James Clerk Maxwell’s eponymous equations are the basis for simulating electromagnetic wave propagation. In school, EE majors tended to fall into two camps: (a) those that thoroughly enjoyed their fields and waves classes, who liked doing surface integrals, and who were adept at demonstrating the “right hand rule”, and (b) … Read More



Submerging the Data Center
One of NetSpeed’s customers is a Tier-1 semiconductor company that develops some of the industry’s best performing and most complex system on chips (SoC) for the data center and cloud computing markets. To keep its leadership in the data center market, the company needs to produce best-in-class SoC solutions year after year. … Read More
Keeping an ‘Open’ Mind with Technology
Software and hardware vendors are developing proprietary products and technologies to tap into the massive potential business opportunity with Internet of Things (IoT). While most of the noise is around consumer driven IoT, commercial applications for IoT are making huge financial impact in many verticals. Buildings alone… Read More
Smartphone-based Connected Health Insights from Patents
US20150124067 illustrates an improved technique for monitoring human health vitals without contact using the physiological signals extracted from video images captured by a video camera of a smartphone. One advantage of the contact-less vitals monitoring technique is the avoidance of contact measurement which can be a problem… Read More
HSPICE – 35 and looking good!
A maturetool. A legacytool. A tool that’s a little long in the tooth. We have all used these terms to refer to an EDA product that has not been able to keep up with technical challenges of model complexity, performance, or new features required by current SoC and system design requirements.… Read More
Where There’s Apple, There’s a Way
With hundreds of billions of dollars overseas and ridiculous profits domestically it is safe to say that Apple can have its way with whatever industry, market or project it sets its mind to. The only sad thing is that money alone can’t cure cancer or bring Middle East peace. Money can, however, help bring a new car company into… Read More
DesignCon 2016 — signal integrity must be power-aware!
DesignCon is a unique conference — its tagline is “Where the Chip meets the Board”. Held each January in Santa Clara, the conference showcases a wealth of new technologies for advanced packaging, printed circuit board fabrication, connectors, cables, and related analysis equipment (e.g, BERT, VNA, scopes). Of specific… Read More
Crypto Key Exchange …like taking candy from a digital baby
For those among you who have read my previous SemiWiki articles, you will no doubt see a theme: the security of our connected world is badly broken, and for the bad guys, violating our online lives – both business and personal – is as easy as taking candy from the proverbial baby.… Read More
The Mechanical Reliability of IC Packages
At Intel back in the late 1970’s we were designing DRAM chips and mounting them in ceramic and plastic packages, however there were problems when some of the die would crack inside of the package because of thermal mismatch issues with how the die was attached to the heat spreader inside the package. Back then we really didn’t… Read More
5nm Chips? Yes, but When?
For any invention, technical proof of concept or prototyping happens years ahead of the invention being infused into actual products. When we talk about 5nm chip manufacturing, a test chip was already prototyped in last October, thanks to Cadence and Imec. Details about this chip can be found in a blog at Semiwiki (link is given … Read More
Flynn Was Right: How a 2003 Warning Foretold Today’s Architectural Pivot