 companies will be exhibiting and more than 120,000 people will be attending the next Consumer Electronics Show(CES) and it is an easy bet that ARM processors will dominate the show yet again. In fact, my money is on ARM to dominate future generations of computing platforms (smartphones) due in large part to one simple… Read More
Synopsys Acquires Virage Logic!
Overshadowing the acquisition of Denali by Cadence, Synopsys, the #2 semiconductor IP provider acquires Virage Logic, the #3 IP provider. Virage brings the #1 embedded SRAM, #1 BIST, #1 Logic Libraries, #1 DDR, #1 NVM, the ARC CPU cores and audio/video interface technology, and all the AMS IP from the NXP acquisition.
Under the… Read More
CEO Interview with Ido Bukspan of Pliops