Releasing a new protocol like ThunderBolt, HDMI or SuperSpeed USB has not only to do with bandwidth performance or form factor of the connector as a guarantee of success. Some non-scientific parameters also play a role in the alchemy, that’s why forecasting the success of a certain protocol is such a hard task, and can’t be reduced… Read More
What Dolpin Technology Uses for SPICE Circuit Simulation of IP
Mo Tamjidi founded two Semiconductor IP companies Virage Logic and Dolphin Technology. After reading a press release about how Dolphin Technology is using FineSIM SPICE from Magma I decided to contact him and learn more about why they are now using that circuit simulator in the design of their memory, standard cells, and IO cells.… Read More
Semiconductor IP Dilemma?
Just how many hands have touched your SoC design by the time it goes to manufacturing? Clearly the more hands that touch it, the more complex the design is, making it more difficult to meet your product requirements. The commercial semiconductor IP dilemma is that not only are you using the same IP as your competitors, you are exponentially… Read More
Micron Races to Its Future
Perhaps no semiconductor company took it on the chin harder the last half of 2011 than Micron. And yet, perhaps no company was racing as hard as Micron to make a radical changeover. Micron is considered a bell weather on the overall health of the semiconductor industry given that DRAM, NAND and NOR Flash are used in some combination… Read More
America Heads Into a Generational Turn
America has received a gift whose consequence and magnitude is just now unfolding before our eyes. Taken to its limits, it may in the course of the next decade finally free us from many of our foreign entanglements while lifting the economic burdens from the working majority that has seen their wages stagnate for the past 40 years.… Read More
View from the top: Chris Rowen
I met with Chris Rowen, CEO of Tensilica, last week to get his outlook on the year ahead.
He gave me an interesting quote from his time at Silicon Graphics. “We wanted to be very fast in development not to be first to market but so that we could be the last to start.”
A lot of what Tensilica does is bound up with evolving standards in audio,… Read More
eSilicon awards supplier of the year to…
In one of those wonderfully timed coincidences, yesterday eSilicon had their partner appreciation event yesterday. They awarded the 2011 supplier of the year award to…Magma. They have been using Magma tools for almost ten years.… Read More
Driving in the bus lane
Modern microprocessor and memory designs often have hundreds of datapaths that traverse the width of the chip, many of them very wide (over one thousand signals). To meet signal timing and slope targets for these buses, designers must insert repeater cells to improve the speed of the signal. Until now, the operations associated… Read More
Mark Milligan joins Springsoft
Mark Milligan recently joined SpringSoft as VP Corporate Marketing. I sat down with him on Monday to get his perspective on things.
He started life, as so many of us, as an engineer. He was an ASIC designer working on low-level microcode for the Navy Standard Airborne Computer at Control Data. It was actually the first ASIC that they… Read More
Taiwan Trip Report: Semiconductors, EDA, and the ASIC Business!
Just returning from my monthly trip to Taiwan and I find myself energized! Semiconductors, EDA, and the ASIC business have never been more exciting! The travel itself is not so exciting but since I make frequent trips the airline and hotel treat me like a king. And let me tell you, it is good to be a king!
If you believe in Hobbits you can believe in Rapidus