This year’s OIP was much more lighthearted than I remember which is understandable. TSMC is executing flawlessly, delivering new process technology every year. Last year’s opening speaker, David Keller, used the phrase “Celebrate the way we collaborate” which served as the theme for the conference. This year David’s… Read More
Should the US Government Invest in Intel?“Most companies don’t die because they are wrong;…Read More
PDF Solutions and the Value of Fearless CreativityPDF Solutions has been around for over 30…Read More
Semiconductor Device Physics, Lab in a Box
One of my favorite classes in college was the lab exercise, mostly because we actually got to use real electronics and then measure something, finally writing it up in our lab notebooks. The issue today is that a college student taking Electrical Engineering probably doesn’t have much access to 10nm FinFET silicon for use… Read More
Webinar Preview: Alexa, can you help me build a better SoC?
Nothing is pushing complexity in system-on-chips (SoCs) designs like the drive (no pun intended) to make autonomous vehicles a widespread reality. Autonomous vehicle systems require heterogeneous architectures with reliable, efficient communications between CPU clusters, vision processing accelerators, storage and… Read More
Is there anything in VLSI layout other than “pushing polygons”?
As I travel a lot in the last 15 years and visited customers as well as friends I was many times invited to talk to the Layout teams. The main purpose is always to encourage automation. So I developed a presentation related to market trend, technology trends, and latest tools advancements. In many cases I present updates from DAC (Design… Read More
Life Imitates Art
Neural nets, neuromorphic computing and other manifestations of artificial intelligence are popular topics these days. You might think of this as art (as in the art of computing) imitating life. What about the other direction – does life ever imitate art in this same sense? A professor at ASU’s Biodesign Institute thinks it can,… Read More
Fusing CMOS IC and MEMS Design for IoT Edge Devices
In my 34 years in IC and EDA, it never ceases to amaze me as to how ingenious designers can be with what is given them. Mentor, a Siemens business, has released a wonderful white paper that is proof of this yet again. The white paper steps through how one of their customers, MEMSIC, used the Tanner tool suite to develop a combination CMOS… Read More
QCOM vs Apple and Everyone Else!
Having worked with Qualcomm in many different capacities during my career I can tell you there are some amazing people in and around that company. I am always positive when people I know are considering working there and QCOM people who leave are an easy reference for other jobs. Unfortunately, I lost respect for the QCOM higher ups… Read More
How to protect #IoT devices from software attacks!
#IoT devices are supposed to function properly in the field for many years without human intervention. Given that we know in advance that each #IoT node is going to be hacked in the future, it is essential that some trusted code be isolated from that hack to restore the #IoT application code to a known good state.… Read More
Uber is a Cancer!
Uber’s marketing and public relations afterburners are running at full blast with a new CEO, new driver rules and promises to make amends and “turn the company around” – whatever that means. If Uber is sincere about making changes it may find itself at war with its own nature.
Uber is a liar and a thief.… Read More
Embedded FPGA IP as a Post-Silicon Debugger
The hardware functionality of a complex SoC is difficult to verify. Embedded software developed for a complex, multi-core SoC is extremely difficult to verify. An RTOS may need to be ported and validated. Application software needs to be developed, and optimized for performance. Sophisticated methodologies are employed to… Read More
Intel’s Pearl Harbor Moment