When I first started doing IC design back in 1978 we had hierarchical designs, and that was doing a relatively simple 16Kb DRAM chip with only 32,000 transistors using 6um (aka 6,000 nm) design rules. SoC designs today make massive use of hierarchy at all levels of IC design: IC Layout, transistor netlist, gate level netlist, RTL … Read More





A Crossover MCU
Back in the day we had processors which consolidated computing power onto a chip, and out of these sprang (if you’ll excuse the Biblical imagery) microcontrollers (MCUs) in one direction and increasingly complex system-on-chip (SoC) processors in another direction. SoCs are used everywhere today, in smartphones, many IoT … Read More
Multi-Channel Multi Rate FEC Engine Webinar with Open Silicon
I will be pleased to moderate on December 7[SUP]th[/SUP] the Open-Silicon webinar addressing the benefits of the multi-channel multi-rate forward error correction (MCMR FEC) IP and the role it plays in high-bandwidth networking applications, especially those where the bit error rate is very high, such as high speed SerDes … Read More
Outsourced Operations: Reduced Risk, Fast Ramp, and Managed Complexity
One of the more interesting semiconductor success stories is Apple and how they transformed from a struggling computer company to a dominant chip maker. We covered this story in quite a bit of detail in our book “Mobile Unleashed” in Chapter 7 “From Cupertino” but the short answer to how they did it is: Outsourced Operations.
Apple’s… Read More
Field-Solver Parasitic Extraction Goes Mainstream
Layout parasitic extraction (LPE) has three primary goals – accuracy, capacity, and throughput. Traditionally, LPE tools have offered two methods for capacitance derivation, with tradeoffs on these goals:… Read More
CEVA and Local AI Smarts
When we first started talking about “smart”, as in smart cars, smart homes, smart cities and the like, our usage of “smart” was arguably over-generous. What we really meant was that these aspects of our daily lives were becoming more computerized and connected. Not to say those directions weren’t useful and exciting, but we weren’t… Read More
Protecting electronics around the world, SEMI insights
SEMI is a worldwide organization with local chapters like the one here in Oregon, where I attended a recent half-day presentation by several industry experts on the topic – Globalization, How it shapes the Semiconductor industry:
- Michael Chen, Director, Mentor – A Siemens Business
- John Brewer, CEO, Amorphyx
- Ed
Advanced ASICs – It Takes an Ecosystem
I remember the days of the IDM (integrated device manufacturer). For me, it was RCA, where I worked for 15 years as the company changed from RCA to GE and then ultimately to Harris Semiconductor. It’s a bit of a cliché, but life was simpler then, from a customer point of view at least. RCA did it all. We designed all the IP, did the physical… Read More
Worldwide Interface IP Revenue Grew by 13.5% in 2016 (Source: IPnest)
IPnest has released the 9[SUP]th[/SUP] version of the Interface IP Survey, ranking by protocol the IP vendors addressing the Interface segments: USB, PCI Express, (LP)DDRn, MIPI, Ethernet & SerDes, HDMI/DP and SATA. When the 1[SUP]st[/SUP] version has been issued in 2009, the IP segment was weighting $225 million and the… Read More
Seeking Solution for Saving Schematics?
Schematics are still the lynchpin of analog design. In the time that HDL’s have revolutionized digital design, schematics have remained drawn and used much as they have been for decades. While the abstraction of HDL based designs has made process and foundry porting relatively straightforward, porting schematic based designs… Read More
Rapidus, IBM, and the Billion-Dollar Silicon Sovereignty Bet