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Breakfast with Aart de Geus and the Foundries!

Breakfast with Aart de Geus and the Foundries!
by Daniel Nenni on 09-06-2017 at 7:00 am

Being the number one EDA and the number one IP company does have its advantages and the resulting foundry relationships are a clear example. One of the DAC traditions that I truly enjoy is the Synopsys foundry breakfasts. Not only does Synopsys welcome scribes, they reserve a table up front for us and Synopsys CEO Aart de Geus has been… Read More


Project Management Tools for Analog IP Verification

Project Management Tools for Analog IP Verification
by Tom Dillinger on 09-05-2017 at 12:00 pm

Large SoC design teams typically have a cadre of project managers to oversee all facets of functional verification — e.g., specification, reviews, directed testbench development, automated (pseudorandom) testcase generation, HDL coverage measurement and reporting, and bug identification/tracking database management.… Read More


Embedding FPGA IP

Embedding FPGA IP
by Bernard Murphy on 09-05-2017 at 7:00 am

The appeal of embedding an FPGA IP in an ASIC design is undeniable. For much of your design, you want all the advantages of ASIC: up to GHz performance, down to mW power (with active power management), all with very high levels of integration with a broad range of internal and 3[SUP]rd[/SUP]-party IP (analog/RF, sensor fusion, image/voice… Read More


Webinar: Mobile Device Companies Get New Sensor Interconnect Standard

Webinar: Mobile Device Companies Get New Sensor Interconnect Standard
by Daniel Payne on 09-04-2017 at 12:00 pm

I’ve been a mobile device user since the 1980’s when the Motorola brick phone was introduced, so I’ve seen an increasing amount of sensors added to each new generation of mobile phones over the years. One big challenge to both sensor companies and fabless semiconductor companies designing SoCs for mobile devices… Read More


CEO Interview: Michel Villemain of Presto Engineering, Inc.

CEO Interview: Michel Villemain of Presto Engineering, Inc.
by Daniel Nenni on 09-04-2017 at 7:00 am

One of the many advantages of being part of SemiWiki is the interesting people we get to meet. As I have mentioned before, the semiconductor industry is home to many brilliant and successful people and Dr. Michel Villemain is certainly one of them. Michel is the founder and CEO of Presto Engineering and it is interesting to note that… Read More


Fix Lauren: No War on Cars!

Fix Lauren: No War on Cars!
by Roger C. Lanctot on 09-01-2017 at 12:00 pm

We have gotten to the point with automotive safety where we are happy to hear that ONLY 18,000 people died on the nation’s highways in the first six months of 2017. That’s right. That is good news – 100+ people were killed every day so far this year in, by or as a result of cars.

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Apple iPhone Super Cycle Update!

Apple iPhone Super Cycle Update!
by Daniel Nenni on 09-01-2017 at 7:00 am

In 2014 Apple released the iPhone 6 which included the first SoC built on a TSMC (20nm) process. This phone started what many call a “Super Cycle” of people upgrading. According to Apple, they now have more than 1 billion activated devices so this super cycle could be seriously super, absolutely.… Read More


Getting More Productive Coding with SystemVerilog

Getting More Productive Coding with SystemVerilog
by Daniel Payne on 08-31-2017 at 12:00 pm

HDL languages are a matter of engineering personal preference and often corporate policy dictates which language you should be using on your next SoC design. In the early days we used our favorite text-based editor like Vi or Emacs, my choice was Vi. The problem with these text-based editors of course is that they really don’t… Read More


Virtual Prototyping With Connection to Assembly

Virtual Prototyping With Connection to Assembly
by Bernard Murphy on 08-31-2017 at 7:00 am

Virtual prototyping has become popular both as a way to accelerate software development and to establish a contract between system/software development teams and hardware development and verification. System companies with their tight vertical integration lean naturally to executable contracts to streamline communication… Read More


12 Myths about Blockchain Technology

12 Myths about Blockchain Technology
by Ahmed Banafa on 08-30-2017 at 12:00 pm

Blockchain, the “distributed ledger” technology, has emerged as an object of intense interest in the tech industry and beyond. Blockchain technology offers a way of recording transactions or any digital interaction in a way that is designed to be secure, transparent, highly resistant to outages, auditable, andRead More