We tend to focus on connectivity and sensors for the IoT, however there is a third element to what I call the “Edge Device Triad” that is just as important: actuators. Making things move with microcontrollers (MCUs) is a science in and of itself. For small size and low weight combined with decent mechanical power, designers are opting… Read More
The Accidental Infrastructure: How Crypto Miners Built the Foundation of the AI BoomMost crypto forty-niners died broke in a warehouse…Read More
From Detection to Safety: Reframing Fault Simulation for Functional SafetyIn the early 1980s, when computer-aided engineering (CAE),…Read More
Driving the Future through the “Talent Empowering Program”: Why TSMC Charity Foundation’s Youth Career Initiative MattersThe future of work will not be shaped…Read More
Foundation IP for Intel 18A: Technical Overview and Why It MattersSynopsys Foundation IP for Intel 18A is a…Read More
WEBINAR: Defacto is Boosting Front-end SoC Design With AI-Powered EDA toolsThe real promise of AI in EDA is…Read More
Here’s the advantage that keeps Silicon Valley ahead of the world
A trait shared by the fastest growing and most disruptive companies in history – Google, Amazon, Uber, AirBnb, and eBay – is that they aren’t focused on selling products, they are building platforms. The ability to leverage the network effects of a platform is something that the technology industry learned… Read More
Cadence loads up on MACs for vision with CNNs
For vision DSP IP running convolutional neural networks (CNNs), a big driver of performance is increasing the bits processed per cycle with parallel MACs. Tom Simon did a great job in recent posts of introducing CNNs at a high level, so I’ll look at what is architecturally behind Cadence’s latest announcement: the Tensilica Vision… Read More
How to Deal With Seven Design Closure Issues
The challenge of tracking design progress is a shared problem for individual designers, team leaders, and project managers. At each level the ability to step back from just reviewing error log files and seeing the arc of the whole design as it moves forward is valuable. The difficulty of seeing the whole picture is exacerbated when… Read More
From Simulation to Emulation: 3 Steps to a Portable SystemVerilog/UVM Testbench
If your team is building large, complex designs that require millions of clock cycles to fully verify, you need both simulation and emulation.
Using emulation with simulation accelerates performance for dramatically reduced run times.… Read More
Mind The Gap – Boarding the Silicon Photonics Packaging Train
I’ve been doing a lot of reading on silicon photonics lately and I’ve come to realize that while there is much written on the development of individual silicon photonic components and devices (modulators, photo detectors, optical amplifiers and such) that much of the cost and therefore chances of economic success… Read More
Why Should Companies Care about Internet of Things Services?
As with any new technology, businesses will need to find quantifiable benefits in the Internet of Things before the concept is embraced and implemented. It could be argued that connected devices are already being adopted on a wide scale: companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Qualcomm, IBM, and others already see IoT as a core part … Read More
Semiconductor capital spending slow in 2016
The outlook for semiconductor capital expenditures (capex) in 2016 is weak. Gartner’s January 2016 forecast called for a decline of 4.7%. IC Insights in February projected a 0.8% decline. The table below shows the Gartner forecast along with the capex forecasts from the top three spenders (Intel, Samsung and TSMC) which… Read More
Qualcomm’s New X16 LTE Modem Delivers Gigabit LTE And A Scalable Architecture
Qualcomm has been the global unit and revenue market share leader for years in modem technologies used in smartphones, tablets, PCs and IoT (Internet of Things). One of the reasons they have maintained this lead for so long is that they are typically first to market with new generations of modems. Today at their investor conference,… Read More
Are Layoffs Good for the Semiconductor Industry?
As I have mentioned before, semiconductor professionals are very smart people, pound for pound the smartest in the workforce in my opinion. So what happens when thousands of engineers from Qualcomm, Broadcom, Altera, and Intel get shown the door? They don’t go to work for Starbucks, they don’t go to the unemployment line, they … Read More
The Packaging PDK Is the Missing Layer for Co-Packaged Optics