In 2002 few people outside of Steve Jobs, could have predicted the iPhone. But a forward-looking technology CEO could expect Moore’s Law to extend into portable devices as it did with PCs. While 2G and 2.5G cellular phones were shipping in the hundreds of millions, the features were rather primitive. 3G, 4G, WiFi, Bluetooth,… Read More
In advanced process technologies, electrical and timing problems due to variability can become a big issue. Due to various processing effects, a circuit performance (both speed and power) is dependent on specific layout attributes and can vary a lot from instance to instance. The accumulated effects can be severe to the point… Read More
Honestly speaking, there is no firm answer to this question, and often when we get confronted by our customers, we talk about the coverage reports. The truth is a product with high rate of coverage can very easily fail in customer environment. Of course coverage is important, and to be clear about the fact that the failure is not because… Read More
As we know mobile industry is one of the fastest growing in the electronics arena, and it has led to the emergence of several standards of interfaces between processors, devices, storage, camera, keyboard and so on. The interfaces can involve hardware as well as software and can be complex. The standards are still evolving, often… Read More
Recently, Sonics and ARM entered into an agreement whereby ARM licensed a significant portion of Sonics’ patent portfolio. Sonics, Inc. is one of the leading providers of connectivity IP often referred to as network-on-chip, or NoC. ARM is the leading provider of processor intellectual property (IP). The potential scope… Read More
Much awaited, automatic tool for DRM (Design Rule Manual) and DRC (Design Rule Check) deck creation is here now! I am particularly excited to know about this because I had been hearing for its need (in different context) from the designers with whom I was working to improve their design productivity through the use of our EDA tools… Read More
The tremendous growth in IC and SoC design complexity has now enabled engineers to place bilions of transistors on a single chip. To make that growth possible design teams resort to using libraries and semi IP provided by other groups in their company, or outside IP vendors. To lower risk, you must know that the IP being used in your… Read More
For 19 years GSA (presumably going back to the days when it was Fabless Semiconductor Association, FSA) has recognized public and private semiconductor companies. The awards are celebrated at a dinner. This year’s dinner is on Thursday December 12th at the Santa Clara Convention Center. The keynote speaker at the dinner… Read More
With nearly twenty five years in business, Tanner EDA Application Engineers have seen a wide range of support requests. One consistent topic area is around design data management and design reuse. In one recent instance, our customer, an IDM who produces imaging sensors for infrared vision systems, called on Tanners AE team for… Read More
For a couple of years the GSA has had working group looking at funding of semiconductor investment. There is a general feeling, which I share, that it is hard to get a fabless semiconductor company off the ground (nobody would dream of trying to create one with a fab these days) due to the size of the investment and the relatively long… Read More
