Last week’s IDC and Gartner Q4-2015 report on PC sales sent a shock-wave through the industry. The stock market responded with a sell-off of major PC-related names like Advanced Micro Devices, HP Inc. (fka Hewlett-Packard), Intel, Lenovo, and NVIDIA. While I was disappointed in the Q4 numbers, I also have a good grasp of what was… Read More
What XiangShan Got Right—And What It Didn’t Dare TryAn Open ISA, a Closed Mindset — Predictive…Read More
The Critical Role of Pre-Silicon Security Verification with Secure-IC’s Laboryzr™ PlatformAs embedded systems and System-on-Chip (SoC) designs grow…Read More
Solving the Next Big SoC Challenges with FPGA Prototyping
The health of the semiconductor industry revolves around the “start”. Chip design starts translate to wafer starts, and both support customer design wins and product shipments. Roadmaps develop for expanding product offerings, and capital expenditures flow in to add capacity enabling more chip designs and wafer starts. If… Read More
Enterprise SSD SOC’s Call for a Different Interconnect Approach
The move to SSD storage for enterprise use brings with it the need for difficult to design enterprise capable SSD controller SOC’s. The benefits of SSD in hyperscale data centers are clear. SSD’s offer higher reliability due to the elimination of moving parts. They have a smaller foot print, use less power and offer much better performance.… Read More
Multi-Level Debugging Made Easy for SoC Development
An SoC can have a collection of multiple blocks and IPs from different sources integrated together along with several other analog and digital components within a native environment. The IPs can be at different levels of abstractions; their RTL descriptions can be in different languages such as Verilog, VHDL, or SystemVerilog.… Read More
FPGA tools for more predictive needs in critical
“Find bugs earlier.” Every software developer has heard that mantra. In many ways, SoC and FPGA design has become very similar to software development – but in a few crucial ways, it is very different. Those differences raise a new question we should be asking about uncovering defects: earlier than when?… Read More
ASML and IMEC EUV Progress
Day 1 of the SPIE conference featured a number of customer updates on the status of their EUV programs. On Tuesday morning we got to hear ASML’s update on their work.… Read More
Reinventing Power Management ICs for Mobile
Semiconductor startups are becoming rather rare in Silicon Valley, otherwise known as the cradle of technology innovation. In an era where social media and cloud-based software startups are sprouting in every nook and corner of the Valley, it is extremely difficult to get venture capital funding for semiconductor startups,… Read More
Millennial Tyranny, Tattoos and Scions!
Millennials tiring of TV commercials for erectile dysfunction and rheumatoid arthritis will have their revenge soon enough. The population bulge of under-35-year-olds is making its way through the demographic grinder and will soon be reformatting everything from business models and television advertising budgets to the… Read More
Life, the Universe and Everything
In Douglas Adams’ iconic series A hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxya super-intelligent species created a super-powerful computer called Deep Thought to answer the ultimate question – what is the meaning of life (and the universe and everything)? Life imitates art so it should come as no surprise that a team in London founded a venture… Read More
HW Emulator Apps Open Doors to Entirely New Uses
When the topic of hardware emulation comes up, thoughts of big iron customarily come to mind. However, hardware emulation has evolved significantly and now there are other important traits that distinguish the offerings in this area. For a very long period of time emulators provided primarily a method to accelerate gate level… Read More
Weebit Nano Moves into the Mainstream with Customer Adoption