I was scheduled to attend the Mentor tutorial at DVCon this year. Then coronavirus hit, two big sponsors dropped out and the schedule was shortened to three days. Mentor’s tutorial had to be moved to Wednesday and, as luck would have it, I already had commitments on that day. Mentor kindly sent me the slides and audio from the meeting… Read More




Reducing Your ASIC Production Risk!
Managing the ASIC manufacturing is one of the biggest challenges of chip projects.
Building an ASIC supply chain requires specific expertise. Throughout the process you’ll be confronted with hundreds of decisions that will require specific knowledge in order to be addressed correctly, avoid costly mistakes and lose time. … Read More
Cadence Digital Full Flow Optimized to Deliver Improved Quality of Results with Up to 3X Faster Throughput
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are hot topics. Beyond the impact these technologies are having on the world around us, they are also having impact on the semiconductor and EDA ecosystem. I posted a blog last week that discussed how Cadence views AI/ML, both from a tool and ecosystem perspective. The is one… Read More
A Conversation with Wally Rhines: Predicting Semiconductor Business Trends After Moore’s Law
Wally Rhines is one of the most prolific speakers the semiconductor industry has ever experienced. Wally is also one of the most read bloggers on SemiWiki.com, sharing his life’s story which is captured in his first book: From Wild West to Modern Life the Semiconductor Evolution.
On April 2nd at 10am PDT we will host Wally on a live… Read More
Semiconductor COVID-19 Update!
Last week whilst China started to recover from COVID-19 outbreak, the rest of the world was seriously impacted by the growing number of cases as the number of cases and deaths outside of China grew higher than in China. With the rise, many governments around the world belatedly put in measures to prevent the further spread of the … Read More
The End of Mobility as We Know It
The hideous reality of the coronavirus has exposed the hideous realities of the mobility industry with sobering implications for all. At its core, mobility is about moving people in the safest, most efficient, and cost effective ways and suddenly citizens around the world are being told to stop moving and stop congregating.… Read More
TSMC 32Mb Embedded STT-MRAM at ISSCC2020
32Mb Embedded STT-MRAM in ULL 22nm CMOS Achieves 10ns Read Speed, 1M Cycle Write Endurance, 10 Years Retention at 150C and High Immunity to Magnetic Field Interference presented at ISSCC2020
1. Motivation for STT-MRAM in Ultra-Low-Leakage 22nm Process
TSMC’s embedded Spin-Torque Transfer Magnetic Random Access Memory (STT-MRAM)… Read More
Hyper-Scaling Of Data Centers – Environmental Impact Of The Carbon ‘Cloud’
It is predicted that by 2030 energy consumption attributable to data centers will make up a staggering 8% of the world’s total usage!
As we move in to 2020 it’s clear that every sector of industry, including the semiconductor industry, will have a responsibility to address growing environmental concerns. We should be aware that… Read More
5G Infrastructure Opens Up
It seemed we were more or less resigned to Huawei owning 5G infrastructure worldwide. Then questions about security came to the fore, Huawei purchases were put on hold (though that position is being tested outside the US) and opportunity for other infrastructure suppliers (Ericsson, Nokia, etc) has opened up again.
Building … Read More
COVID-19 and Semiconductors
The threat of COVID-19 (coronavirus) is continuing to spread. As of March 17, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported 179,111 confirmed cases and 7,426 deaths. WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic as of March 11. Many countries have imposed severe restrictions to slow the spread of the disease, ranging from banning of large … Read More
Intel’s Pearl Harbor Moment