At the #53DAC earlier this month held in Austin, Texas I met up with Renee Donkers, the founder of Fractal Technologies. His company has been focused on improving the quality of semiconductor IP cells through the use of automated checking software. The highest area of growth in EDA as measured by the ESD Alliance is in the reusable… Read More




IBM Fires a Shot at Intel with its Latest POWER Roadmap
In case you worry that IBM will abandon hardware in the pursuit of its strategic initiatives focusing on cloud, mobile, analytics and more; well, stop worrying. With the announcement of its POWER Roadmap at the OpenPOWER Summitearlier this spring, it appears POWER will be around for years to come. But IBM is not abandoning the strategic… Read More
ASML pays $3.1B for Hermes to get E-beam inspection
Cheap versus year ago but expensive on fundementals – Net negative for KLAC/LRCX & AMAT. ASML bought Hermes Microvision for much the same reason as the Cymer acquisition – to support EUV. ASML could have made a counter offer for KLAC (as we had suggested previously) but this obviously would have been much more expensive… Read More
TMR approaches should vary by FPGA type
We’ve introduced the concepts behind triple modular redundancy (TMR) before, using built-in capability in Synopsys Synplify Premier to synthesize TMR circuitry into FPGAs automatically. A recent white paper authored by Angela Sutton revisits the subject… Read More
IC Designers talk about 28nm to 7nm challenges at #53DAC
IC design challenges are different at advanced nodes like 7nm, so to learn more about the topic I attended a panel luncheon at DAC sponsored by Cadence. The moderator was both funny and technically astute, quite the rare combination, so kudos to Professor Rob Rutenbar, a former Neolinear guy now at the University of Illinois. Panelists… Read More
Which CEVA DSP to use to Support Multimode Connectivity Requirements of IoT and M2M?
The definition of IoT systems is moving fast: the simple definition of a connected (to Internet) device in the early days is becoming more complex and also more precise. IoT or M2M devices are expected to support the full range of emerging cellular protocols such as LTE MTC Cat-1, Cat-0 or Cat-M, as well as the suite of Low Power Wide… Read More
Synaptics’ New Security Adapter Takes PC Fingerprint Security Literally Anywhere
Synaptics is an understated innovator in the human interface and end user experience technology space, and many of the hottest smartphones, tablets and PCs have their technology inside. The Samsung Galaxy S7, Apple iPhone 6S, Dell XPS 15, Microsoft Surface and Surface Book, and HP ENVY are just a few of these products I’ve personally… Read More
The Evolution of IoT Platforms
Hype-cycles are well known phenomena to those who pay attention to high-tech markets. Since we are probably at a peak of the early IoT hype-cycle in 2016, it’s natural to expect this latest wave of technologies to evolve just like other tech categories have in the past, with the eventual market power and market value going to a few … Read More
Democracy is a great thing, except in the workplace
“The Soviet Union I left behind was a dictatorship but the workplace was a democracy; America may be free but the workplace is a dictatorship” said Len Erlikh after I hired him at First Boston (now Credit Suisse First Boston) in 1986. Being of the Jewish faith, he had fled the U.S.S.R.’s religious persecution.
Erlikh’s words have … Read More
The iPhone 7 Intel Modem Controversy Explained!
The media is really having a field day on this one so I think it deserves further discussion. The rumor is that Intel has won the modem socket in the iPhone 7. The same rumor was circulating about Intel winning the modem socket for the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 5e so it really has reached urban legend status. The question I have is why does … Read More
Should Intel be Split in Half?