The demand for information is growing at an unprecedented rate. Our insatiable appetite for communication, computing and downloading, is driving this demand. With emerging technologies, such as cloud computing and the internet of things, not to mention the 300 hours of video being loaded to YouTube every minute, this trend … Read More
WEBINARS: Boost Your Simulation and Modeling EfficiencyUnlock the full potential of your semiconductor designs…Read More
Asia Driving Electronics GrowthElectronics production in the major developed countries has…Read More
Automating Reset Domain Crossing (RDC) Verification with Advanced Data AnalyticsThe complexity of System-on-Chip (SoC) designs continues to…Read More
The Immensity of Software Development and the Challenges of Debugging Series (Part 2 of 4)Part 2 of this 4-part series reviews the…Read More
FPGA Prototyping: From Homebrew to Integrated Solutions
Years ago, when FPGA prototyping started, there were no solutions that you could go out and buy and everything was created as a one-off: buy some FPGAs or an FPGA-based board, and put it all together. It was a lot of effort, nobody really knew in advance how long it would take, there was very limited visibility for debug and the whole … Read More
3D Xpoint and the Future of Memory
Recently Intel and Micron announced a new three dimensional cross point (3D Xpoint) memory. The 3D Xpoint announcement has generated a lot of questions and interest in what this new memory is and where it may fit in the semiconductor market. … Read More
How to Overcome NoC Validation Multiple Challenges?
NetSpeed has developed NocStudio, a front end optimization design tool helping architects to create SoC architecture bridging the gap with the back end, floor planning and place and route. At the chip level, NocStudio generates a cache-coherent Network-on-Chip (NoC) allowing interconnecting the various CPU, GPU or Acceleration… Read More
All Models Are Wrong, Some Are Useful
“All models are wrong, some are useful.” This remark is attributed to the statistician George Box who used it as the section heading in a paper published in 1976.
Just for fun I looked up a few semiconductor statistics from 1976. Total capital spending was $238M in Japan and $306M in US and…that’s it, there was nobody else back then … Read More
Mongoose: The Making of Samsung’s Custom CPU Core
Samsung is seemingly ready to move to a new milestone in its brief but exciting system-on-chip (SoC) history: a custom CPU core codenamed Mongoose. It’s going to be based on ARMv8 instruction set and is expected to outperform the Exynos 7420 application processor that Samsung unveiled this year. There are some media reports… Read More
Thermal Reliability and Power Integrity for IC Design
When I designed DRAM chips at Intel back in the 1970’s we didn’t really know what the die temperature would be before taping out silicon, instead we waited for packaged parts to come back and then did our thermal measurements. IC designers today don’t have that luxury of taping out their new SoC without having … Read More
Replacing the British Museum Algorithm
In principle, one way to address variation is to do simulations at lots of PVT corners. In practice, most of this simulation is wasted since it adds no new information, and even so, important corners will get missed. This is what Sifuei Ku of Microsemi calls the British Museum Algorithm. You walk everywhere. And if you don’t walk to… Read More
FDSOI As a Multi-Node Platform
One of the main criticisms of the FDSOI technology has been that it is a one-node solution at best and is not scalable to the future. Such arguments are typically based on the “gate-length-scaling” assumptions which do not capture the past and current trends of the CMOS technology as I discussed in my earlier post. Back in the early… Read More
Apple’s Butterfly Effect?
The Butterfly Effect (chaos theory) describes how small changes to complex systems can result in large unforeseen consequences over time. The Apple Effect describes how a once struggling computer company completely disrupted a dozen different industries including semiconductors. Apple is now the largest and most influential… Read More
TSMC 16th OIP Ecosystem Forum First Thoughts