Bugs are an inescapable reality in any but the most trivial designs and usually trace back to very deterministic causes – a misunderstanding of the intended spec or an incompletely thought-through implementation of some feature, either way leading to reliably reproducible failure under the right circumstances. You run diagnostics,… Read More




5G Deployments – The Analysis Requirements are Ginormous
The introduction of 5G communications support offers tremendous potential across a broad spectrum of applications (no pun intended). 5G is indeed quite encompassing, across a wide range of frequencies – the figure below illustrates the common terminology used, from low-band, mid-band (“sub 6G”), and high-band (“mmWave”)… Read More
A Future Vision for 3D Heterogeneous Packaging
At the recent Open Innovation Platform® Ecosystem Forum in Santa Clara, TSMC provided an enlightening look into the future of heterogeneous packaging technology. Although the term chiplet packaging is often used to describe the integration of multiple silicon die of potentially widely-varying functionality, this article… Read More
A Review of TSMC’s OIP Ecosystem
Each year, TSMC conducts two events – the Technology symposium in the Spring and the Open Innovation Platform (OIP) ® Ecosystem Forum in the Fall. Yet, what is the OIP ecosystem? What does it encompass? And, how does the program differentiate TSMC from other foundries? At the recent OIP Forum in Santa Clara, Suk Lee, Senior Director,… Read More
SiFive Continues to Foster RISC-V in the Middle East With Tech Symposiums
Workshops Coming to Istanbul, Amman, Cairo and Abu Dhabi
SiFive is continuing its tour through the Middle East with highly educational RISC-V Tech Symposiums and Workshops in the key locations of Istanbul, Amman and Cairo. These cities are some of the most technologically advanced in the region, and we are eager to collaborate… Read More
Workflow Automation Applied to IP Lifecycle Management
I often blog about a specific EDA tool, or an IP block, but the way that SoC design teams approach their designs and then use tools and IP can either be a manual, ad-hoc process, or part of something that is well-documented, following a design methodology. Back in the 1980’s while at Intel our team first created a design methodology… Read More
The GF Pivot, Specialization Defined
On August 27, 2018, GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF) announced that they were no longer going to compete in the race to the next smaller semiconductor node, at that time, the 7nm node. While surprising to some, on further analysis this move made sense. TSMC had announced its plan to invest around $25B in the 5nm technology node. GF revenue is … Read More
Synopsys and Infineon prepare for expanding AI use in automotive applications
We all know that cars are using processors for many tasks, but it is easy to fail to comprehend just how many there are in a typical modern car. Browsing through the Infineon AURIX automotive processor application guide, you can start to see just how pervasive processors are. The AURIX processors are specifically designed for automotive… Read More
AI Hardware Summit, Report #3: Enabling On-Device Intelligence
This is the third and final blog I have written about the recent AI Hardware Summit held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. Day 1 of the conference was more about solutions in the data center, whereas Day 2 was primarily around solutions at the Edge. This presentation from Day 2 was given by Dr. Thomas Anderson, Head,… Read More
Debugging SoCs at the RTL, Gate and SPICE Netlist Levels
Debugging an IC is never much fun because of all the file formats used, the levels of hierarchy and just the sheer design size, so when an EDA tool comes around that allows me to get my debugging done quicker, then I take notice and give it a look. I was already familiar with debugging SPICE netlists using a tool called SPICEVision Pro,… Read More
Should the US Government Invest in Intel?