The global market for earphones and headphones in 2020 is estimated to have been $34B and is expanding at a compound rate of over 20% per year. Of this almost 50% is said to be earphones which are shifting rapidly to True Wireless Stereo (TWS). We have seen the sales of TWS devices grow from 1M units is 2016 to 109M units in 2019, though … Read More
Semiconductor Intellectual Property
Quantum Tunneling for OTPs, PUFs: Higher security
I’ve had a number of enjoyable discussions with John East who ran Actel until it was acquired. (John and Actel devices also play an important role in my book, The Tell-Tale Entrepreneur.) This is relevant because Actel were well-known for their anti-fuse FPGAs. eMemory Technology, the subject of this blog, also produce an anti-fuse… Read More
Delivering True Wireless Stereo (TWS) Experience
A recent blog about the Hearables market covered how expansive and far reaching the product opportunities promise to be. Of course, consumer purchase criteria will drive the product realizations, adoptions and consequently the market success of each of these envisioned products. Whether it is the earbud product or one of those… Read More
Enabling Edge AI Vision with RISC-V and a Silicon Platform
AI vision processing moving to the edge is an undeniable industry trend. OpenFive, the custom silicon business unit of SiFive, discusses this trend with compelling facts in their recent paper titled “Enabling AI Vision at the Edge.” AI vision is being deployed in many applications, such as autonomous vehicles, smart cities, … Read More
Webinar: How to Protect Sensitive Data with Silicon Fingerprints
Data protection is on everyone’s mind these days. The news cycle seems to contain a story about hacking, intrusion or cyber-terrorism on a regular basis. The cloud, our hyperconnected devices and the growing reliance on AI-assisted hardware to manage more and more mission critical functions all around us make data protection… Read More
Using IP Interfaces to Reduce HPC Latency and Accelerate the Cloud
IDC has forecasted that over the next five years, the Global Datasphere — the amount of data that’s created, transferred over the network and stored each year — will increase by over 3X to 175 zettabytes (Figure 1). Much of this is driven by the Internet of Things (IoT), video applications (including video streaming,… Read More
Hearables: From Earbuds to Life Augmentation and Beyond
As the months of 2020 passed by, I started noticing more and more people sporting what looked like fashionable ear accessories. I’m of course referring to True Wireless Stereo (TWS) earbuds. With the rapid increase in online meetings due to social distancing requirements, it appeared that adoption of TWS earbuds was even faster… Read More
USB 3.2 Helps Deliver on Type-C Connector Performance Potential
Despite sounding like a minor enhancement version for USB, USB 3.2 introduces many important changes for the USB specification. To see where USB has come from and where it is going, it is essential to look at what is found in USB 3.2. The other salient point is that now the Type-C connector has split out from the underlying USB specification… Read More
Features of Short-Reach Interface IP Design
The emergence of advanced packaging technologies has led to the introduction of new types of data communication interfaces. There are a number of topologies that are defined by the IEEE 802.3 standard, as well as the Optical Internetworking Common Electrical I/O CEI standard. [1,2] (Many of the configurations of interest … Read More
USB4 Makes Interfacing Easy, But is Hard to Implement
USB made its big splash by unifying numerous connections into a single cable and interface. At the time there were keyboard ports, mouse ports, printer ports and many others. Over the years USB has delivered improved performance and greater functionality. However, as serial interfaces became more popular and started being used… Read More
Rapidus, IBM, and the Billion-Dollar Silicon Sovereignty Bet