I attend a lot of events on machine learning and write about it regularly. However, I learned some exciting new information about machine learning in a very surprising place recently. Every year for the last few years I have attended the HSPICE SIG dinner hosted by Synopsys in Santa Clara. This event starts with a vendor fair featuring… Read More





More Than Your Average IP Development Kit
When I think of an IP development kit, I imagine software plus a hardware model I can run on a prototyper or, closer to the kits offered by semi companies, software plus a board hosting an FPGA implementation of the IP along with DDR memory, flash and a variety of interfaces. These approaches work well for IP providers because hardware… Read More
IEDM 2017 – Leti Gate-All-Around Stacked-Nanowires
At IEDM in December I had a chance to interview Thomas Ernst about the paper “Performance and Design Considerations for Gate-All-around Stacked-NanoWires FETs” by Leti and STMicroelectonics.
Leti published the first stacked nanowire in 2006, it was very new then, now stacked nanowire/nanosheets are starting… Read More
Qualcomm Continues to Mislead its Own Stockholders
The war of words continues between Broadcom and Qualcomm and the stock analysts still seem to be split on the merger. Please note that Broadcom is proposing to merge with Qualcomm instead of a tender offer which is what Qualcomm has proposed for the acquisition on NXP. Same result but two very different approaches. Another interesting… Read More
Quantum computers may be more of an imminent threat than AI
Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and others have been warning about runway artificial intelligence, but there may be a more imminent threat: quantum computing. It could pose a greater burden on businesses than the Y2K computer bug did toward the end of the ’90s.
Quantum computers are straight out of science fiction. Take the “traveling… Read More
Design Automation Conference Silicon and Technology Art Show
This year the 55th annual Design Automation Conference is in San Francisco and the Silicon and Technology Art Show, one of my favorite DAC events, is back! Favorite because it’s something my beautiful wife and I can share. She is very artistic and has an eye for colors and I actually know what the art is so we make a good team. I … Read More
Webinar: Multiphysics Reliability Signoff for Next-Generation Automotive Electronics Systems
In case you missed the TSMC event, ANSYS and TSMC are going to reprise a very important topic – signing-off reliability for ADAS and semi-autonomous /autonomous systems. This topic hasn’t had a lot of media attention amid the glamor and glitz of what might be possible in driverless cars. But it now seems like the cold light of real … Read More
Machine Learning And Design Into 2018 – A Quick Recap
How could we differentiate between deep learning and machine learning as there are many ways of describing them? A simple definition of these software terms can be found here. Let’s look into Artificial Intelligence (AI), which was coined back in 1956. The term AI can be defined as human intelligence exhibited by machines.… Read More
High Performance Ecosystem for 14nm-FinFET ASICs with 2.5D Integrated HBM2 Memory
High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) systems have been successfully used for some time now in the network switching and high-performance computing (HPC) spaces. Now, adding fuel to the HBM fire, there is another market that shares similar system requirements as HPC and that is Artificial Intelligence (AI), especially AI systems doing… Read More
Increased Processing Power Moves to Edge
Recently there has been a lot of buzz about 5G networks. Aside from the talk about it possibly being nationalized, 5G will be a lot different than its predecessors. Rather than a single data link in a predetermined band, 5G will consist of a web of connections all working together to support existing types of data traffic and many new… Read More
Rapidus, IBM, and the Billion-Dollar Silicon Sovereignty Bet