The Tale of Three Metrics
Meeting PPA (Performance, Power and Area) target is key to a successful design tapeout. These mainstream QoR (Quality of Results) metrics are rather empirical yet inter-correlated and have been expanded to be linked with other metrics such as yield, cost and reliability. While the recent CPU performance… Read More
WEBINAR: Is Agentic AI the Future of EDA?The semiconductor industry is entering a transformative era,…Read MoreSEMICON West – Leading Edge Lithography and EUV
At SEMICON West I attended the imec technology forum, multiple Tech Spot presentations and conducted a number of interviews relevant to advanced lithography and EUV. In this article I will summarize what I learned plus make some comments on the outlook for EUV.… Read More
Are We Over Uber? Bring on the Bots
From sexual harassment, to surveilling regulators, to Uber drivers and taxi drivers committing suicide (because they can’t make a living) the pervasive creepiness of Uber continues to spread while the means of corraling this societal phenomenon creeps steadily forward like sclerotic mid-town traffic. The latest chapter… Read More
Florida Sends Mixed Autonomous Message
Florida is poised to surpass California and Arizona as the leader in autonomous driving development thanks to an aggressive legislative agenda that began in 2012 and direct engagement with autonomous car developers. The state has good reasons for fostering automated driving given that it is the second largest state in the U.S.… Read More
eSilicon and SiFive partner for Next-Generation SerDes IP
While writing “Mobile Unleashed: The Origin and Evolution of ARM Processors In Our Devices” it was very clear to me that ARM was an IP phenomenon that I did not believe would ever be repeated. Clearly I was wrong as we now have RISC-V with an incredible adoption rate, a full fledged ecosystem, and top tier implementers… Read More
Desperation Drives Inspiration
This is the tenth in the series of “20 Questions with Wally Rhines”
1978 was a bad year for TI. In April, Intel announced the 8086 followed by disclosures of 16-bit microprocessors from Motorola, the 68000, and Zilog, the Z8000. TI had tried to leapfrog the microprocessor business by introducing the TMS 9900 16-bit … Read More
Living on the (IoT) Edge
The phrase “where the rubber meets the road” is especially apt when it comes to discussions about the Internet of Things. The obvious interpretation is that dissimilar things are being put together in a mutually dependent fashion. When I hear the phrase I always think of the things that can go wrong, such a tire sliding instead of … Read More
Machine Learning with Prior Knowledge
I commented recently on limitations in deep learning (DL), one of which is the inability to incorporate prior knowledge, like basic laws of mathematics or physics. Typically, understanding in DL must be inferred from the training set, which in a general sense cannot practically cover prior knowledge. Indeed one of the selling… Read More
Enhancing Early Static FSM
Finite state machines (FSMs) are widely adopted as part of reactive systems to capture their dynamic behaviors using a limited number of modes or states that usually change according to the applied circumstances. Some terminologies are frequently used to describe the FSM characteristics: state, transition, condition and … Read More
Tesla Leap of Faith (or the Adoration of Elon Musk)
The Reverend Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, held forth to his flock on yesterday’s earnings call. Musk described at length his efforts to lead the company out of production hell. The lengthy session highlighted the challenges facing the company, which posted its greatest quarterly loss ever, and was emblematic of the typical … Read More




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