Whenever a new partnership is announced, the natural question is, “why?” What will this partnership make possible that wasn’t already possible with those two companies working independently? I talked yesterday with Frank Schirrmeister of Arteris on the partnership. (Yes, Frank is now at Arteris). And I just got off an Arm press… Read More


3D IC – Managing the System-level Netlist
I just did a Google search for “3D IC”, and was stunned to see it return a whopping 476,000 results. This topic is trending, because more companies are using advanced IC packaging to meet their requirements, and yet the engineers doing the 3D IC design have new challenges to overcome. One of those challenges is creating… Read More
Arm 2022 Neoverse Update, Roadmap
Arm recently provided their annual update on the Neoverse product line, targeting infrastructure from cloud to communication to the edge. Chris Bergey (SVP and GM for infrastructure) led the update, starting with a shock-and-awe pitch on Neoverse deployment. He played up that Arm-based servers are now in every major public … Read More
UCIe Specification Streamlines Multi-Die System Design with Chiplets
Over the last few years, the design of application-specific ICs as well as high-performance CPUs and other complex ICs has hit a proverbial wall. This wall is built from several issues: first, chip sizes have grown so large that they can fill the entire mask reticle and that could limit future growth. Second, the large chip size impacts… Read More
Methodology to Minimize the Impact of Duty Cycle Distortion in Clock Distribution Networks
Synchronous circuits dominate the electronic world because clocking eases the design of circuits compared to asynchronous circuits. At the same time, clocking also introduces its share of challenges to overcome. No wonder, a tremendous amount of time and effort have been spent over the years on developing and implementing … Read More
Podcast EP108: Brief History of the Semiconductor Industry – How Did It Get Started?
Dan is joined by Chris Miller, Associate Professor of International History at The Fletcher School and author of Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology, a geopolitical history of the computer chip. Chris provides a far-reaching overview of the forces that shaped the worldwide semiconductor industry,… Read More
Semifore is Supplying Pain Relief for Some World-Changing Applications
In a recent post, I discussed how Samtec is fueling the AI revolution. In that post, I talked about how smart everything seems to be everywhere, changing the way we work, the way we think about our health and ultimately improving life on the planet. These are lofty statements, but the evidence is growing that the newest wave of applications… Read More
Enjoy the Super-Cycle it’ll Crash in 2023!
At our January 2021 industry update webinar, 20 months ago, we forecast “There’s no tight capacity relief before 2022 at the earliest” whilst simultaneously cautioning “Enjoy the super-cycle … it’ll crash in 2023!” At the time, we were dismissed as being ‘ever optimistic’ for the first prognosis and ‘losing the plot’ for the … Read More
Flex Logix: Industry’s First AI Integrated Mini-ITX based System
As the market for edge processing is growing, the performance, power and cost requirements of these applications are getting increasingly demanding. These applications have to work on instant data and make decisions in real time at the user end. The applications span the consumer, commercial and industrial market segments.… Read More
Semiconductor Decline in 2023
The semiconductor market dropped 0.8 percent in 2Q 2022 versus 1Q 2022, according to WSTS. The 2Q 2022 decline followed a 0.5% quarter-to-quarter decline in 1Q 2022. The 2Q 2022 revenues of the top 15 semiconductor suppliers match the overall market results, with a 1% decline from 1Q 2022. The results by company were mixed. Memory… Read More
Should the US Government Invest in Intel?