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GPS Chronicle: The Beginning of the Commercial Era

GPS Chronicle: The Beginning of the Commercial Era
by Majeed Ahmad on 07-22-2015 at 4:00 am

Although primarily developed for military operations, this cutting-edge satellite technology was eventually allowed for civilian applications. The first interagency testing of GPS receivers was conducted in California in 1984. By July 1995, using Navstar constellation, GPS was fully operational across the country. Automotive… Read More


SEMICON West 2015 Recap – Day 1 – Softening Markets, Sub 14nm and 3D NAND

SEMICON West 2015 Recap – Day 1 – Softening Markets, Sub 14nm and 3D NAND
by Scotten Jones on 07-21-2015 at 6:00 pm

Tuesday morning press briefing
The show started for me Tuesday morning with the SEMI press briefing. SEMI said there are 1,200 booths this year, 629 exhibiting companies and over 180 hours of programming. They also said pre-registration was up from last year and they expect 26,000 visitors.

Dan Tracy then gave an update on the markets.… Read More


See What’s Pushing up IoT Revenues

See What’s Pushing up IoT Revenues
by Pawan Fangaria on 07-21-2015 at 12:00 pm

The whole world’s eyes are at Internet of Things (IoT) market in various segments. The overall semiconductor ecosystem, starting from best suited technology nodes for IoT up to the final end products including sensors, microcontrollers, wireless chipsets, analog ICs, and so on are geared to avail the best opportunities from… Read More


Starvision and SOS, a Perfect Match

Starvision and SOS, a Perfect Match
by Paul McLellan on 07-21-2015 at 7:00 am

SoC design these days is largely about assembling externally developed semiconductor IP with a small amount of differentiated content. Only companies who have to adopt new processes instantly develop a lot of their own IP. It makes more sense to license it. Partially because there is not a lot of differentiation in standards-based… Read More


NetSpeed NoC IP or Architectural Synthesis Company?

NetSpeed NoC IP or Architectural Synthesis Company?
by Eric Esteve on 07-21-2015 at 12:00 am

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


Apple Took All the Money

Apple Took All the Money
by Paul McLellan on 07-20-2015 at 4:00 pm

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

Choosing C++ or SystemC for High Level Synthesis
by Daniel Payne on 07-20-2015 at 12:00 pm

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, on Synopsys’ Secret Sauce in Design
by Paul McLellan on 07-20-2015 at 7:00 am

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

Cost Modeling as a Decision Making Tool
by Scotten Jones on 07-19-2015 at 10:00 am

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

GPS Chronicle: The Early History
by Majeed Ahmad on 07-19-2015 at 4:00 am

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