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Why Tech Tales are Wafer Thin in Hollywood

Why Tech Tales are Wafer Thin in Hollywood
by Craig Addison on 04-25-2021 at 10:00 am

Chip Warriors

Mad scientists have been a staple of Hollywood science fiction since Dr Victor Frankenstein created his eponymous monster in 1931. Pre-pandemic, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was the main source of on-screen geeks-turned-superheroes, from Iron Man’s Tony Stark to Ant Man’s Hank Pym.

When it comes to real-life scientists on… Read More


How to Spend $100 Billion Dollars in Three Years

How to Spend $100 Billion Dollars in Three Years
by Scotten Jones on 04-25-2021 at 6:00 am

Slide1 1

TSMC recently announced plans to spend $100 billion dollars over three years on capital. For 2021 they announced $30B in total capital with 80% on advanced nodes (7nm and smaller), 10% on packaging and masks and 10% on “specialty”.

If we take a guess at the capital for each year, we can project something like $30B for 2021 (announced),… Read More


Podcast EP17: EDA, Semiconductors and the Future

Podcast EP17: EDA, Semiconductors and the Future
by Daniel Nenni on 04-23-2021 at 10:00 am

Dan and Mike are joined by semiconductor and EDA executive Jack Harding. Jack has a diverse career as a technology executive beginning at IBM with notable stops along the way, including taking Cooper and Chyan Technology public, taking the helm from Joe Costello as CEO of Cadence and most recently as the founding CEO of eSilicon,… Read More


Automakers to Blame for Semiconductor Shortage

Automakers to Blame for Semiconductor Shortage
by Bill Jewell on 04-23-2021 at 8:00 am

Top Automotive Semiconductor Suppliers

Automakers worldwide have scaled back production due to a shortage of semiconductors. Companies which have announced temporary halts on production include Volkswagen, Toyota, General Motors, Ford, Nissan, Honda, Suzuki, Mitsubishi, Daimler (Mercedes) and Stellantis (merger of Fiat-Chrysler and Peugot).

IHS Markit estimates… Read More


CEO Interview: Dr. Rick Shen of eMemory

CEO Interview: Dr. Rick Shen of eMemory
by Daniel Nenni on 04-23-2021 at 6:00 am

eMemory Business Model

Dr. Shen has been President of eMemory Technology since 2009, succeeding Dr. Charles Hsu. Prior to the appointment, Dr. Shen held various management positions within the company, overseeing Technology Development, founding the Customer Service team, supervising Technology & IP services, and the company’s technology… Read More


Using eFPGA to Dynamically Adapt to Changing Workloads

Using eFPGA to Dynamically Adapt to Changing Workloads
by Kalar Rajendiran on 04-22-2021 at 10:00 am

Dynamic Reconfig Not New Why Now FlexLogix

In early April, Gabriele Saucier kicked off Design & Reuse’s IPSoC Silicon Valley 2021 Conference. IPSoC conference as the name suggests is dedicated to semiconductor intellectual property (IP) and IP-based electronic systems. There were a number of excellent presentations at the conference. The presentations had been… Read More


Embedded Analytics Becoming Essential

Embedded Analytics Becoming Essential
by Tom Simon on 04-22-2021 at 6:00 am

Embedded Analytics

SoC integration offers huge benefits through reduced chip count in finished systems, higher performance, improved reliability, etc. A single die can contain billions of transistors, with multiple processors and countless subsystems all working together. The result of this has been rapid growth of semiconductor content … Read More


Adaptive Power/Performance Management for FD-SOI

Adaptive Power/Performance Management for FD-SOI
by Tom Dillinger on 04-21-2021 at 10:00 am

Dolphin FD SOI FBB

A vexing chip design issue is how to achieve (or improve) performance and power dissipation targets, allowing for a wide range of manufacturing process variation (P) and dynamic operation voltage and temperature fluctuations (VT).  One design method is to analyze the operation across a set of PVT corners, and ensure sufficient… Read More


Arm Announces v9 Generation – Custom, DSP, Security, More

Arm Announces v9 Generation – Custom, DSP, Security, More
by Bernard Murphy on 04-21-2021 at 6:00 am

Balance of Standardization min

This wasn’t as much of a big bang announcement as others I have seen. More a polishing of earlier-announced reveals, positioning updates, together with some new concepts. First, you probably remember the Cortex-X announcement from about a year ago, allowing users to customize their own instructions into the standard instruction… Read More


Addressing SoC Test Implementation Time and Costs

Addressing SoC Test Implementation Time and Costs
by Daniel Payne on 04-20-2021 at 10:00 am

testmax flow

In business we all have heard the maxim, “Time is Money.” I learned this lesson early on in my semiconductor career when doing DRAM design, discovering that the packaging costs and time on the tester were actually higher than the fabrication costs. System companies like IBM were early adopters of Design For Test (DFT)… Read More