Primarius 2B

Secure Processor for IoT

Secure Processor for IoT
by barun on 02-16-2015 at 1:00 pm

In my last blog “Processor for IoT” I have discussed security as one of the key requirements for processor used in IoT devices. In this blog we will analyze different method of hacking and some techniques which can be used to prevent those security breaches.

One of the common ways of attack is to probe address and data … Read More


ARM 2014 Results: 12 Billion Cores

ARM 2014 Results: 12 Billion Cores
by Paul McLellan on 02-16-2015 at 7:00 am

Last week was the ARM earnings call, giving the Q4 results and a summary of 2014. 12B chips containing ARM processors were shipped last year which has meant that they have grown in all their major end-markets: mobile, embedded intelligence, and enterprise infrastructure. Almost half of those 12B chips were in mobile, around 5.6B.… Read More


Greetings from Digitopia!

Greetings from Digitopia!
by Bill Boldt on 02-15-2015 at 7:00 pm

digitopia

When it comes to the privacy and security of data, what does the future hold for consumers, companies and governments?

A tremendously interesting document, called “Alternate Worlds,” was published by the U.S. National Intelligence Council. It’s a serious document that not only examines four different alternatives of what … Read More


AMAT Earnings Call: Next Generation FinFETs?

AMAT Earnings Call: Next Generation FinFETs?
by Paul McLellan on 02-15-2015 at 9:00 am

The Applied Materials earnings call was last week. As usual I”m not all that interested in the financial details of the quarter and I’m certainly not the person to pick whether the stock is going to go up or down in the immediate future. However, there is always interesting information to be gleaned from the semiconductor… Read More


TSMC 20nm Essentially Worthless?

TSMC 20nm Essentially Worthless?
by Daniel Nenni on 02-15-2015 at 7:00 am

It happens at every process node, professional journalists write that something is broken and blames TSMC like a worn out record. To be fair they are not semiconductor professionals with access to the fabless semiconductor rank and file and are easily manipulated which is what happened again at 20nm. Remember when NVIDIA suggested… Read More


Do You Need a Silicon Catalyst?

Do You Need a Silicon Catalyst?
by Daniel Nenni on 02-14-2015 at 7:00 pm

Lately there has been significant concern over the rising costs of designing in silicon and the troubling decline in venture investments in semiconductors. These alarming trends include fewer IPOs, a falloff in the amount and frequency of early stage seed investments, and comparatively low industry organic growth rates. A … Read More


More Test Points are Better

More Test Points are Better
by Daniel Payne on 02-14-2015 at 7:00 am

I got really involved in testability back at CrossCheck in the 1990’s when they designed a way for Gate Arrays to have 100% observability without any Design For Test (DFT) requirements on designers. The Japanese Gate Array companies loved this approach and their customers enjoyed the highest test coverage without being… Read More


A Comprehensive Automated Assertion Based Verification

A Comprehensive Automated Assertion Based Verification
by Pawan Fangaria on 02-13-2015 at 4:00 pm

Using an assertion is a sure shot method to detect an error at its source, which may be buried deep within a design. It does not depend on a test bench or checker, and can fire automatically as soon as a violation occurs. However, writing assertions manually is very difficult and time consuming. To do so require deep design and coding… Read More


TSMC’s OIP: Everything You Need for 16FF+ SoCs

TSMC’s OIP: Everything You Need for 16FF+ SoCs
by Paul McLellan on 02-13-2015 at 7:00 am

Doing a modern SoC design is all about assembling IP and adding a small amount of unique IC design for differentiation (plus, usually, lots of software). If you re designing in a mature process then there is not a lot of difficulty finding IP for almost anything. But if you are designing in a process that has not yet reached high-volume… Read More


Dealing with FPGA IP in all its forms

Dealing with FPGA IP in all its forms
by Don Dingee on 02-12-2015 at 10:00 pm

One of the recurring themes I see here in the pages of SemiWiki and elsewhere is this pitched, bordering on religious battle between Altera and Xilinx. Just because both are FPGA technologies, the tendency is to put them in the same bucket, drawing direct comparisons between them. Some folks say there is no comparison; Xilinx has… Read More