I am not sure about you but whenever I see those big market forecasts for IoT (and I’ve seen a lot)… my brain takes a short cut to “ok, I get it, it’s big”. And I believe it will be. But is “it’s big” that helpful? Or, to put it another way, does it hurt?
Robin Duke-Woolley of Beecham … Read More




When Good Standards Get Lost – the UVM Register Model
Some time ago I wrote a DeepChip viewpoint on DVCON 2014 in which I praised a Mentor paper “Of Camels and Committees”. The authors argued that while the UVM standards committee had a done a great job in the early releases, the 1.2 release was overloaded with nice-to-have features with questionable value for a standard, particularly… Read More
Chips on the road to deep learning
CES has been morphing into an automotive show for several years now. Chipmakers were pitching control solutions, infotainment solutions, then connectivity solutions. Phone makers pitched device integration. Automotive electronics suppliers pitched MEMS sensors and cameras. Now, with a lot of pieces in place, the story … Read More
Coventor ASML IMEC: The last half nanometer
On Tuesday evening December 8[SUP]th[/SUP] at IEDM, Coventor held a panel discussion entitled the “The last half nanometer”. Coventor is a leading provider of simulation software used to design processes. This is my third year attending the Coventor panel discussion at IEDM and they are always excellent with very strong panels… Read More
How to Secure the Internet of Things (IoT)?
The Internet of Things (IoT) as a concept is fascinating and exciting, but the key to gaining real business value from it, is effective communication between all elements of the architecture so you can deploy applications faster, process and analyze data at lightning speeds, and make decisions as soon as you can.
IoT architecture… Read More
How to Build a Deadlock-Free Multi-cores SoC?
We will precisely explain the meaning of deadlock in a modern, complex multi-core SoC. First, let’s take a look at the crash of the Air France 296, when a brand new Airbus A320 crashed during a demo flight on June 26, 1988. This Airbus 320, the first plane being completely automated, thanks to the FADEC flight system, was running a demo… Read More
Decisive Floorplanning for Faster Design Closure
Semiconductor design automation at system level is gaining its due importance today. It needs an effective, efficient, and seamless flow from system up to silicon. There is lot of effort going on for automating SoC design exploration at system level but that eventually stops at RTL; another level of flow automation takes over … Read More
Internet of Things 2015 Year End Review (3): IoT Opportunities and Risks Insights from Patents
New IoT Product/Service Development
Even though the IoT is getting a huge attention recently the concept of interconnected billions of devices is not new and has been under development for over 10 years. Thus, there are a large number of related patented technologies that can be exploited for developing new products/services,… Read More
Synopsys on the Future of Custom Layout!
Analog and mixed signal design has received more than their fair share of attention since the mobile revolution and now that FinFETs are in production at the foundries I see that trend continuing. As a result this year there are some interesting things brewing in EDA, especially in the area of Custom Layout.
Innovation in Custom … Read More
IBM’s OpenPOWER Presence Was Felt Heavily At SuperComputing ’15
IBM is in the process of reinventing themselves as a company, changing how they see themselves, what they do as a company and how they want their partners and customers to view them. This is exemplified best in their mobile alliance with Apple, their Watson cognitive efforts, the sale of their chip fab to GlobalFoundries, the sale… Read More
Flynn Was Right: How a 2003 Warning Foretold Today’s Architectural Pivot