Until recently, ICs at bleeding edge nodes like 7nm technology from foundries like TSMC were mostly targeted for high-performance-computing (HPC) and mobile applications or possibly high radix switches that needed the increased performance of advanced nodes. The momentum of Moore’s law and Moore-than-Moore saw foundries… Read More




Global Semiconductor Market Trends ISS 2018
One of the other blog worthy analyst presentations at ISS 2018 was by Len Jelinek of IHS. Len is my kind of analyst, he spent 28 years in the semiconductor industry before going to the dark side so he knows what he is talking about. Len’s presentation on Global Semiconductor Market Trends is action packed so I will be doing a lot of cut … Read More
What GM Can Learn from Tesla
General Motors has had wireless connections to its cars for more than 21 years, thanks to Project Beacon, better known as OnStar, now operated as Global Connected Consumer Experience. OnStar has likely saved hundreds of lives, if not thousands, by summoning emergency responders to the scenes of crashes where airbags deployed.… Read More
Webinar: The Emergence of FPGA Prototyping for ASIC and SoC Design
One of the more interesting markets that I cover is FPGA Prototyping. Interesting because it is fast growing ($150-250M) and interesting because it is all about design starts and design starts are the lifeblood of the semiconductor industry.
If you are interested in FPGA prototyping you might want to start with the 30+ S2C Inc blogs… Read More
IEDM 2017 – Controlling Threshold Voltage with Work Function Metals
As I have said many times, IEDM is one of the premier conferences for semiconductor technology. On Sunday before the formal conference started I took the “Boosting Performance, Ensuring Reliability, Managing Variation in sub-5nm CMOS” short course. The second module in the course was “Multi-Vt Engineering… Read More
Wanted by January 30th: Paper for DAC IP Track 2018!
DAC 2018 will take place in San Francisco in June (24 to 28) and you have a fantastic opportunity to present a paper in the IP track! In fact, the deadline has been extended to January 30[SUP]th[/SUP] to submit your proposal.
Let’s make it clear: you are not expected to send the completed paper by this date, just the following:
- The title
Webinar: Fast-track SoC Verification – Reduce time-to-first-test with Synopsys VC AutoTestbench
There seems to be a general sense that we have the foundations for block/IP verification more or less under control, thanks to UVM standardizing infrastructure for directed and constrained-random testing, along with class libraries providing building blocks to simplify verification reuse, build sequence tests, verify register… Read More
Designing an SoC for 3D TV Without using the Funny Glasses
In the blur of activities at DAC last year I visited the Mentor booth a few times and had just a few minutes to glance at a 3D TV display that didn’t require me to wear any funny glasses, kind of novel I thought at the time because I’ve read that the market of 3D TV sets is being hampered by requiring viewers to wear glasses. The… Read More
Context is Everything – especially for autonomous vehicle IP
GM has just announced that it will introduce a car with no steering wheel or pedals in 2019. According to their statement, they have already planned four phases of their autonomous driving system, and they will plan many more. However, before we jump into this latest car and not grab the wheel for a spin, it is reasonable to ask about… Read More
TSMC 5nm and EUV Update 2018
The TSMC Q4 2017 earnings call transcript is up and I found it to be quite interesting for several reasons. First and foremost, this is the last call Chairman Dr. Morris Chang will participate in which signifies the end of a world changing era for me and the fabless semiconductor ecosystem, absolutely. TSMC announced his retirement… Read More
Should the US Government Invest in Intel?