In tiny devices, such as true wireless headphones, the battery life of the device is usually determined by the chips that execute the device’s functions. Professor Jan Rabaey of UC Berkeley, who wrote the book on low power, also coined the term “energy frugal” a number of years ago, and this term is even more valid today with the proliferation… Read More





Webinar: Achronix and Vorago Deliver Innovation to Address Rad-Hard and Trusted SoC Design
Radiation hardening is admittedly not a challenge every SoC design team faces. Methods to address this challenge typically involve a new process technology, a new library or both. Trusted, secure design is something more design teams worry about and that number is growing as our interconnected world creates new and significant… Read More
TSMC ISSCC 2021 Keynote Discussion
Now that semiconductor conferences are virtual there are better speakers since they can prerecord and we have the extra time to do a better job of coverage. Even when conferences go live again I think they will also be virtual (hybrid) so our in depth coverage will continue.
ISSCC is one of the conferences we covered live since it’s… Read More
The Chip Market / China Conundrum
In its February 20, 2021 edition, the Economist published an article entitled “How to kill a democracy; China faces fateful choices, especially involving Taiwan”. It went on to quote “To many Chinese, the island’s conquest is a sacred national mission” as well as a by-line “America is losing its ability to deter a Chinese attack… Read More
Accelerating AI-Defined Cars
Convergence of Edge Computing, Machine Vision and 5G-Connected Vehicles
Today’s societies are becoming ever more multimedia-centric, data-dependent, and automated. Autonomous systems are hitting our roads, oceans, and air space. Automation, analysis, and intelligence is moving beyond humans to “machine-specific” … Read More
The Quest for Bugs: Dilemmas of Hardware Verification
Functional Verification for complex ASICs or IP-Core products is a resource limited ‘quest’ to find as many bugs as possible before tape-out or release. It can be a long, difficult and costly search that is constrained by cost, time and quality. The search space is practically infinite, and 100% exhaustive verification is an unrealistic… Read More
Podcast EP9: Why Fabs and Fabless Matter
Dan and Mike are joined by Ray Zinn, the longest serving CEO in Silicon Valley. Join us for a tour of the very beginnings of the semiconductor industry and the rise of the fabless movement. Beyond a historical perspective, Ray also discusses the importance of semiconductor technology and its impact on the world, governments and … Read More
CEO interview: Graham Curren of Sondrel
It has been my pleasure to interview Graham Curren, CEO of Sondrel. A veteran of the Electronics Design industry, he founded Sondrel in 2002 to provide digital ASIC designs.
How did you aim to differentiate Sondrel when you started?
My view of the market was that there were a lot of small design companies and also huge in-house design… Read More
FD-SOI Offers Refreshing Performance and Flexibility for Mobile Applications
SoC designers often have to make a, “red pill or blue pill,” decision when it comes to selecting process technology. Usually, a choice has to be made between performance, power and area, with one being prioritized at the expense of the others. However, as is pointed out in a recent paper by Mixel and NXP, designers can have the best … Read More
Key Requirements for Effective SoC Verification Management
Effective and efficient functional verification is one of the biggest hurdles for today’s large and complex system-on-chip (SoC) designs. The goal is to verify as close as possible to 100% of the design’s specified functionality before committing to the long and expensive tape-out process for application-specific integrated… Read More
Rapidus, IBM, and the Billion-Dollar Silicon Sovereignty Bet