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Qualcomm Attests Benefits of Mentor’s RealTime DRC for P&R

Qualcomm Attests Benefits of Mentor’s RealTime DRC for P&R
by Tom Simon on 01-31-2019 at 7:00 am

When floor planning (FP) and place & route (P&R) tools took over from custom layout tools for standard cell based designs, life became a lot better for designers of large digital chips. The beauty of the new flows was that all the internals of the standard cells and many IP blocks were hidden from view, lightening the load … Read More


The 50th Year of Intel, What Happened in 2018

The 50th Year of Intel, What Happened in 2018
by Daniel Payne on 01-30-2019 at 12:00 pm

2018 was the 50th year for Intel in the semiconductor business, and their Q4 2018 conference call just happened last week, so I’ll get you all caught up on what they talked about. Bob Swan is the CFO and interim CEO, as the company continues to search for a new CEO after Brian K. was ousted for misconduct. Here’s a quick financial… Read More


Why High-End ML Hardware Goes Custom

Why High-End ML Hardware Goes Custom
by Bernard Murphy on 01-30-2019 at 7:00 am

In a hand-waving way it’s easy to answer why any hardware goes custom (ASIC): faster, lower power, more opportunity for differentiation, sometimes cost though price isn’t always a primary factor. But I wanted to do a bit better than hand-waving, especially because these ML hardware architectures can become pretty exotic, so … Read More


Switch Design Signoff with IC Validator

Switch Design Signoff with IC Validator
by Alex Tan on 01-29-2019 at 12:00 pm

The surge of network traffic at the data centers has driven to an increase in network bandwidth, doubling every 12-15 months according to a study conducted on Google’s data centers. The primary drivers to this uptick include the proliferation of cloud computing, more distributed storage architecture, emerging applications… Read More


Mathematics are Hard – That is Why AI Needs Mathematics Hardware

Mathematics are Hard – That is Why AI Needs Mathematics Hardware
by Tom Simon on 01-29-2019 at 7:00 am

The field of artificial intelligence has relied on heavy inspiration from the world of natural intelligence, such as the human mind, to build working systems that can learn and act on new information based on that learning. In natural networks, neurons do the work, deciding when to fire based on huge numbers of inputs. The relationship… Read More


Accuracy of In-Chip Monitoring for Thermal Guard-banding

Accuracy of In-Chip Monitoring for Thermal Guard-banding
by Daniel Payne on 01-28-2019 at 12:00 pm

I remember working at Intel and viewing my first SPICE netlist for a DRAM chip, because there was this temperature statement with a number after it, so being a new college graduate I asked lots of questions, like, “What is that temperature value?”

My co-worker answered, “Oh, that’s the estimated junction… Read More


Why we will all benefit from the next space race

Why we will all benefit from the next space race
by Vivek Wadhwa on 01-27-2019 at 7:00 am

Until January 3, no human being had ever set eyes upon the “dark side” of the moon: the side always facing away from the Earth. It always remained a mystery. But no longer. China’s National Space Administration successfully landed a lunar lander, Chang’e-4, at South Pole-Aitken, the moon’s largest and deepest basin. Its lunar rover… Read More


ASML and Memory Loss 2019

ASML and Memory Loss 2019
by Robert Maire on 01-25-2019 at 7:00 am

ASML reported a more or less in line quarter as expected, coming in at EUR3.14B in revenues and EPS of EUR1.87. However, guidance was worse than most analysts were expecting with Q1 revenues expected to be EUR2.1B or down about one third.

This cut is something we have been talking about for a while as we have expected sharp memory CAPEX… Read More


Having Your Digital Cake and Eating It Too

Having Your Digital Cake and Eating It Too
by Bill Montgomery on 01-24-2019 at 12:00 pm

Anybody who’s ever read the iconic MAD magazine would be familiar with the wordless Spy vs Spy cartoon. First published in January, 1961, it features two agents involved in stereotypical and comical espionage activities. One is dressed in white, and the other in black, but they are otherwise identical. A parody of the politicalRead More


Intel Swaggers at CES

Intel Swaggers at CES
by Daniel Payne on 01-24-2019 at 7:00 am

Intel started out as a DRAM company using planar NMOS technology, then later on added EPROM and Microprocessors to the product mix. Their CPU technology enabled the dynamic growth of the PC industry starting with the IBM PC back in 1981 and continuing all of the way to this day. They long ago dropped out of the DRAM marketplace and began… Read More