QuickLogic Corp.—the former FPGA maker that reinvented itself through configurable design for consumer electronics (CE) products—is taking its sensor hub arsenal to high pitch at the 2015 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Sensor hub, a companion to application processor, offloads data from sensors… Read More
IEDM: FD-SOI Down to 10nm
The big picture is that planar semiconductor transistors don’t really work below 20nm. The reason is that the gate does a poor job of controlling the channel since too much channel is too far from the gate and so there is a lot of leakage even when the transistor is nominally off. So the channel needs to be made thinner. One way … Read More
Variation: How Can We Survive?
At IEDM last week Coventor hosted a panel session as they do each year. The theme this year was surviving variation. The panel was hosted by someone whose name is familiar round here, Dan Nenni. The panel that Coventor had put together had people from all sorts of different slots in the design/supply chain for semiconductor. Unfortunately… Read More
Components for Wearables, Making the IoT Real
The screenwriter William Goldman is famous for saying that in Hollywood “Nobody knows anything.” Meaning that there is simply no way for any of the people involved to be able to predict which movies will turn out to be hits and which will be flops. I think the internet of things (IoT) is going to be like that. There will … Read More
A Brief History of Silicon Frontline
Silicon Frontline was founded in 2007 by Yuri Feinberg. Since then the company has built up a team with expertise in computational geometry, circuit layout, circuit simulation and analysis, and post-layout verification. After a small initial funding, Silicon Frontline has continued to grow, acquiring new customers even over… Read More
ASIC Days Are Here Again
Technology often goes in cycles. Thirty years ago the dominant mode of computing was a shared computing resource with comparatively dumb terminals. Think of a Vax accessed by terminals. Then workstations and the PC came along and the dominant mode became a computer on everyone’s desk. Then the smartphone came along and … Read More
A Closer Look at the QCOM $40M Investment in China!
Last Thursday night was the 20[SUP]th[/SUP] annual GSA Awards Dinner which probably hosts one of the largest collections of semiconductor executives. Think of a movie or music awards show with all of the trimmings including Jay Leno as the keynote. I don’t know the exact head count but there were 160 dinner tables with 10 plates … Read More
Benefits of Using Schematic Driven Layout
Most IC designs are developed by a team of professionals, often separated into distinct groups like front-end and back-end, logical and physical designers. Circuit designers use tools like schematic capture at the transistor-level to create a topology, then begin simulating the netlist with a SPICE simulator. Layout designers… Read More
Intel has Another First for 14nm Production!
An interesting thing happened while I was researching a slide from Bill Holt’s “Advancing Moore’s Law” presentation at last month’s analyst meeting. Slide #19 mentioned that Intel was the first to use “air gap” dielectric spaces to improve performance in a digital logic flow for microprocessors. I know a certain foundry that … Read More
Which IP for FD-SOI Ecosystem?
We know that the best technology or product, even if it exhibits best in class and unmatched features, is almost of no use if lacking an ecosystem. If you think about a processor core, you will expect to find compatible communication bus and memories (inside the SoC) and operating system, compiler, debugger, etc. When dealing with… Read More