A quality standard that stays static and is not itself targeted for continuous improvement, is a standard that is breaking one of the first tenets of quality. This is why the ISO 9001 specification has been updated several times since its introduction in 1987. The first version was fairly modest. The most recent version was released… Read More




Home Automation IoT Company Cuts ASIC Testing Costs
Customer Case Study
digitalSTROM develops smart home automation solutions providing users with superior comfort and a whole new style of living. Based on proprietary ASIC and software, digitalSTROM’s solutions connect electrical household appliances through existing power lines and enable an intelligent home via light… Read More
Why Did Ambiq Micro Select HiFi-5 DSP IP for Next Generation MCU?
Ambiq Micro has built a family of voice processing MCU dedicated to battery powered, energy sensitive systems, supporting mobile application like wearable. The company is facing two strong challenges: support computationally intensive processing (NN-based far field) and speech recognition algorithms, while offering … Read More
The Changing Face of IP Management
Aristotle once said “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”. The notion of synergism echoes the importance of leveraging design IPs to the maximum extent with the rest of the system under development, in order to ensure a successful SoC design outcome in a shorter development cycle.
SoC design cost and entry point
For over… Read More
Is ARM TechCon Really Worth it?
The ARM TechCon organizers are asking me what I thought of this year’s conference so here it goes. As you know I am a big fan of ARM TechCon and feel it is one of the better conferences for SoC design. This year however I noticed a big change in demographics. Maybe the location change had something to do with it but I definitely saw different… Read More
Connected Cars High Tech Low Demand
The latest reliability report from Consumer Reports which dumped on domestics and rained glory upon Asian imports highlighted a conundrum facing car makers. The more effort car makers put into innovation, the greater the risk of consumer confusion, system failure and lousy reliability scores.
The picture is even worse if one… Read More
Q4 Hiring remains strong Outlook for Q1 2019
Things are going quite well in the Valley, ESPECIALLY if traffic is any indication. I still remember the BUST with the empty office buildings and light traffic, back in the early 2000’s…while I wish for traffic like that always, I certainly prefer the busy times, guess you cannot have it all. The more traffic, the more jobs; they invariably… Read More
UMC the Next China Chip Embargo?
The DOJ last week released a previously sealed indictment against UMC, Jinhua and three individuals for stealing Micron trade secrets. The indictment is very damning of UMC with very specific semiconductor technology files that were stolen by UMC related people then passed on to Jinhua through its joint development with UMC.… Read More
Playing the Long Game with 56G SerDes
IP has always been a hot topic on SemiWiki with quite a bit of our readers doing the “make versus buy” analysis. SerDes is one of the more difficult “makes” so it is mostly a “buy” analysis made by networking class ASIC architects and a handful of other applications that demand high performance and throughput. Based on the recent traffic… Read More
Basic Techniques for Managing EDA Business
The “20 Questions with Wally Rhines” series finale
During the period from 1997, I had the privilege to work with Greg Hinckley, a superb “out of the box” thinker and excellent operational manager. We had such a common view of the world that we almost always agreed upon the best approach to problems and opportunities … Read More
Semiconductor Equipment Spending Healthy