TSMC was founded in 1987 by Morris Chang. At about the same time, I was wrestling with the question of whether or not to join Actel. Morris had been a top executive at Texas Instruments during the period when TI took ownership of the TTL market. (See my week #8. Texas Instruments and the TTL Wars) I have to admit that when I first … Read More



NATO’s Collective Defense for Cyber Attack Remains Fragile
The Secretary-General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, stated all 29 member countries would respond to a serious cyberattack against any of the nations in the coalition. The pressing question is will NATO work together with combined forces when one of the members is attacked in an asymmetrical manner with digital technology?
When… Read More
Chapter Nine – Specialization Inhibits System Level Optimization
Solving critical customer problems sometimes isn’t enough. One of my most interesting experiences came during the development and rollout of a product that was designed to optimize integration of hardware and embedded software. In this case, the product performed exactly as planned but the plan ignored the organizational… Read More
TSMC OIP Overview and Agenda!
The TSMC Symposium and OIP Ecosystem Fourm are the most coveted events of the year for the fabless semiconductor ecosystem, absolutely. In my 35 years of semiconductor experience never has there been a more exciting time in the ecosystem and that is clear by the overview and agenda for this year’s event. I hope to see you there:… Read More
Carnegie Robotics Case Study: RTLvisionPRO
RTLvisionPRO has proven to be an indispensable tool which has greatly improved the productivity and work-flow of our current task: understanding, verifying, and documenting the existing RTL IP library at our company. Consisting of about 500 Verilog and VHDL files, the library has been under development for several years and… Read More
AI, Safety and the Network
If you follow my blogs you know that Arteris IP is very active in these areas, leveraging their central value in network-on-chip (NoC) architectures. Kurt Shuler has put together a front-to-back white-paper to walk you through the essentials of AI, particularly machine learning (ML) and its application for example in cars.
He… Read More
SiFive to Host its Tech Symposium on RISC-V in Israel on September 5
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!
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
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
WEBINAR: Lightspeed Data Sync – Design Workspace Problems Solved!
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
Should the US Government Invest in Intel?