I say finally because it was a long time coming… almost ten years to be exact. I started doing business development work for both Solido and Berkeley Design Automation about ten years ago and have been trying to put them together ever since. The synergy was obvious, like peanut butter and jelly. In fact, this is my third time … Read More



Electronics Production Rising in 2017
Production of electronic equipment is continuing healthy growth. China, the world’s largest producer of electronics, had a three-month-average increase of 14% in October 2017 versus a year ago. Year-to-date through October, China’s electronic production has gained 13.8% compared to 10.0% for the year 2016, putting China… Read More
ASIC and TSMC are the AI Chip Unsung Heroes
One of the more exciting design start market segments that we track is Artificial Intelligence related ASICs. With NVIDIA making billions upon billions of dollars repurposing GPUs as AI engines in the cloud, the Application Specific Integrated Circuit business was sure to follow. Google now has its Tensor Processing Unit, Intel… Read More
Cybersecurity is (not only) about Technology
One of the biggest misconceptions is thinking cybersecurity is only about technology. When in fact, people and their behaviors, play a prominent role in almost every aspect of protecting digital assets. Without proper consideration for the human element, security strategies are destined to fail miserably.
In this Week’s Video… Read More
New e-Book – Custom SoCs for IoT: Simplified – Available for Free Download
We are fortunate to be living in one of the most amazing and exciting times in the history of our planet. The developments seen in my life time alone have been astounding and we are now on the cusp of yet another inflection point. The world wide web has morphed into the internet of things (IoT), some even call it the internet-of-everything… Read More
Tensilica Vision P6 DSP is Powering Huawei Kirin 970 Image
Cadence has recently announced two key design-in for their Vision DSP IP family: MediaTek’s Helio P30 integrates the Tensilica Vision P5 DSP and HiSilicon has selected the Cadence® Tensilica® Vision P6 DSP for its 10nm Kirin 970 mobile application processor. The Kirin 970 being integrated into Huawei’s new Mate 10 Series mobile… Read More
Scale the tools not your expectations
The complexity of silicon chips is exploding. Actually, it has been growing at a tremendous speed for decades. So far, the semiconductor industry has been successful at providing new ways to master new levels of complexity, over and over again.
Standardizing hardware platforms, using higher-level languages with a knowledge… Read More
High-Level Design for Automotive Applications
Automotive markets have added pressure on semiconductor/systems design through demand for ISO26262 compliance – this we all know. But they have also changed the mix of important design types. Once class of design that has become very significant in ADAS, and ultimately autonomous applications, is image signal processing (ISP).… Read More
IoT and Blockchain: Challenges and Risks
The Internet of Things (IoT) is an ecosystem of ever-increasing complexity; it’s the next wave of innovation that will humanize every object in our life, and it is the next level of automation for every object we use. IoT is bringing more and more things into the digital fold every day, which will likely make IoT a multi-trillion dollar… Read More
Arm and Mentor Use DesignStart Program to Accelerate Proof-of-Concept for IoT Designs
Sometimes the hardest thing about bringing a new idea to fruition is overcoming the inertia to get started with a proof-of-concept. You must be able to put together enough parts of the solution to prove to those controlling budgets that an idea has merit and is worth taking to the next level. It’s a bit of a chick-vs-egg scenario as … Read More
Intel Foundry is a Low Risk Aternative to TSMC