Looking at the ARM Top Ten customers list (for 2010) brings useful information about the volumes production generated by the chip makers involved in the wireless handset segment. Revenue for an ARM licensee comes from upfront license and royalties. Upfront license are in the few $ million range (max), when the below listed contribution… Read More
Semiconductor Intellectual Property
Thanks to Linkedin members: 24 “Like” given to “Interface Protocols, USB3, HDMI, MIPI… the winner and losers in 2011”
Just because it seems that the likes given to: Interface Protocols, USB3, HDMI, MIPI… the winner and losers in 2011 were numerous, I decided to count it.
Twenty-four likes received, in 11 Linkedin groups (see below), that’s good! Very goos! Thanks to all of you… And most probably thanks to IPNESTfor the quality of the… Read More
The Innovator’s Dilemma Dagger Aimed at AMD and nVidia’s Heart
There is one semiconductor company that for the last 3 years has outperformed ARM and more than doubled in stock price relative to Apple. They are everywhere but barely known to most. The success of this company in the coming year though could result in the leveling of AMD and nVidia as they try to adjust to the economics of the mobile… Read More
Memory Controller IP, battle field where Cadence and Synopsys are really fighting face to face. Today let’s have a look at Cadence’s strategy.
I have shared with you last year some strategic information released by Cadence in April about their IP strategy, more specifically about the launch of the DDR4 Controller IP. And try to understand Cadence strategy about Interface IP in general (USB, PCIe, SATA, DDRn, HDMI, MIPI…) and how Cadence is positioned in respect with their… Read More
Medfield: ARM twisting
One of the most significant announcements at the consumer electronics show (CES) this week was Intel’s Medfield, an Atom-based smartphone SoC. The SoC itself is unremarkable, perhaps a little better than ARM Cortex-based SoCs in some areas, worse in others. The reason it is significant is that Motorola (soon to be Google,… Read More
Kindle Touch – My Experience
Mostly I blog about EDA software however the end objective of IC design is to produce an electronic system like the Kindle Touch, a popular e-book reader from Amazon introduced in late 2011.
Tear Down
This particular model has the following components (Source: Tech Republic):
Economist on ARM vs Intel
The Economist has a big article (may need a subscription, can’t tell because I have one, it’s in the print edition too) about ARM versus Intel. It is an interesting read since I think it misses so much of what really drives semiconductor. It tells the story about Intel trying to get into mobile (because it’s main… Read More
Altera’s New Dual ARM® Cortex™-A9 SoC Arria® and Cyclone® V FPGA Families
Altera recently introduced versions of their new Arria® and Cyclone® V FPGA families that incorporates a dual ARM®Cortex™-A9 MPCore hard core. These parts are particularly interesting to NARD as it’s consistent with the NARD concept of offering platforms unified by a common ARM® host core and a variety of controller/coprocessor… Read More
Will Rising Smartphone Tide Lift Semiconductor Boats in 2012?
Memo to Self: When all else fails, return to the Smartphone Market!
The announcement by Intel earlier this week that they would come up short this quarter is a reminder that it is not growth, but very high growth that covers a Multitude of Economic Sins (many which are unforeseen). The semiconductor industry has had to endure three… Read More
IP-SoC 2011 Trip Report: IP again, new ASSP model, security, cache coherence and more
For the 20[SUP]th[/SUP] anniversary of IP-SoC, we had about ten presentations, most being really interesting; the conference has provided globally a very good level of information, speakers coming from various places like China, Belarus, The University of Aizu (Japan), University of Sao Paulo (Brazil), Silesian and Warsaw… Read More
Intel’s Pearl Harbor Moment