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Smarter Cities and How They Can Serve Humanity

Smarter Cities and How They Can Serve Humanity
by Bill McCabe on 08-04-2016 at 4:00 pm

Communications technology is progressing at a phenomenal rate, especially when it comes to wireless communications and the ever growing Internet of Things. While many observers and media outlets focus on the benefits of devices and how they will impact consumers, producers, and service providers, there are also huge benefits… Read More


Why using new DDR4 allow designing incredibly more efficient Server/Storage applications?

Why using new DDR4 allow designing incredibly more efficient Server/Storage applications?
by Eric Esteve on 08-04-2016 at 12:00 pm

The old one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work anymore for DDR4 memory controller IP, especially when addressing the enterprise segments, or application like servers, storage and networking. For mobile or high end consumer segments, we can easily identify two key factors: price (memory amount or controller footprint) … Read More


Linley Mobile and Wearable Conference Drills into Rapidly Evolving Markets

Linley Mobile and Wearable Conference Drills into Rapidly Evolving Markets
by Tom Simon on 08-04-2016 at 7:00 am

Last week the Linley conference on mobile and wearables started with an overview and keynote address by the event’s namesake Linley Gwennap. His talk offered a few surprises and was informative all around. As you have seen recently reported here on SemiWiki, he sees smartphone shipments continuing to rise, but with a declining… Read More


One transistor for the future of mmWave?

One transistor for the future of mmWave?
by Don Dingee on 08-03-2016 at 4:00 pm

We’ve heard recently from several sources that millimeter wave radios, once the exclusive realm of defense and satellite use, are now finding homes in applications such as automotive radar and 5G networks. Therein lies a significant opportunity for digital design: moving frequency conversion and filtering from the analog … Read More


At What Point Does Transistor Gate Length Stop Getting Smaller?

At What Point Does Transistor Gate Length Stop Getting Smaller?
by Daniel Payne on 08-03-2016 at 12:00 pm

When I started doing IC design back in 1978 we had 6,000 nm channel gate lengths, and today you can buy a smart phone with 16 nm or 14 nm technology, although the gate lengths in those phones are more like 34 nm. The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) makes predictions about emerging trends in our industry and… Read More


A Credible Player at the Power Table

A Credible Player at the Power Table
by Bernard Murphy on 08-03-2016 at 7:00 am

For a while it seemed like Mentor lived on the margins of the (RTL) design-for-power game. They had interesting micro-architectural optimization capabilities through their Calypto heritage but no real industry chops in power estimation, a must-have when you are claiming to reduce power. Better known offerings in RTL power … Read More


efabless: Think GitHub for ICs and IP

efabless: Think GitHub for ICs and IP
by Daniel Nenni on 08-02-2016 at 4:00 pm

For those of you who don’t know, GitHub is the crowdsourcing version of the defacto industry standard GIT source code management software. Currently, more than 14 million people have deposited more than 35 million software projects (mostly open-source) on GitHub making it the largest host of source code in the world.

Now think… Read More


SEMICON West – Harry Levinson and Mike Lercel Interview

SEMICON West – Harry Levinson and Mike Lercel Interview
by Scotten Jones on 08-02-2016 at 12:00 pm

On Tuesday morning at SEMICON I had the opportunity to sit down with Harry Levinson, Sr. Director of Technology Research and Sr. Fellow at Global Foundries and Michael Lercel, Director of Strategic Marketing at ASML to discuss the state of lithography.

I opened the discussion with a question about how we are going to address lithography… Read More


1-T SRAMs in high-density, portable applications

1-T SRAMs in high-density, portable applications
by Farzad Zarrinfar on 08-02-2016 at 7:00 am

For SoCs designed for various applications such as mobile, automotive, wearable computing, gaming, virtual reality, PC, imaging, security, and IOT applications, it is incredibly important to keep area (cost) and power as low as possible. Considering the growing percentage of chip area used for memory, it makes sense to choose… Read More


Filling out the rest of the mobile device

Filling out the rest of the mobile device
by Don Dingee on 08-01-2016 at 4:00 pm

We spend an inordinate amount of energy tracking the big chip – the application processor – in a mobile device. As we’ve seen this space is coming down to a handful of players. A more interesting competition is heating up around the APU for the rest of chips needed to make a phone.… Read More