


Breker on PSS and UVM
When PSS comes up, a lot of mainstream verification engineers are apt to get nervous. They worry that just as they’re starting to get the hang of UVM, the ivory tower types are changing the rules of dynamic verification again and that they’ll have to reboot all that hard-won UVM learning to a new language. The PSS community and tool … Read More
Uber Lyft and the Price of Greed
Uber and Lyft blew it with their initial public offerings over the past couple weeks. Both companies opted to cash out founders and early investors while tossing pennies to long-supportive drivers in the form of bonuses. The short-term cash out focus could sound the death knell of these market leaders.
Both companies extracted… Read More
Learning on the Edge Investment Thesis
It is said that it will cost as much as $600M to develop a 5nm chip. At that price, only a few companies can afford to play, and with that amount of cash in, innovation is severely limited.
At the same time, there is a stampede in the artificial intelligence (AI) market where around 60 startups have appeared, many of which have already … Read More
Chips are the bleeding edge of China trade war Recovery
Last week we warned of a further down leg due to China trade. We were surprised how quickly our prediction came true as it appears we are now in the midst of giving back all the upside built in to stocks based on a peaceful resolution of the trade conflict which obviously isn’t happening.
Many of the semi stocks we cover were down… Read More
IC to Systems Era
One of my favorite EDA disruptions is the Siemens acquisition of Mentor, pure genius. Joe Sawicki now runs the Mentor IC EDA business for Siemens so we will be seeing him at more conferences and events than ever before. Joe did a very nice keynote at the recent U2U conference that I would like to talk about before we head to the 56thDAC… Read More
The IoT will meet 5G soon, but not with the old SIM cards
By now you have probably realized that 5G is a lot more than an incremental change from previous 3G and 4G cellular technology. For instance, 5G will be used to connect our phones in completely new ways, such as with microcells in urban areas using mm-wavelength signals. 5G will also include two low power protocols that are intended… Read More
56thDAC ClioSoft Excitement
As the number one 56thDAC supporting portal we will publish what’s happening in the conference, on the exhibit floor, and outside activities. The SemiWiki bloggers will be out in full force with live coverage and behind the scenes looks. Remember, SemiWiki bloggers are actual semiconductor professionals with hundreds… Read More
Getting to EMC Compliance by Design
At the risk of highlighting my abundant lack of expertise in the domain, I had always viewed EMC (electromagnetic compatibility) compliance and testing as one of those back-end exercises that can only be done on the real device and depends on a combination of expertise and brute-force in chip/package/module/system design (decaps,… Read More
Achieving a Predictable SignOff in 7nm
Designing with advanced-nodes FinFETs such as 7nm node involves a more complex process than prior nodes. As secondary physical effects are no longer negligible, the traditional margin-based approach applied at various design abstraction levels is considered ineffective. Coupled with the increase of device counts, failing… Read More
Scaling Debug Wisdom with Bronco AI