Physical IC design is a time consuming and error prone process that begs for automation in the form of clever EDA tools that understand the inter-relationships between logic synthesis, IC layout, test and sign-off analysis. There’s even an annual conference called ISPD – International Symposium on Physical Design… Read More
Cost, Cycle Time, and Carbon aware TCAD Development of new TechnologiesOur good friend Scotten Jones wrote a paper…Read More
3D ESD verification: Tackling new challenges in advanced IC designBy Dina Medhat Three key takeaways 3D ICs…Read More
Reimagining Architectural Exploration in the Age of AIThis is not about architecting a full SoC…Read MoreCustomizing and Standardizing IP with eSilicon at the Linley Conference
During the SoC Design Session at the just concluded Linley Spring Processor Conference in Santa Clara, Carlos Macian, Senior Director AI Strategy and Products at eSilicon, held a talk entitled ‘Opposites Attract: Customizing and Standardizing IP Platforms for ASIC Differentiation’.
Standardization is key to IP in modern … Read More
User2User Silicon Valley 2019
This will be one of the more interesting Mentor User Group Meetings now that the Siemens acquisition has fully taken effect and the new management team is in place. The Mentor User Conference is at the Santa Clara Marriott, Santa Clara, California on May 2, 2019 from 9:00 am to 6:00pm.
Remember, in 2017 Siemens acquired Mentor Graphics… Read More
Auto Shows No Connection
The Washington Auto Show, one of the largest auto shows in the U.S., has a problem and it is a problem shared by other auto shows in the U.S. and around the world. It is a problem that plagues the entire industry and it may spell trouble for connecting with car customers.
I visited the Washington Auto Show last week. The event closed on … Read More
A Tale of Two Semis
It was the best of times (for stocks)
It was the worst of times (for memory chips)
The disconnect between stock & chip prices
The Venn Diagram of Stocks and Chips
Having been involved with semiconductor and tech stocks for a long time there has always been a loose correlation between the fortunes of the industry and the fortunes… Read More
SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference – Imec and Veeco on EUV
At the SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference Imec presented several papers on EUV and Veeco presented about etching for EUV masks. I had the opportunity to see the presentations and speak with some of the authors. In this article I will summarize the key issues around EUV based on this research.
EUV is ramping up into high volume 7nm… Read More
TSMC Q1 2019 Earnings Call Discussion!
It’s no coincidence that the TSMC Symposium is right after the Q1 earnings call. This will allow TSMC to talk more freely and they certainly will, my opinion. It is a very interesting time in the semiconductor industry and TSMC, being the bellwether, can tell us what will happen the rest of the year and give us some 2020 insights.… Read More
Flex Logix InferX X1 Optimizes Edge Inference at Linley Processor Conference
Dr. Cheng Wang, Co-Founder and SVP Engineering at Flex Logix, presented the second talk in the ‘AI at the Edge’ session, at the just concluded Linley Spring Processor Conference, highlighting the InferX X1 Inference Co-Processor’s high throughout, low cost, and low power. He opened by pointing out that existing inference solutions… Read More
ML and Memories: A Complex Relationship
No, I’m not going to talk about in-memory-compute architectures. There’s interesting work being done there but here I’m going to talk here about mainstream architectures for memory support in Machine Learning (ML) designs. These are still based on conventional memory components/IP such as cache, register files, SRAM and various… Read More
TechInsights Gives Memory Update at IEDM18 DRAM and Emerging Memories
On the Sunday evening at IEDM last year, TechInsights held a reception in which Arabinda Das and Jeongdong Choe gave presentations that attracted a roomful of conference attendees.
This is the second part of the review of Jeongdong’s talk, we covered NAND flash technology in the last post. Jeongdong is a Senior Technical… Read More




Quantum Computing Technologies and Challenges