SOC designers face choices when it comes to choosing how to implement algorithms in their designs. Moving them to hardware usually offers advantages of smaller area, less power and faster processing. Witness the migration of block chain hashing from CPUs to ASICs. However, these advantages can come with trade-offs. For one, … Read More
Perforce and Siemens Collaborate on 3DIC Design at the Chiplet SummitThe recent Chiplet Summit at the Santa Clara…Read More
Building the Interconnect Foundation: Bump and TSV Planning for Multi-Die SystemsThe first article in this series examined how…Read More
CHERI: Hardware-Enforced Capability Architecture for Systematic Memory SafetyThe rapid escalation of cyberattacks over the past…Read More
WEBINAR: Two-Part Series on RF Power Amplifier DesignAt lower frequencies with simpler modulation, RF power…Read More
Securing RISC-V Third-Party IP: Enabling Comprehensive CWE-Based Assurance Across the Design Supply Chainby Jagadish Nayak RISC-V adoption continues to accelerate…Read MoreAI, Deep Learning, SystemC, UVM, PSS – DVCon Has it All
Today I had the pleasure to speak with Tom Fitzpatrick, TPC Chair for the DVCon conferenceand exhibition slated for February 25-28 in the heart of Silicon Valley – San Jose. Tom lives in Massachusetts, a place where I used to live and work at Wang Labs, back in the day before the PC and WordPerfect software ended Wang’s… Read More
Accelerating 5G Innovation and Reliability Through Simulation and Advanced FinFET Design
In an ANSYS seminar held at DesignCon 2019, Dr. Larry Williams, ANSYS Director of Technology, outlined how 5G design innovation can be accelerated through simulation. He posited that 5G will become a general-purpose technology that affects an entire economy, drastically alter societies and unleash a cascade of complementary… Read More
Semiconductor Equipment Companies Facing Significant Headwinds in 2019
In January 2019, the memory market has been hit with a significant amount of negative news.
- On Jan. 15, DRAM manufacturer Nanya Technology reported its Q4 2018 revenue was $551 million, down 30.4% QoQ.
- On Jan. 24, 2019, SK Hynix reported Q4 2018 earnings. Revenues fell 13.7% QoQ to $8.7 billion, while operating profit amounted to
Data Center Optimization Through Game Theory
I always enjoy surprising synergies so I was immediately attracted to a Research Highlight in the Communications of the ACM this month, on a game-theoretic method to balance discretionary speed-ups (known as computational sprints) in data centers. If you don’t have an ACM membership and want to dig deeper, I include an open link… Read More
Renaming and Refactoring in HDL Code
I’ve enjoyed my past discussions with Cristian Amitroaie, the CEO of AMIQ EDA, in which we covered their Design and Verification Tools (DVT) Eclipse Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and their Verissimo SystemVerilog Testbench Linter. Cristian’s descriptions of AMIQ’s products and customers have intrigued me. They… Read More
GLOBALFOUNDRIES Talks About Enabling Development of 5G ICs
5G is in the news again. Sprint has mounted a legal challenge against ATT, claiming that ATT is misleading people into believing that they already are offering 5G. While ATT is about to start testing of 5G, they have also sent out updates that causes customer phones to display 5GE when they are still on 4G LTE systems. The truth is that… Read More
Semiconductor Security and Sleep Loss
One of the semiconductor topics that keeps me up at night is security. We track security related topics on SemiWiki and while the results are encouraging, we still have a very long way to go. Over the last three years we have published 148 security related blogs that have garnered a little more than 400,000 views. Security touches … Read More
A Detailed History of Samsung Semiconductor
From our book “Mobile Unleashed”, this is a detailed history of Samsung semiconductor:
Conglomerates are the antithesis of focus, and Samsung is the quintessential chaebol. From humble beginnings in 1938 as a food exporter, Samsung endured the turmoil and aftermath of two major wars while diversifying and expanding.… Read More
McKinsey Mangles Micromobility
Micromobility – characterized by shared bicycles, scooters and other wheeled devices – was all the rage in 2018 and that enthusiasm has carried over into 2019 – if McKinsey is to be believed. McKinsey published a white paper last week touting the glories of micromobility and a potential market of $300B-$500B by 2030.… Read More


CEO Interview with Jerome Paye of TAU Systems