Like it or not, the surveillance market is growing, at a CAGR approaching 10%. Big brother concerns sometimes cloud the picture but overlook the much larger practical yet less hype-worthy applications for surveillance. Home and industrial security, enhanced traffic flow management, monitoring for fire and other fast-growing… Read More
Semiconductor Intellectual Property
CEO Interview: Stephen Fairbanks of Certus Semiconductor
Trained as a semiconductor Analog and RF Circuit Designer, Stephen Fairbanks has been designing and developing process-specific I/O and ESD libraries for 24 years. His foundational training began while attending Brigham Young University designing highspeed 32 GSPS data acquisition systems and RF interfaces for a time-of-flight… Read More
Alphawave IP is now Alphawave Semi for a very good reason!
The semiconductor ecosystem has been full of interesting twists of late and Alphawave has been a company to watch since the very beginning. Alphawave came out of stealth mode in early 2019 as the world’s first IP company focused on multi-standard connectivity (SerDes) IP solutions. The importance of SerDes had been understated… Read More
Arteris IP Acquires Semifore!
The semiconductor ecosystem consolidation continues with an interesting acquisition of an EDA company by an IP company. Having worked with both Arteris and Semifore over the past few years I can tell you by personal experience that this is one of those 1+1=3 types of acquisitions, absolutely.
How to Efficiently and Effectively Secure SoC Interfaces for Data Protection
Before the advent of the digitized society and computer chips, things that needed protection were mostly hard assets such as jewelry, coins, real estate, etc. Administering security was simple and depended on strong guards who provided security through physical means. Then came the safety box services offered by financial … Read More
Analog to Digital Converter Circuits for Communications, AI and Automotive
Sensors are inherently analog in nature, and they get digitized for processing by using an Analog to Digital Converter (ADC) block. At the recent IP SoC event I had the chance to see the presentation by Ken Potts, COO of Alphacore on their semiconductor IP for ADCs. I learned that Alphacore started out in 2012, now offering both standard… Read More
How an Embedded Non-Volatile Memory Can Be a Differentiator
Embedded memory makes computing applications run faster. In the early days of the semiconductor industry, the desire to utilize large amount of on-chip memory was limited by cost, manufacturing difficulties and technology mismatches between logic and memory circuit implementations. Since then, advancements in semiconductor… Read More
Chiplets UCIe Require Verification
Chiplets have been trending on SemiWiki for the past two years and I think that will continue into the distant future. As a potential way to unclog Moore’s Law, you can bet the semiconductor ecosystem will prove once again to be a chiplet force of nature driving semiconductor company roadmaps to smaller and better things.
To be clear,… Read More
MIPI bridging DSI-2 and CSI-2 Interfaces with an FPGA
We’re so spoiled by 4K and 8K and frame rates of 120 Hz or higher video content on high-performance devices that now, many of us expect these higher resolutions and rates on even small devices. The necessary interfaces exist in MIPI Display Serial Interface 2 (DSI-2) and Camera Serial Interface 2 (CSI-2). The challenge is these interfaces… Read More
CEO Interview: Ron Black of Codasip
Dr. Black has over 30 years of industry experience. Before joining Codasip, he has been President and CEO at Imagination Technologies and previously CEO at Rambus, MobiWire (SAGEM Handsets), UPEK, and Wavecom. He holds a BS and MS in Engineering and a Ph.D. in Materials science from Cornell University. A consistent thread of his… Read More


Is Intel About to Take Flight?