When I first started working with the foundries 25 years ago I would have never imagined that I would make a career out of it, which I most certainly have. Fortunately, I recognized early on that not only are the foundries the cornerstone of the semiconductor ecosystem, they are also a very important economic bellwether, absolutely.… Read More




SiFive is Teaming with Many of the Most Prestigious Universities in South America to Engage Academia in the RISC-V Ecosystem!
We’re confirming seats in São Paulo, Porto Alegre, Montevideo, Buenos Aires and Bucaramanga for the South American leg of our worldwide 2019 SiFive Tech Symposiums and Workshops. These five events will be focused heavily on academia, which is a key focus for SiFive. In fact, we are co-hosting these events with many of the most prestigious… Read More
Evolving Landscape of Self-Driving Safety Standards
I sat in a couple of panels at Arm TechCon this year, the first on how safety is evolving for platform-based architectures with a mix of safety-aware IP and the second on lessons learned in safety and particularly how the industry and standards are adapting to the larger challenges in self-driving, which obviously extend beyond … Read More
Functional Safety Comes to EDA and IP
Every week I read headlines about the progress of autonomous vehicles, and the inevitable questions began to arise, like, “Just how safe is this AV?”, or “Is this new ADAS feature trustworthy?” The automotive industry has already setup the ISO 26262 functional safety standard, and we’ve blogged… Read More
Package Reliability Issues Cost Money
Advanced packaging technology is enabling “More Than Moore” scaling of heterogeneous technology die. At the recent EDPS Symposium in Milpitas, Craig Hillman, Director of Product Development, DfR Solutions, at ANSYS gave a compelling presentation, “Reliability Challenges in Advanced Packaging”. The key takeaway messages… Read More
A No-Fudge ML Architecture for Arm
At TechCon I had a 1×1 with Steve Roddy, VP of product marketing in the Machine Learning (ML) Group at Arm. I wanted to learn more about their ML direction since I previously felt that, amid a sea of special ML architectures from everyone else, they were somewhat fudging their position in this space. What I heard earlier was that… Read More
Is the ASIC Business Dead?
We covered the ASIC business in Chapter 2 of our book “Fabless: The Transformation of the Semiconductor Industry” using VLSI Technology and eSilicon as shining examples. Neither of which now exist. The ASIC business model was a critical steppingstone in the transformation of the semiconductor industry. Many systems companies… Read More
WEBINAR: Which ASIC Manufacturing Method is Right for You?
Minimizing ASIC production costs is the goal of every company. The problem is that this requires extensive knowledge. You must understand the technical intricacies and the financial implications of multiple activities like wafer production, packaging and QA activities such as electrical tests.
Generally, the more your company… Read More
Google Gaining ADAS Ground
Google’s Head of Android Auto Partnerships, Jens Bussman, joined me on stage last week in Munich at TU-Auto Europe to discuss Google’s progress and priorities in the global connected car market. The standing-room-only audience was treated to an overview of Google’s plans and some clarifications regarding its different assets… Read More
The New SemiWiki Job Board!
As a very experienced semiconductor job seeker/employer the most important lesson I have learned in 35 years is that getting the first interview is not so much WHAT you know as WHO you know. Networking really is the key to career success and SemiWiki 2.0 is all about networking, absolutely.
In fact, that is one of the reasons why I became… Read More
Should the US Government Invest in Intel?