Design rules are at the heart of the interface between the foundry and semiconductor designers, which makes them so critical. Traditionally, design rules and DRC decks have been developed manually with no or little automation. Design rule definitions are written using WORD or other general purpose office tools, and DRC decks… Read More



Quick Guide to FD-SOI at #53DAC
If you’re headed to #53DAC (June 5-9 in Austin,TX) and are interested in learning more about FD-SOI, there will be lots of opportunities. Here’s a quick guide to get you started. … Read More
Making a smart city like Austin smarter
One of the takeaways from the recent #NXPFTF in Austin was the potential for smart cities. As the EDA industry gathers again for @53rdDAC, visitors will see firsthand how much high-tech talent there is in #ATX – and how big a challenge is developing.… Read More
Layout Pattern Matching for DRC, DFM, and Yield Improvement
It is truly amazing to consider the advances in microelectronic process development, using 193i photolithography. The figure below is a stark reminder of the difference between the illuminating wavelength and the final imaged geometries. This technology evolution has been enabled by continued investment in mask data generation… Read More
Go Native – With Methodics at DAC in Austin
DAC is often a yearly reflection point for the companies that exhibit and attend. For the innovators it is an opportunity to look back and see a year of progress and development. Fortunately, this is the case for Methodics, which has had a strong year both in terms of business and technical development. Though, we easily see how these… Read More
TSMC Update at #53DAC!
TSMC is having an interesting year for sure. I was at the TSMC Symposium in Hsinchu last week and everyone was talking about the new 16FFC process. Silicon is out and it is exceeding expectations leading some people (me included) to believe that TSMC 16FFC will be the next TSMC 28nm in regards to popularity. To be clear, 16FFC is currently… Read More
Bringing Human-Like Intelligent Vision Processing to Low-Power Embedded Systems
Semiconductor IP has always been one of the most interesting topics on SemiWiki. Since going online in January of 2011 there have been a total of 592 IP related blogs that have been viewed 2,581,118 times. 79 of those blogs have been about CEVA, the number one licensor of digital signal processing (DSP) IP for a wide range of power-efficient,… Read More
Why USB 3.1 Certification is a “Must Have”?
USB 3 protocol is now height years old, but USB 3.1 is much more recent (2014). The adoption behavior for USB protocol is unique, as USB 2.0 bandwidth (480 Mbps) is largely enough for certain applications. Nevertheless we have seen the sales for USB 3 IP passing the USB 2 in value during 2014, and the total USB IP segment becoming the … Read More
Finding IoT patents that are not worthless and weak
Is that an IoT patent application I see pinned to your desktop? A new analysis by technology intellectual property legal experts LexInnova confirms IoT patents are being generated rapidly – and looks at which classes of patents are likely to be worth something in acquisition or litigation.… Read More
Arteris Unveils Solution for Heterogeneous Cache Coherent SOC’s
Designing SOC’s for markets like automotive and mobile electronics requires taking advantage of every opportunity for optimization. One way to do this is through building a cache coherent system to boost speed and reduce power. Recently, NXP decided to go about this on their automotive MCU based SOC’s by using Arteris’ just-announced… Read More
Should the US Government Invest in Intel?