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
Semiconductor Intellectual Property
It’s Energy vs. Power that Matters
In tiny devices, such as true wireless headphones, the battery life of the device is usually determined by the chips that execute the device’s functions. Professor Jan Rabaey of UC Berkeley, who wrote the book on low power, also coined the term “energy frugal” a number of years ago, and this term is even more valid today with the proliferation… Read More
FD-SOI Offers Refreshing Performance and Flexibility for Mobile Applications
SoC designers often have to make a, “red pill or blue pill,” decision when it comes to selecting process technology. Usually, a choice has to be made between performance, power and area, with one being prioritized at the expense of the others. However, as is pointed out in a recent paper by Mixel and NXP, designers can have the best … Read More
Podcast EP8: A Look Inside Analog IP and Analog Bits
Dan and Mike are joined by Mahesh Tirupattur, executive vice president at Analog Bits. Mahesh discussed how he found his way to analog IP design and his long association with Analog Bits. Effective strategies for analog IP design and deployment are discussed as well as leading edge applications for analog IP . Mahesh also provides… Read More
Synopsys is Enabling the Cloud Computing Revolution
In 2019 I was involved in a major project to move all our engineering and financial systems to the cloud. We succeeded in this endeavor, but it wasn’t easy. We faced a lot of infrastructure challenges during our journey. The freedom from facility management and capital budgeting offered by the cloud was significant, however. If … Read More
Arteris IP folds in Magillem. Perfect for SoC Integrators
Arteris IP and Magillem recently tied the knot, creating a merger of Network-on-Chip (NoC) and related Intellectual Property (IP) with a platform known for IP-XACT based SoC integration and related support. This is interesting to me because I’m familiar with products and people in both companies. I talked to Kurt Shuler, vice… Read More
SmartDV Shines in 2020!
After an incredible year for SemiWiki I spent much of January breaking down 2020 with our sponsoring companies. Some had a down year, some had a flat year, but quite a few had remarkable years. One standout company is SmartDV which recorded a 51% revenue increase, so the important question is why?
Reasons:
SmartDV covers one of the… Read More
Synopsys Delivers a Brief History of AI chips and Specialty AI IP
Let’s face it, AI is everywhere. From the cloud to the edge to your pocket, there is more and more embedded intelligence fueling efficiency and features. It’s sometimes hard to discern where human interaction ends, and machine interaction begins. The technology that underlies all this is quite complex and daunting to understand.… Read More
How SerDes Became Key IP for Semiconductor Systems
We have seen that the interface IP category is seeing incredibly high growth rate over the last two decades and we expect this category to generate an ongoing high source of IP revenues for at least another decade. But if we dig into the various successful protocols like PCI Express, Ethernet or USB, we can detect a common function … Read More
CEO Interview: Pim Tuyls of Intrinsic ID
Pim Tuyls, CEO of Intrinsic ID, founded the company in 2008 as a spinout from Philips Research. It was at Philips, where he was Principal Scientist and managed the cryptography cluster, that he initiated the original work on Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) that forms the basis of the Intrinsic ID core technology. With more… Read More


Is Intel About to Take Flight?