VISUEL LID25 800x100 (1)

SiFive to Host its Tech Symposium on RISC-V in Israel on September 5

SiFive to Host its Tech Symposium on RISC-V in Israel on September 5
by Swamy Irrinki on 09-03-2019 at 10:00 pm

There’s no question that the RISC-V ISA is revolutionizing the semiconductor ecosystem around the world. We see Israel as the epicenter of RISC-V based development and innovation in the Middle East. For the second year in a row, SiFive will be hosting its Tech Symposium on RISC-V in Israel to help foster the growth and momentum that’s… Read More


Leave the Driving to Musk!

Leave the Driving to Musk!
by Roger C. Lanctot on 09-03-2019 at 10:00 am

For years Tesla Motors’ CEO Elon Musk has been taunting the global insurance industry that he would offer insurance coverage directly from Tesla if he was dissatisfied with the industry’s own underwriting. That shoe dropped last week with a resounding thud as Tesla Insurance Services launched in California.

As part of the filing,… Read More


Cryptocurrencies Should be Enabled to Blacklist Criminal Holdings

Cryptocurrencies Should be Enabled to Blacklist Criminal Holdings
by Matthew Rosenquist on 09-03-2019 at 6:00 am

Cryptocurrency is seen as a new, wild, reckless, revolutionary, and sometimes shady financial instrument. In addition to legitimate transactions, a disproportionate amount of attention is paid to the criminal use of cryptocurrency to store wealth, collect payments, transfer illicit funds, and launder money. Malicious

Read More

WEBINAR: Lightspeed Data Sync – Design Workspace Problems Solved!

WEBINAR: Lightspeed Data Sync – Design Workspace Problems Solved!
by Daniel Nenni on 09-02-2019 at 10:00 am

With every process node and every SOC design, engineering and IT teams are experiencing an unprecedented data explosion. User workspaces routinely exceed 10’s of GB and sometimes even 100’s of GB. Regression runs, characterization runs, design and debug of workspaces, building verification environments – all of these… Read More


From AMD to Actel (to Microchip)

From AMD to Actel (to Microchip)
by John East on 09-02-2019 at 6:00 am

By the late 80s it had become clear to me that the Japanese were right.  Memories,  Microprocessors,  and Gate Arrays (As well as ASICs) were what customers wanted then.  “Building blocks of ever-increasing complexity” was obsolete.  What next?  Should I try to become an overnight networking expert?  Maybe a DSP expert?  Pretty… Read More


China Winning the Future of the semiconductor industry?

China Winning the Future of the semiconductor industry?
by Bart van Hezewijk on 09-01-2019 at 11:00 am

In this second article about China’s role in the global semiconductor industry I analyse the impact of the Chinese government’s Big Fund and compare Chinese investments in semiconductor R&D with those in other countries. In my previous article, I looked at the possible effects of a US-China decoupling in theRead More


3D TCAD Simulation for Power Devices

3D TCAD Simulation for Power Devices
by Daniel Payne on 08-30-2019 at 10:00 am

Silvaco: Split Gate, Figure 1

My first IC design back in 1978 was a DRAM and it ran on 12V, 5V and -5V, but then my second DRAM was using only a 5V supply. Today we see SOCs running under a 1V supply voltage, but there is a totally different market for power devices that are at the other end of the voltage spectrum and they handle switching ranges from 12V – 250V. … Read More


Chapter 8 – Value Through Differentiation in Semiconductor Businesses

Chapter 8 – Value Through Differentiation in Semiconductor Businesses
by Wally Rhines on 08-30-2019 at 6:00 am

Gross Profit Margin Percent Provides a Measure of Product Value

The difference between what customers will pay for a physical product and what it costs to make or acquire it is a good measure of differentiation. This difference divided by the revenue is the gross profit margin percent or GPM%. Once a product has an established market… Read More


GloFo & TSMC lawsuit- A Surrogate Trade War- Pushing TSMC into China’s open arms?

GloFo & TSMC lawsuit- A Surrogate Trade War- Pushing TSMC into China’s open arms?
by Robert Maire on 08-29-2019 at 10:00 am

Surrogate Wars
Is GloFo using the trade war as an excuse?
Does TSMC get lumped in with China on trade?
Does this alienate TSMC into China’s embrace?

Much like Vietnam and Korea before it, there have been a number of “surrogate” wars between the US and China as well as many other wars between the US and Russia using… Read More


Lint for Implementation

Lint for Implementation
by Bernard Murphy on 08-29-2019 at 6:00 am

Conformal Litmus

When I was at Atrenta, we took advantage of opportunities to expand our static tool (aka linting) first to clock domain crossing (CDC) analysis and DFT compatibility and later to static analysis of timing constraints, all of which have importance in implementation. CDC is commonly thought of as an RTL-centric analysis, however,… Read More