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
Variation at IEDM
IEDM (technically the International Electron Devices Meeting although I’ve never heard anyone use the full name) is in a couple of weeks time, in San Francisco. It is December 15-17th at the Hilton Union Square (which is not actually at Union Square but nearby at 333 O’Farrell Street).
For the last few years on the Tuesday… Read More
IC Place and Route for AMS Designs
High-capacity IC place and route (P&R) tools can cost $200K and more to own from the big three vendors (Cadence, Synopsys, Mentor), but what about IC designs that are primarily Big Analog and Little Digital? In the EDA world we often have multiple choices for tools, and there are affordable alternatives to place and route out… Read More
‘Tis the season for 4K UHD and HEVC
4K UHD TVs were all dressed up at CES 2014 with no content to show. The good news for the 2014 holiday season is the industry has converged on one set of standards for display, interfacing, and encoding, so consumers should not be left marooned in an instant replay of the 3DTV hype-crash cycle. It may be a bit longer before everyone can… Read More
What makes the world smart?
The simple answer is when everything in the world is smart. But if you think deeply, you would find that the continuous progression to make things easy in life is what makes the world smarter day-by-day – the sky is the limit. In the world of computing, consider the 17[SUP]th[/SUP] century era when humanbrain was used as a computer … Read More
SIM cards and avoiding stranded IoT assets
Since pennants, drums, smoke, and horses fell out of favor to more advanced communication technology, network operators have struggled to find balance. Too few subscribers interested, and infrastructure investments completely fail. Just the right number of paying users, revenue streams provide profit and ability to invest… Read More
Leakage Current TCAD Calibration in a-Si TFTs
Two weeks ago I blogged about amorphous silicon and how that material is well-suited for designing TFTs. Today I’m following up after watching the archived webinarpresented by Nam-Kyun Tak of Silvaco. After clicking on that link you’ll be brought to a brief sign-up page and then can watch the archived webinar in your… Read More
MIPS CPU and Newton2 Platform for Wearables
I have written recently about SmarCoT (Smart Connected Thing) and smartwatches are one of these numerous smart and connected applications that some still refer to as IoT. Imagination Technologies is working hard to be part of the SmarCoT ecosystem and Ingenic, IMG customer, has recently launched a MIPS-based chip (M200) and … Read More
NoC 101, a Sonics Webinar
One of the things that I’ve been telling the people at Sonics when they will listen is that they should do a bit more basic education on Networks on Chip (NoC). Sure, the people who actually use Sonics’s products care about deep details such as security and power management, but there is a whole host of designers who have… Read More
How many 28nm FDSOI SoC Design Starts in 2015? In 2020?
I would like to further discuss this graphic (presented during IP-SoC 2014 by John Koeter, VP of Marketing IP and prototyping, Synopsys) and focus on Active Design and Tapeouts at 28nm. In fact the very first activity appeared in Q1 2007, but it was only during 2010 that 28nm become popular, after the first Tapeouts coming in Q1 and… Read More