When you look at NetSpeed’s NocStudio design tool, you first think “I see, NetSpeed is a new Network-on-Chip (NoC) IP company”. Are you wrong? Yes and no… No because NocStudio indeed generates a NoC. Yes, because the company objectives are going much farther than simply deliver a new NoC solution. According with Sundari Mitra, … 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
Collaboration Required to Maximize ASIC Chiplet ValueIt is a well-known fact that chiplets provide…Read More
Apple Took All the Money
Apple has roughly 20% market share of the smartphone unit shipments. Android has pretty much all the rest with a tiny sliver for Microsoft Windows Phone, Blackberry, and Samsung’s Tizen. By any standard, Android is the highest volume operating system ever created. Famously, Microsoft makes more money on patent licenses… Read More
Choosing C++ or SystemC for High Level Synthesis
Most engineers learn by doing, and so at DAC in June an EDA vendor with High Level Synthesis (HLS) tools held a language tutorial on choosing C++ or SystemC for design and verification projects. The EDA company is Calypto, and Stuart Clubb put together the tutorial on using synthesizable C++ or SystemC. The design and verification… Read More
Antun Domic, on Synopsys’ Secret Sauce in Design
Antun Domic is the GM of the Design Group at Synopsys. I sat down with him a couple of weeks ago.
His name is Croatian although, of course, there was no Croatia back then it was part of Yugoslavia. But in fact he grew up in Chile and went to university there where he studied EE and math. He came to the US as a grad student and did a PhD at MIT in … Read More
Cost Modeling as a Decision Making Tool
The use of simulation is well established in the semiconductor industry. Virtually all circuit designs are run through a Spice simulation, layouts are analyzed for timing issues and even process development employs process simulation tools. What I believe is less widely used but just as useful is cost modeling.
The semiconductor… Read More
GPS Chronicle: The Early History
There is really nothing new about GPS: the technology was reinvented from the old. After satellite communications was established, scientists and engineers started to look for different ways of utilizing this fascinating space marvel. Radio navigation systems had been developed during the World War II for aircraft operations,… Read More
TSMC (Apple) Update Q2 2015!
The TSMC quarterly conference call was last week and of course it stirred up quite a bit of controversy. Let me share with you my experience, observations, and opinions and maybe together we can come up with an accurate prediction for 2016. First let’s take a look at 20nm and what people now call the “Apple effect.”
Correct… Read More
Why Drones Love Atmel SAM E70
Avionics is by nature a mature market, requiring the use of validated system solution: safety is an absolute requirement, innovative systems require stringent qualification phase. That’s why the very fast adoption of drones as alternative solution for human piloted planes is impressive. It took 10 years or so for drones to be… Read More
How ARM Implemented a Mali GPU using Logic Synthesis and Place/Route Tools
ARM is a well-known semiconductor IP provider and they often create a reference design so that SoC companies can have a starting point to work with. On the GPU side of IP the ARM engineers have an architecture called Mali, and a recent webinar hosted by Synopsys reviewed how the physical design area was minimized by using a combination… Read More
GlobalFoundries 22nm FD-SOI: What Happens When
Earlier in the week I wrote about GlobalFoundries announcement of 22nm FD-SOI. At SEMICON West there were three events that filled in some more details. First, on Tuesday, a lunch presentation given by SOITEC who make the wafer blanks that FD-SOI requires. Then on Wednesday I sat down for an hour with Gary Patton and Subi Kengeri … Read More
5 Expectations for the Memory Markets in 2025