Television spots for cars are becoming a little like pharmaceutical ads filled with fine print and warnings about side effects and clarifications. Safety advocates are taking Mercedes to task for its latest TV ads for the 2017 E Class, claiming that the car company is misleading consumers into thinking the car can drive itself.… Read More





Why is AMD Stock Jumping?
One of my favorite pastimes is listening to the quarterly investor calls of the leading semiconductor companies. I can then match up the talking points with the calls I do with Wall Street, the conferences I attend, and the other data points I have collected while working inside the fabless semiconductor ecosystem for more than … Read More
SoC QoS gets help from machine learning
Several companies have attacked the QoS problem in SoC design, and what is emerging from that conversation is the best approach may be several approaches combined in a hybrid QoS solution. At the recent Linley Group Mobile Conference, NetSpeed Systems outlined just such a solution with an unexpected plot twist in synthesis.
The… Read More
Industry Analyst Perspectives On The Apple WWDC 2016 Keynote
I was in-person and live at Apple’s WWDC keynote in San Francisco. The following are my quick takeaways from the event.
Watch and watchOS:
Apple is focusing on exactly what they should be with watchOS, and that’s speed, ease of use and upping the ante in health and fitness. With the first Watch and watchOS, Apple solved many of the problems… Read More
Dragging RTL Creation into the 21st Century
When I was at Atrenta, we always thought it would be great to do as-you-type RTL linting. It’s the natural use model for anyone used to writing text in virtually any modern application (especially on the Web, thanks to Google spell and grammar-checks). You may argue that you create your RTL in Vi or EMACS and you don’t need no stinking… Read More
Why Elon Musk’s crazy plans for Tesla aren’t crazy
Elon Musk recently laid out a “master plan” for where his company, Tesla Motors, is heading. The vision is undoubtedly ambitious: four new kinds of Tesla vehicles, solar initiatives, autonomous driving technologies and a ride-sharing program.… Read More
Stressed out about Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) or Electrical Overstress (EOS)?
Do not lose sleep worrying that your integrated circuits might fail during EOS/ESD events. Join us for the 38th annual EOS/ESD Symposium in Anaheim, CA in September. Experts on the field will address the latest research on EOS and ESD in the rapidly changing world of electronics.
As electronics continue to become commonplace in… Read More
SEMICON West – Leti FDSOI and IOT, status and roadmap
On Tuesday, July 12th at SEMICON West I had an opportunity to sit down with Marie Semeria, the CEO of Leti and discuss the status and future of FDSOI. Leti pioneered FDSOI 15 years ago and has been the leading FDSOI research ever since.
Two years ago Leti and ST Micro demonstrated products on 28nm that are cost competitive with bulk technology.… Read More
A Chinese smartphone drill in progress
One of our astute readers caught what looks like a major gaffe in the Linley Group mobile conference presentations from this week. It’s another indication of the speed of change in mobile markets and the instability that is giving Apple and others heartburn.
Here’s the chart in question:
The point of contention is who, exactly, … Read More
When Waze Comes to Town
Waze’s Connected Citizens program, rolled out in October of 2014, was envisioned as a means for cities to create a two-way data exchange between Waze users and cities for communicating urgent traffic information as well as to facilitate the analysis of traffic patterns. In other words, Waze wanted to be part of the solution… Read More
Musk’s new job as Samsung Fab Manager – Can he disrupt chip making? Intel outside