On September 9 and 10 Altair held their high-performance computing virtual summit. Altair is a company with a large footprint. In their own words, “Altair is a global technology company that provides software and cloud solutions in the areas of data analytics, product development, and high-performance computing (HPC).” Their… Read More





Webinar: Static Verification for RISC-V Cores and SoCs
RISC-V has been trending ever since it landed on SemiWiki in 2016. Even more so now that Arm is in flux with the Nvidia acquisition. Verification is a fast growing EDA challenge with the number of verification engineers steadily outpacing design, so this webinar is a best case scenario for SemiWiki traffic, absolutely.
Two things… Read More
SMIC Cut off by US Government is Doomsday Scenario for US Chip Equipment Companies
SMIC Cut Off = Worst case scenario
SMIC is on US gov “no fly” list for US Equipment Companies
Will likely lead to loss of all of China- 25% to 50% of revenues
Retaliation by China will worsen situation
SMIC cut off from US technology (Chip Equip)
It has been reported in the Wall St Journal and many news outlets that the US government… Read More
How to multiply currents: Inside a Counterfeit Analog Multiplier
A recent Twitter thread about a counterfeit analog multiplier chip attracted my attention since I’m interested in both counterfeit integrated circuits and how analog computers multiply. In the thread, John McMaster decapped a suspicious AD633 analog multiplier chip and found an entirely different Rockwell RC4200… Read More
Innovating to Survive
The global COVID-19 pandemic has almost shut down entire industries, forcing companies of all sizes to adapt and evolve. It has also done incredible things for a pivot to innovation.
Safety has had to come first. And for many, that meant changing how they worked, using technology to power a shift to remote work and servicing of customers.… Read More
Autonomous Vehicles: Avoiding Obstacles and Responsibility
The headline screams off of the page and challenges all that we know about the fatal crash in Tempe, Ariz., that took the life of Elaine Herzberg two and a half years ago. “Backup Driver of Autonomous Uber SUV Charged with Negligent Homicide in Arizona.”
How could the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) associate itself… Read More
Don’t You Forget About “e”
I imagine that the title of this post will remind many of 80s synth-pop, or perhaps the movie The Breakfast Club. But my topic is the venerable hardware verification language (HVL) known simply as e. It has quite an interesting history and it played a key role in the development of the modern testbench methodology that most chip verification… Read More
Synopsys talks about their DesignWare USB4 PHY at TSMC’s OIP
When USB initially came out it revolutionized how peripherals connect to host systems. We all remember when Apple did away with many separate connections for mouse, keyboard, audio and more with their first computers supporting USB. USB has continued to develop more flexibility and more throughput. In 2015 Apple again introduced… Read More
112G/56G SerDes – Select the Right PAM4 SerDes for Your Application
This is another installment covering TSMC’s very popular Open Innovation Platform event (OIP), held on August 25. This event presents a diverse and high-impact series of presentations describing how TSMC’s vast ecosystem collaborates with each other and with TSMC. Not all SerDes are the same. The presentation covered here,… Read More
Verifying Warm Memory. Virtualizing to manage complexity
SSD memory is enjoying a new resurgence in datacenters through NVMe. Not as a replacement for more traditional HDD disk drives, which though slower are still much cheaper. NVMe storage has instead become a storage cache between hot DRAM memory close to processors and the “cold” HDD storage. I commented last year on why this has become… Read More
Weebit Nano Moves into the Mainstream with Customer Adoption