Smart devices are transforming the world that we live in, but is change always positive? When it comes to the internet of things (IoT), there are two strongly opposing viewpoints. Some see connected devices as a natural evolution of technology and the internet, with far reaching benefits for consumers, industry, and general business.… Read More



We Have Met the Enemy (of Security) and It Is Us
(With apologies to Pogo.) For all the great work that we are seeing in improving both software and hardware security, we – not the technology – are in many ways the weakest link in the security chain. Recent reports indicate we are surprisingly easy to fool, despite our much proclaimed awareness of risks.
In a recent experiment at … Read More
Synopsys Webinar: MIPI Adoption Beyond Mobile, it’s now!
Some of the various MIPI specifications are now massively used in mobile (smartphone or tablet), especially the Multimedia related specs like Camera Serial Interface (CSI-2), Display Serial Interface (DSI) and D-PHY. You have to implement with CSI-2 or DSI controller a serial based physical interface, D-PHY specified up to… Read More
Pseudo random generator tutorial in VHDL (Part 3/3)
On the first two chapters of this Tutorial we started with a simple LFSR module and added a test bench. Then, on chapters three and four we upgraded our module with some features and learned to export the test bench data to files.
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Pseudo random generator tutorial in VHDL (Part 2/3)
In the first part of this tutorialwe started with a simple implementation of an LFSR block (Chapter 1) and its test bench (Chapter 2). Let’s make our code look a bit more professional.
… Read More
Pseudo random generator tutorial in VHDL (Part 1/3)
In this tutorial we will see how to design a VHDL block. We will start with a very simple block and we will gradually add features to it. We will also simulate it and test its output with Matlab. Over the process we will see:
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The 2016 Leading Edge Semiconductor Landscape
The leading edge semiconductor logic landscape has in recent years collapsed to just four companies. The following is a summary of what is currently known about each company’s plans and how they compare. ASML has analyzed many logic nodes and developed a formula that normalizes processes to a “standard node”.… Read More
Pushing automotive-grade embedded flash to 28nm
18 months ago Renesas announced they were prototyping their SG-MONOS eFlash on 28nm, and at the time we said it would be a couple of years before actual product. Yesterday, Renesas revealed their partner in this effort is TSMC – no surprise – and hinted things are moving, with better performance than expected but on a longer qualification… Read More
Five Things To See at DVCon India 2016
DVCon is an annual Design and Verification Conference that started out in Silicon Valley, then expanded by adding India as a new location. Our semiconductor design and verification world is global in stature, so if you’re living in the region then consider registering for this event held Thursday and Friday, September … Read More
Petahertz Electronics?
In the early days of integrated components, we used to think kHz (~10[SUP]3[/SUP]Hz) processing was pretty wild. Those systems were quickly eclipsed by MHz (~10[SUP]6[/SUP]Hz) performers and now we’re blasé about GHz (~10[SUP]9[/SUP]Hz) speeds. Recently (2014), DARPA announced a THz (~10[SUP]12[/SUP]Hz) amplifier, built… Read More
Should the US Government Invest in Intel?