During 2018, Menta looked quiet if you consider communication as the main indicator of activity. In fact, the eFPGA vendor was hyper-active in developing future business and reports two main design-win. The first is with the European Processor Initiative (EPI) and Menta has announced in December 2018 that it has been selected… Read More
Semiconductor Intellectual Property
Verification 3.0 Holds it First Innovation Summit
Last week I attended the first Verification 3.0 Innovation Summit held at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara along with about 90 other interested engineers and former engineers (meaning marketing and sales people, like me). There was a great vibe and feel to the event as it exuded an energy level that I have not felt at an EDA event in years.… Read More
Narrow-Band IoT Adoption Grows as IP Options Narrow
Cellular as a method to communicate with the IoT is on a tear for obvious reasons. It’s long-range with no concerns about the lesser reach of Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, it needs no added infrastructure since it already works with 2G/3G/4G (and ultimately 5G I presume) and it’s designed for ultra-low power, supporting those devices expecting… Read More
ARM, NXP Share Usage, Challenges at Synopsys Lunch
Synopsys runs a “Industry verifies with Synopsys” lunch at each DVCon, which isn’t as cheesy as the title might suggest. The bulk of the lunch covers user presentations on their use of Synopsys tools which I find informative and quite open, sharing problems as much as successes. This year, Eamonn Quiqley, FPGA engineering manager… Read More
The Revolution Evolution Continues – SiFive RISC-V Technology Symposium – Part II
During the afternoon session of the Symposium, Jack Kang, SiFive VP sales then addressed the RISC-V Core IP for vertical markets from consumer/smart home/wearables to storage/networking/5G to ML/edge. Embedding intelligence from the edge to the cloud can occur with U Cores 64-bit Application Processors, S Cores 64-bit Embedded… Read More
Qualcomm Intel Facebook and Semiconductor IP
What does Qualcomm, Intel, and Facebook have in common? Well, for one thing they all bought network onchip communications (NoC) IP companies. As I have mentioned before, semiconductor IP is the foundation of the fabless semiconductor ecosystem and I believe this trend of acquisitions will continue. So, if you are going to start… Read More
The Revolution Evolution Continues – SiFive RISC-V Technology Symposium – Part I
SiFive held a RISC-V Technology Symposium on February 26 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. Keith Witek, SiFive SVP Corporate Development and Strategy kicked off the event and introduced the first keynote speaker Martin Fink, Western Digital CTO, at the time acting CEO of the RISC-V Foundation (as of this writing,… Read More
Segmenting the Machine-Learning Hardware Market
One of the great pleasures in what I do is to work with people who are working with people in some of the hottest design areas today. A second-level indirect to be sure but that gives me the luxury of taking a broad view. A recent discussion I had with Kurt Shuler (VP Marketing at Arteris IP) is in this class. As a conscientious marketing… Read More
Accelerating SOC Development for Automobile Applications
No area of electronics is moving faster than automotive semiconductors. Everyone has been talking about the increasing electronics content of automobiles for decades. With Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) and autonomous driving becoming a reality the pace has picked up even more. These new designs combine just about… Read More
eSilicon Bucking the Trend at OFC with 7nm SerDes
A recent press release from eSilicon caught my eye. The company has been touting their 7nm SerDes quite a bit lately – reach, power, flexibility, things like that. While those capabilities are important, any high-performance chip needs to work in the context of the system, which usually contains technology from multiple sources.… Read More
Should Intel be Split in Half?