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Radiation Tolerance. Not Just for ISO 26262

Radiation Tolerance. Not Just for ISO 26262
by Bernard Murphy on 04-30-2020 at 6:00 am

Satellite

Years before ISO 26262 (the auto safety standard) existed, a few electronics engineers had to worry about radiation hardening, but not for cars. Their concerns were the same we have today – radiation-induced single event effects (SEE) and single event upsets (SEU). SEEs are root-cause effects – some form of radiation, might be… Read More


Can TSMC Maintain Their Process Technology Lead

Can TSMC Maintain Their Process Technology Lead
by Scotten Jones on 04-29-2020 at 10:00 am

TSMC Process Lead Slides 20200427 Page 1

Recently Seeking Alpha published an article “Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Losing Its Process Leadership To Intel” and Dan Nenni (SemiWiki founder) asked me to take a look at the article and do my own analysis. This is a subject I have followed and published on for many years.

Before I dig into specific process density… Read More


Starting a Chip Company? Silicon Catalyst and Arm Are Ready to Help

Starting a Chip Company? Silicon Catalyst and Arm Are Ready to Help
by Mike Gianfagna on 04-29-2020 at 6:00 am

Screen Shot 2020 04 27 at 5.59.56 PM

Anyone who has started a company knows that landing the seed round of investment is just the beginning. There are many decisions to face.  When to start building a sales team?  What parts of the company’s infrastructure to outsource? How to price and promote your product? These are just a few of the questions to be answered. If your… Read More


Webinar: Real-time In-Chip Monitoring to Boost multi-core AI, ML, DL Systems

Webinar: Real-time In-Chip Monitoring to Boost multi-core AI, ML, DL Systems
by Daniel Payne on 04-28-2020 at 10:00 am

hot spots

During the COVID-19 pandemic I’m using Zoom and attending more webinars to keep updated on semiconductor industry trends, and one huge trend is the importance of AI applied to SoCs. Using more cores to handle ML and DL makes sense, but then how do you keep the chips within their power and reliability limits while at the same … Read More


AI, Safety and Low Power, Compounding Complexity

AI, Safety and Low Power, Compounding Complexity
by Bernard Murphy on 04-28-2020 at 6:00 am

Hoc in a low-power ASIL-D design

The nexus of complexity in SoC design these days has to be in automotive ADAS devices. Arteris IP highlighted this in the Linley Processor Conference recently where they talked about an ADAS chip that Toshiba had built. This has multiple vision and AI accelerators, both DSP and DNN-based. It is clearly aiming for ISO 26262 ASIL D … Read More


Synopsys – Turbocharging the TCAM Portfolio with eSilicon

Synopsys – Turbocharging the TCAM Portfolio with eSilicon
by Mike Gianfagna on 04-27-2020 at 10:00 am

Screen Shot 2020 04 18 at 2.21.03 PM

About 90 days ago, Synopsys completed the acquisition of certain IP assets from eSilicon. The remaining entirety of eSilicon was acquired by Inphi Corporation. I was the VP of marketing at eSilicon during that acquisition so it’s very interesting to me to find out how things are going with those certain IP assets.  I got an opportunity… Read More


SiFive’s Approach to Embedding Intelligence Everywhere

SiFive’s Approach to Embedding Intelligence Everywhere
by Tom Simon on 04-27-2020 at 6:00 am

SiFive Embedding Intelligence

Before the advent of RISC-V, designers looking for embedded processors were effectively limited to a handful of proprietary processors using ISAs from decades ago. While the major ISAs are being updated and enhanced, they also are facing limitations from many decisions made over many years.  RISC-V was conceived with a clean… Read More


Preventing a Product Security Crisis

Preventing a Product Security Crisis
by Matthew Rosenquist on 04-26-2020 at 12:00 pm

Preventing a Product Security Crisis 1

The video conference company Zoom has skyrocketed to new heights and plummeted to new lows in the past few weeks. It is one of the handful of communications applications that is perfectly suited to a world beset by quarantine actions, yet has fallen far from grace because of poor security, privacy, and transparency. Governments,… Read More


COVID-19 Cars as an Essential Service

COVID-19 Cars as an Essential Service
by Roger C. Lanctot on 04-26-2020 at 10:00 am

COVID 19 Cars as an Essential Service

The Automotive News reported Friday that updated guidance from the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Iinfrastructure Security Agency had identified cars as an essential service. AN reported: “The new guidelines include “workers critical to the manufacturing, distribution, sales,

Read More

LRCX Supply constrained by Covid Crisis

LRCX Supply constrained by Covid Crisis
by Robert Maire on 04-26-2020 at 8:00 am

LCRX Lam Research 2020 COVID

Lam Q1 revenue soft by roughly 15% due to supply side
Demand remains solid for Q2 but beyond that, dubious
No guide but Q2 could be => Q1 revenues
NAND solid, China big @ 32%, Foundry remains great

Lam reported a solid quarter but light on revenues…
It was no surprise that Lam reported revenues of $2.5B versus their original… Read More