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Cliff Hou at TSMC OIP

Cliff Hou at TSMC OIP
by Paul McLellan on 10-26-2014 at 7:00 am

I attended Cliff Hou’s keynote at TSMC OIP Forum earlier this month. OIP is a huge undertaking. It currently has over 100 ecosystem partners, 10 technology generations, 7600+ IPs, 60+ EDA tools, 7000+ tech files and 150+ PDKs.

Most of Cliff’s presentation gave details on where TSMC are with the various processes. … Read More


3 reasons to focus on hardware dependent software

3 reasons to focus on hardware dependent software
by Don Dingee on 10-25-2014 at 4:00 pm

Why is software for modern SoCs so blasted expensive to develop? One reason is more software is being developed at the kernel layer – hardware dependent software, or HdS. Application software often assumes the underlying hardware, operating system, communication stacks, and device drivers are stable. For HdS, this flawed assumption… Read More


Sensing, Processing and Connecting: IoT Fundamentals

Sensing, Processing and Connecting: IoT Fundamentals
by Eric Esteve on 10-25-2014 at 7:00 am

Internet of Things, or Internet of Everything, is certainly the buzzword of the year. Does IoT describe one product family? Not really as the acronym describes a family of concepts, each of these concepts could effectively be turned into a family of products, if this concept reach the market, or fulfill a market need. Nevertheless… Read More


A Brief History of ASTC and VLAB Works

A Brief History of ASTC and VLAB Works
by Paul McLellan on 10-24-2014 at 4:00 pm

When I worked for VaST our engineering was in Sydney Australia. To my surprise there was another, entirely independent, group working on virtual platform modeling and tools in another place in Australia, in Adelaide. Is there something in the Fosters? They had originally been part of Motorola Corporate R&D and Software Group,… Read More


ANSYS Electronics Simulation Expo – A View from Industry

ANSYS Electronics Simulation Expo – A View from Industry
by Pawan Fangaria on 10-24-2014 at 7:30 am

As we are seeing more and more automation in most of our activities, not only through software but also smart electronics (at cutting-edge technologies) equipped with processors, micro-controllers, sensors and so on which make a whole system as an integrated entity on a small piece of semiconductor intertwined with other systems… Read More


eSilicon Creates One-Click Access to MPW and GDSII Quoting Portals

eSilicon Creates One-Click Access to MPW and GDSII Quoting Portals
by Paul McLellan on 10-23-2014 at 7:00 am

I have written before about eSilicon taking their internal quoting tool and making it user accessible. This first started just for MPW shuttles for half-a-dozen foundries, and then was extended to cover production runs at TSMC. And it is getting heavily used; eSilicon have had 315 people register to use it from 43 different countries… Read More


Virtual Platform Powers AUTOSAR Software Development

Virtual Platform Powers AUTOSAR Software Development
by Pawan Fangaria on 10-23-2014 at 12:00 am

As a significant part of our life is spent in travelling, it’s natural that automotive sector continues to get traction with a significant push towards electronics and automated solutions for automobiles such as cars to provide safety, comfort and entertainment. These solutions are provided by complete systems which operate… Read More


Two New Announcements at ITC from Synopsys

Two New Announcements at ITC from Synopsys
by Daniel Payne on 10-22-2014 at 4:00 pm

Each year at the International Test Conference(ITC) we hear about the latest advances from the testability side of both EDA vendors and academics. This year Aart de Geus, Chairman and Co-CEO of Synopsys delivered a keynote speech titled, “Testing Positive, for Complexity“. Yesterday I spoke with Robert Ruiz and… Read More


SecureCore: secure MPU for IoT

SecureCore: secure MPU for IoT
by Eric Esteve on 10-22-2014 at 8:44 am

The evaluation of the number of connected (IoT) systems by 2020 varies depending on the source, but we should see in the range of 30 billion IoT devices by that date. We already know some of the basic requirements: such a device will have to be connected, low cost, ultra-low power and… secure. The first three are key enablers, but we … Read More


SEMI Strategic Materials Conference and SEMICON Japan

SEMI Strategic Materials Conference and SEMICON Japan
by Paul McLellan on 10-22-2014 at 7:01 am

I attended the SEMI Strategic Materials Conference earlier this month. I cover a pretty broad range of stuff on SemiWiki from embedded software and system-level design on down. But I usually stop at lithography and TCAD, which have a major impact on design and the whole fabless ecosystem. I hadn’t really thought about the… Read More