CAST Compression IP Webinar 800x100 (2)

A Robust Lint Methodology Ensures Faster Design Closure

A Robust Lint Methodology Ensures Faster Design Closure
by Pawan Fangaria on 06-03-2015 at 4:00 am

With the increase in SoC designs’ sizes and complexities, the verification continuum has grown larger to an extent that the strategies for design convergence need to be applied from the very beginning of the design flow. Often designers are stuck with never ending iterations between RTL, gate and transistor levels at different… Read More


Why is Intel going inside Altera for Servers?

Why is Intel going inside Altera for Servers?
by Eric Esteve on 06-02-2015 at 12:30 pm

You should be happy to listen that Intel will buy Altera FPGA challenger, if you expect always more power to be consumed in datacenter! In 2013 the power consumption linked with the Servers and Storage IC activity, plus the electricity consumed in the systems cooling these high performance chips has reached 91 BILLION KWh (or the… Read More


The State of Desktops, Notebooks and Tablets

The State of Desktops, Notebooks and Tablets
by Daniel Payne on 06-02-2015 at 10:00 am

The personal computing market started out back in the late 1970’s, with IBM being a relative late-comer in 1981, however over many decades we’ve seen the unit volumes steadily increasing each year driving demand of semiconductors of all types. IC Insights is a research company that follows the personal computer … Read More


Ultra-Low Power Non-Volatile Memory Solutions for the Smart Connected Universe

Ultra-Low Power Non-Volatile Memory Solutions for the Smart Connected Universe
by Tom Simon on 06-01-2015 at 6:00 pm

DAC is a great place to gather information about products and technologies. However it can be difficult to chase down the information you need because you may need to cover a lot of ground to hear or talk to the people with the right knowledge. Fortunately there are a few places you can go to learn about a number of products at one place.… Read More


Aldec packs 6 UltraScale parts on HES-7

Aldec packs 6 UltraScale parts on HES-7
by Don Dingee on 06-01-2015 at 12:00 pm

A few months ago, when the Xilinx UltraScale VU440 FPGA began shipping, one of the immediate claims was a quad-FPGA-based prototyping board touted as “Godzilla’s Butcher on Steroids”. That was a refreshing and creative PR approach, frankly. I’m always careful with less creative terms like “world’s biggest” or “world’s fastest”,… Read More


The Trojan Horse Was Free Too

The Trojan Horse Was Free Too
by Paul McLellan on 06-01-2015 at 7:00 am

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. I fear the Greeks especially when bearing gifts. In Virgil’s Aeneid these words are spoken by the Trojan priest Laocoön warning about the wooden horse that the Greeks have offered Troy. But to no avail, Laocoön is slain by serpents and the Trojans bring the horse inside the walls of Troy. Since… Read More


Will those IO pad rings pass foundry muster?

Will those IO pad rings pass foundry muster?
by Beth Martin on 05-31-2015 at 10:00 pm

I was talking recently to Dina Medhat, a senior technical marketing engineer at Mentor, about, of all things, IO rings. It has not occurred to me that verifying that your IO rings comply with foundry rules presents new challenges.

IO ring checking isn’t new, nor is it unique to advanced IC process nodes. However, the same forces of… Read More


NVIDIA and Qualcomm Talk about High Level Synthesis, Samsung on Low Power for Mobile

NVIDIA and Qualcomm Talk about High Level Synthesis, Samsung on Low Power for Mobile
by Daniel Payne on 05-31-2015 at 4:00 pm

Since 1978 I’ve seen many trends in the semiconductor design world: transistor-level IC design, gate-level design, RTL coding, High Level Synthesis (HLS) and IP re-use. We’ve witnessed the growth in design productivity enabling chips starting with just thousands of transistor all the way up to billions of transistors… Read More


Atmel Tightens Automotive Focus with Three New Cortex-M7 MCUs

Atmel Tightens Automotive Focus with Three New Cortex-M7 MCUs
by Majeed Ahmad on 05-31-2015 at 11:30 am

Atmel Corp., a lead partner for the ARM Cortex-M7 processor launch in October 2014, has unveiled three new M7-based microcontrollers with a unique memory architecture and advanced connectivity features for the connected car market.

According to the company spokesman, E70, V71 and V70 chips are the industry’s highest performing… Read More


Changing Trends at the Top of Semicon Space

Changing Trends at the Top of Semicon Space
by Pawan Fangaria on 05-31-2015 at 5:00 am

As we have moved down from a CAGR of ~9% over last three decades to a CAGR of ~5% in the current decade, it’s time to check the realities. It can be definitely argued that a 5% of CAGR over a solid base of ~$378 billion should be considered good enough. In my view that’s the sign of maturity in the semiconductor market. At the same time we are… Read More