The analysts at Gary Smith EDA produce an annual What To See List for DAC and I quickly noticed that all three major EDA vendors were included on the list for the specific category of emulation. The big problem that emulation addresses is the ability to run in hardware an early version of your SoC so that software developers can get access… Read More
Scaling Multi-Die Connectivity: Automated Routing for High-Speed InterfacesThis article concludes the three-part series examining key…Read More
Arteris Highlights a Path to Scalable Multi-Die Systems at the Chiplet SummitAt the recent Chiplet Summit, presentations, discussions and…Read More
Captain America: Can Elon Musk Save America's Chip Manufacturing Industry?Intel has posted three consecutive years of falling…Read More
WEBINAR: Reclaiming Clock Margin at 3nm and BelowAt 3nm and below, clock networks have quietly…Read MoreVirtualizing ICE
The defining characteristic of In-Circuit-Emulation (ICE) has been that the emulator is connected to real circuitry – a storage device perhaps, and PCIe or Ethernet interfaces. The advantage is that you can test your emulated model against real traffic and responses, rather than an interface model which may not fully capture… Read More
Seeking Autonomy
I’d wager that if I mention autonomous vehicles, the first thing that you would think of would be autonomous cars. The truth is that we will see many other kinds autonomous vehicles in the years ahead. Their applications will range from package delivery to saving lives on the battlefield. Of course, to some extent they are already… Read More
The Transformation of Silvaco!
Founded in 1984, Silvaco is now the largest privately held EDA company with a rich history including a recent transformation that is worth a blog if not a book. Coincidently, I started my career in Silicon Valley in 1984 and have had many dealings with Silvaco over the years including a personal relationship with Silvaco founder … Read More
Webinar: Ansys on Multi-Physics PDN Optimization for 16/7nm
On the off-chance you missed my previous pieces on this topic, at these dimensions conventional margin-based analysis becomes unreasonably pessimistic and it is necessary to analyze multiple dimensions together. People who build aircraft engines, turbines and other complex systems have known this for quite a long time. You… Read More
Does Elon Musk Hate Artificial Intelligence?
Elon Musk, the tech billionaire and CEO of Tesla, was quoted as saying Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the “Greatest Risk We Face as a Civilization”. He recently met with the National Governor’s Association and advocated for government involvement and regulations. This seems to be a far cry from the government-should-leave-the-market-alone… Read More
Semicon West – The FDSOI Ecosystem
At Semicon West last week I attended presentations by Soitec and CEA Leti, and had breakfast with CEA Leti CEO Marie Semeria, key members of the Fully Depleted Silicon On Insulator (FDSOI) ecosystem. I have also seen some comments in the SemiWiki forum lately that make me believe there is some confusion on the roles of different companies… Read More
Custom SoCs for IoT Revolution!
There are two interesting transformations that are currently taking place inside the semiconductor industry: First, systems companies (not chip companies) are now driving the semiconductor industry. Second, IoT focused chips are accelerating design starts. The result is what I would call the Custom SoCs for IoT Revolution!… Read More
IP Diligence
I hinted earlier that Consensia would introduce at DAC their comprehensive approach to IP management across the enterprise, which they call DelphIP (oracle of Delphi, applied to IP). I talked with Dave Noble, VP BizDev at Consensia to understand where this fits in the design lifecycle.
IP management means a lot of different things.… Read More
Embedded FPGA Blocks as Functional Accelerators (AMBA Architecture, with FREE Verilog Examples!)
A key application for embedded FPGA (eFPGA) technology is to provide functionality for specific algorithms — as the throughput of this implementation exceeds the equivalent code executing on a processor core, these SoC blocks are often referred to as accelerators. The programmability of eFPGA technology offers additional… Read More



Silicon Insurance: Why eFPGA is Cheaper Than a Respin — and Why It Matters in the Intel 18A Era