Change is happening fast with the Internet of Things (IoT). Devices are getting smarter. We all know that and have seen the evolution over the last several years – from smart thermostats to toasters. But smartness is a relative term and as we enter 2016 we will see more devices/machines that are becoming intelligent. And when… Read More





The Silicon Valley Apocalypse!
Based on the Behavioral Sink Experiments in the 1950s it is hard for me to believe that Silicon Valley will continue with the unicorn fueled hyper expansion we are currently experiencing without some very serious repercussions, both social and financial. First let’s talk about the social issues which to me are the most interesting.… Read More
Lighting Up The Cloud
In our rush to imagine a world populated with IoT devices, tech advances at the top end of this ecosystem (the cloud) don’t seem to get much airtime. But this isn’t because they are limited to modest refinements. As one example, there is active technology development in connectivity around fiber-based communications within the… Read More
Tuning Analog IP for High Yield at SMIC
Analog IP is more difficult to design and optimize for a given process node compared to digital IP, so any automation for analog designers is always welcome. The engineers at SMIC in China have customers that design analog IP and often they need to know how to optimize it for a specific process, so I watched a presentation by Josh Yang,… Read More
IEDM Blogs – Part 5 – Intel and Micron 3D NAND
At IEDM Intel and Micron presented “A Floating Gate Based 3D NAND Technology With CMOS Under Array” authored by Krishna Parat and Chuck Dennison.
As I previously discussed in my blog on the IEDM memory short course and blog on IMEC’s work on high mobility 3D NAND channels, continuing to scale 2D Flash has become extremely difficult… Read More
IEDM Blogs – Part 4 – IMEC InGaAs Channel for 3D NAND
At IEDM IMEC presented “MOCVD In[SUB]1-x[/SUB]Ga[SUB]x[/SUB]As high mobility channel for 3-D NAND Memory” authored by E. Capogreco, J. G. Lisoni, A. Arreghini, A. Subirats, B. Kunert, W. Guo, T. Maurice, C.-L. Tan, R. Degraeve, K. De Meyer, G. Van den bosch, and J. Van Houdt.
On December 15[SUP]th[/SUP] I had the opportunity … Read More
Big Auto Fearing IoT!!
In my advisory role I routinely interact with many customers and IoT thought leaders and invariably get acquainted with their point of views. I find most of these insights unique, informative, and most interestingly unmentioned in major news outlets. My intention for posting this is to share some of these findings with you.
Yet… Read More
2015 3D ASIP conference: Thar’s Gold in Them Thar Hills!
Last week I presented at the 3D ASIP EDA Tutorial and attended the Conference. In previous years, leading edge papers were presented from large companies pushing a solution to meet their needs. These companies had the resources and clout to achieve some astounding successes, but the lingering question was: “what other product… Read More
Networking through Dark Silicon Power Islands
For decades, tracing back to the days of Deming, the way to tackle complex engineering problems has been the pareto chart. Charting conditions and their contribution to the problem leads to mitigation priorities.
In the case of SoC power management, the old school pareto chart said the processor core was the biggest power hog and… Read More
Self-driving Connected Taxis Insights from Patents
Japanese company Robot Taxi Inc. announced that it will start trials with self-driving taxi service beginning in 2016. US20150339928 illustrates the system for operating the autonomous vehicles taxi service. A user can request a taxi service using an application that is running on the user’s mobile device. The taxi service… Read More
Flynn Was Right: How a 2003 Warning Foretold Today’s Architectural Pivot