Today it is TSMC’s OIP Ecosystem Innovation forum. This is an annual event but is also a semi-annual update on TSMC’s processes, investment, volume ramps and more. TSMC have changed the rules for the conference this year: they have published all the presentations by their partners/customers. Tom Quan of TSMC told… Read More
Flynn Was Right: How a 2003 Warning Foretold Today’s Architectural PivotIn 2003, legendary computer architect Michael J. Flynn…Read More
Enabling RISC-V & AI Innovations with Andes AX45MPV Running Live on S2C Prodigy S8-100 Prototyping SystemQualifying an AI-class RISC-V SoC demands proving that…Read More
DAC News – A New Era of Electronic Design Begins with Siemens EDA AIAI is the centerpiece of DAC this year.…Read More
The Future of Moore’s Law
I’ve lived in Silicon Valley then moved north to the Silicon Forest (aka Portland, Oregon) in 1995, and thankfully we have a lot of high-tech companies here like: Intel, Lam Research (Novellus), Lattice Semi, Qorvo, Synopsys, Mentor, Cadence, Northwest Logic, etc. There’s a global industry organization called… Read More
The Internet of Sensors
The internet of things (IoT) has a number of key attributes: low power, security, connectivity. But almost every IoT application involves sensors of one sort or another. The visual sensors are built using CCD arrays, they are basically low-resolution cameras, but the mechanical ones are typically built using MEMS technology.… Read More
IoT does NOT lack tools!
Rarely does a month go by without acquisitions in the fabless semiconductor ecosystem. Not surprisingly one of the most read pages on SemiWiki is the EDA Merger and Acquisitions Wiki with more than fifty seven thousand views. It really is a nice family tree, one which we (Daniel Payne) are diligent on keeping current. One of the most… Read More
Re-Thinking Server Design
The demand for information is growing at an unprecedented rate. Our insatiable appetite for communication, computing and downloading, is driving this demand. With emerging technologies, such as cloud computing and the internet of things, not to mention the 300 hours of video being loaded to YouTube every minute, this trend … Read More
FPGA Prototyping: From Homebrew to Integrated Solutions
Years ago, when FPGA prototyping started, there were no solutions that you could go out and buy and everything was created as a one-off: buy some FPGAs or an FPGA-based board, and put it all together. It was a lot of effort, nobody really knew in advance how long it would take, there was very limited visibility for debug and the whole … Read More
3D Xpoint and the Future of Memory
Recently Intel and Micron announced a new three dimensional cross point (3D Xpoint) memory. The 3D Xpoint announcement has generated a lot of questions and interest in what this new memory is and where it may fit in the semiconductor market. … Read More
How to Overcome NoC Validation Multiple Challenges?
NetSpeed has developed NocStudio, a front end optimization design tool helping architects to create SoC architecture bridging the gap with the back end, floor planning and place and route. At the chip level, NocStudio generates a cache-coherent Network-on-Chip (NoC) allowing interconnecting the various CPU, GPU or Acceleration… Read More
All Models Are Wrong, Some Are Useful
“All models are wrong, some are useful.” This remark is attributed to the statistician George Box who used it as the section heading in a paper published in 1976.
Just for fun I looked up a few semiconductor statistics from 1976. Total capital spending was $238M in Japan and $306M in US and…that’s it, there was nobody else back then … Read More
Mongoose: The Making of Samsung’s Custom CPU Core
Samsung is seemingly ready to move to a new milestone in its brief but exciting system-on-chip (SoC) history: a custom CPU core codenamed Mongoose. It’s going to be based on ARMv8 instruction set and is expected to outperform the Exynos 7420 application processor that Samsung unveiled this year. There are some media reports… Read More
Flynn Was Right: How a 2003 Warning Foretold Today’s Architectural Pivot