The SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium (ISS 2018) started today with session one on economic trends. Daniel Niles (Alpha One Capital Partners) started it off with “A Golden Age for Global Growth – Semiconductor revenues up over 20% y/y (The Good News is Also the Bad News)”. The good news of course is that semiconductors continue… Read More
WEBINAR: Revolutionizing Electrical Verification in IC DesignIn the complex world of IC design, electrical…Read More
Silicon Catalyst on the Road to $1 Trillion IndustryThere were quite a few announcements at the…Read More
Hierarchically defining bump and pin regions overcomes 3D IC complexityBy Todd Burkholder and Per Viklund, Siemens EDA…Read More
CDC Verification for Safety-Critical Designs – What You Need to KnowVerification is always a top priority for any…Read More
Ceva Unleashes Wi-Fi 7 Pulse: Awakening Instant AI Brains in IoT and Physical RobotsIn the rapidly evolving landscape of connected devices,…Read MoreScoreboard and Issues Management Tools for PCB Projects
The complexity of an SoC design necessitates that the project managers have accurate visibility into the overall design status, spanning the entire range of tasks – from functional simulation error triage, to physical layout verification errors, to electrical analysis results. Flow scripts used by SoC teams parse the log file… Read More
Better than CNN
No, not the news network though I confess I am curious to see how many initial hits that title attracts. Then I clarify that I’m talking about convolutional neural nets, and my would-be social media fame evaporates. Oh well – for those few of you still with me, CNNs in all their many forms are the technology behind image, voice and other… Read More
Moving from FPGA’s to Embedded FPGA Fabric – How it’s Done
Buying IP is just a little bit more complicated than buying a pair of shoes. A lot of IP is configurable and requires attention to various design and configuration parameters. We live in an age where commercial soft IP is used pretty often in designs, so people have developed increasing comfort in the process that is required to achieve… Read More
Broadcom Versus Qualcomm Update
The Broadcom acquiring Qualcomm drama is still dominating the fabless semiconductor back channel. This week I will be at the SEMI ISS Conference with Scott Jones and several hundred high level semiconductor professionals so it will be interesting to hear the hallway chatter. When it was first announced I was in the minority in … Read More
Mentor Investigates Using Neural Networks for CMP Modeling
I recently read a new white paper release by Mentor, a Siemens Business, that delved into the intricacies of Chemical Mechanical Polishing (CMP) and I got a sense of Déjà vu. My professional career in the IC industry started at Texas instruments and the white paper made me think of a conversation I had with one of my colleagues over … Read More
Achieving ISO 26262 Certification with ASIL Ready IP
According with McKinsey, “analysts predict revenue growth for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) to be up to 29 percent, giving the segment one of the highest growth rates in the automotive and related industries.” Design cycle in automotive segment is much longer than in segments like mobile, PC or consumer. If you expect… Read More
Is there anything in VLSI layout other than “pushing polygons”? (5)
Being new in Ottawa and trying to get some momentum towards automation in full custom layout I was telling industry people that I am interested to work with everybody to move this agenda forward. My Director of Engineering at that time, Peter Gillingham, took me to visit Carleton University in Ottawa. One of his professor friends,… Read More
Webinar: ISO 26262 and DO-254: Achieving Compliance to Both
It’s near-impossible to read anything today about electronic design for cars without running into the ISO 26262 standard. If you design airborne electronic hardware, you’re likely very familiar with the DO-254 standard. But what do you do if you want to design a product to serve both markets? It looks like aircraft makers are increasingly… Read More
Bicycles, Electronics and CES 2018
I’m an avid road bike enthusiast having just completed my 2017 goal of 13,000 miles, so follow me on Strava if you want to see the routes and photo adventures I have in Oregon. In the photo below I’m the guy in the middle with the Portland Velojersey on and we’re in a parking lot just 2 blocks away from Intel’s… Read More


AI RTL Generation versus AI RTL Verification