I am a technologist, an entrepreneur and most recently an angel investor. As I have announced my investments in promising young companies over the last couple years, many people have asked me why. Isn’t the stock market easier (well…), isn’t that risky (yep), what does that mean for your role at ARM (business… Read More
Broadcom Told the Truth. The Market Hasn’t Heard the Rest of It Yet.Hock Tan and his CFO Kirsten Spears logged…Read More
CEO Interview with Chuck Gershman of Owl Autonomous ImagingChuck Gershman is the CEO and co-founder of…Read More
CEO Interview with Daniel Schall of Black SemiconductorDr. Daniel Schall is CEO and Co-Founder of…Read More
Alchip Accelerates on AI ASIC DemandAlchip Technologies reported improved financial results for the…Read More
Intel: Pushing EMIB Forward: Design Methodology Insights with Synopsys ToolsAs advanced packaging becomes a critical enabler for…Read More
Digital Design Trends – A Cadence Perspective
I talked with Paul Cunningham (VP front-end digital R&D) at CDNLive recently to get a Cadence perspective on digital design trends. He sees needs from traditional semiconductor companies evolving as usual, with disruption here and there from consolidation. But on the system side there is explosion in demand – for wearables,… Read More
Cross-viewing improves ASIC & FPGA debug efficiency
We introduced the philosophy behind the Blue Pearl Software suite of tools for front-end analysis of ASIC & FPGA designs in a recent post. As we said in that discussion, effective automation helps find and remedy issues as each re-synthesis potentially turns up new defects. Why do Blue Pearl users say their tool suite is easier… Read More
Top Mobile OEM Uses NetSpeed to Boost Its Next Gen Application Processor
The smartphone segment is certainly the most competitive market for chip makers today and the yearly product launch cadence puts a lot of pressure on the application processor design cycle. End-users expect to benefit from higher image definition, better sound quality, ever faster and more complex applications which push the… Read More
The Semicon Industry Keeps Wafer Fabs Moving Up
The worldwide revenue of semiconductor industry has remained flat in last few years; to be more precise, overall semiconductor revenue declined by 1.9% in 2015 and Gartner forecasts it to further decline by 0.6% in 2016. The total revenue was at record high of $340.3 billion in 2014.
Well, semiconductor industry has matured. A … Read More
ARM and FD-SOI are like Peanut Butter and Jelly!
When I first heard about a foundry possibly licensing FD-SOI I would have bet it was SMIC in China. What better market for a low cost, low power, easy to manufacture alternative to FinFETs? The foundry of course was Samsung which also made complete sense since they have 28nm gate-first capacity that matches up nicely to 28nm FD-SOI.… Read More
IOT Security Trends – Is the online world more dangerous??
Security threats are the biggest concern among the main concerns on the Internet of Things. Due to its very nature, it is a target of interest for those who want to commit either industrial or national espionage. By hacking into these systems and putting them under a denial of service, or other attacks, an entire network of systems… Read More
A Versatile Design Platform with Multi-Language APIs
In one of my whitepapers “SoCs in New Context – Look beyond PPA”, I had mentioned about several considerations which have become very important in addition to power, performance, and area (PPA) of an SoC. This whitepaper was also posted in parts as blogs on Semiwiki (links are mentioned below). Two important… Read More
Get ready for hypergrade in automotive
With use cases expanding, the meaning of “automotive qualified” semiconductors is changing. What we’re now hearing about now is beyond the AEC-Q100 Grade 0 upper end of 150°C, while still meeting other reliability, retention, and security requirements. What does hypergrade mean for complex digital chip… Read More
More on the Practical Uses of Automation
There’s a good article in the March issue of the Communications of the ACM which follows a theme I commented in my “One, Two Many” post. But the CACM article has a better title: “Automation should be like Iron Man, not Ultron”.
For anyone who hasn’t seen the movies, Iron Man is a man (Tony Stark)… Read More
Intel: Pushing EMIB Forward: Design Methodology Insights with Synopsys Tools