Have you notice how smart your automobile is getting? Watching the first round of NFL playoffs I lost count on the number of TV commercials showing cars weaving through tight construction zones (and Star Wars figures), big trucks parking in incredibly tight spaces, cars avoiding rear-end collisions and pedestrians, and even … Read More
RISC-V and AI: The Architecture Shift Is NowThe semiconductor industry has experienced several defining transitions…Read More
PowerArtist RTL Power Estimation Folds into KeysightBack in the late 1990s, Sente launched a…Read More
Intel Foundry Expands the 18A Platform with 18A-P and Demonstrates Long-Term Technology Leadership at VLSI 2026At the 2026 VLSI Symposium, Intel Foundry provided…Read More
GPU-native mask rule checking eliminates the curvilinear mask rule check bottleneckAs semiconductor manufacturing pushes toward advanced nodes with…Read More
A tower-like heterogeneous packaging architecture for the AI era VEMC: The Vertical System…Read MoreA Golden Age for Semiconductor Growth at ISS 2018
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
Scoreboard 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


Available Is Not In Control: Balancing Output, Quality, and Risk in High-Volume Fabs