Sourcing MIPI CSI-2 or DSI IP to a respected IP vendor is mandatory to build a peripheral IC or a SoC targeting mobile application as the chip maker simply can’t afford to do a re-spin because of Time-To-Market imperative. Buying this IP to a vendor also offering MIPI powered FPGA Prototyping Platforms is even better! Northwest Logic… Read More




Smartphones in Q1. Sammy Back On Top
Because it is such a major impact on the semiconductor industry, being the largest and fastest growing market ever, I follow the ups and down of the mobile industry. So what happened in Q1?
Total shipments are up 2% to a record (for Q1) 440 million units but that is down 16% from Q4 which remains the biggest quarter ever.
First thing is… Read More
Wireless Networks Chronicle: The Rise of LTE
Aaron Bartlett, a respected semiconductor industry executive, thinks that “Age of Mobile Data: The Wireless Journey to All Data 4G Networks” is the best book he has come across since Walter Isaacson’s biography on Steve Jobs. There is no dearth of books on wireless networks and Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology… Read More
The Curious Case of Samsung’s Shannon Chips
The recent teardowns of Samsung Galaxy S6 smartphone have one thing written all over them: Samsung is doubling down on its logic business. Although most of the technology press coverage went to Exynos 7420, the first mobile SoC manufactured at the 14nm FinFET process, Samsung’s other logic chips inside the S6 handset equally… Read More
TCAD Enables Moore’s Law to Continue
We live in very interesting times, you can wear an Android watch from Samsung that uses 14 nm FinFET technology, attend the 52nd DAC conference in June to learn about EDA and IP vendors supporting FinFET, and read about research work for new devices down to 5 nm. TCAD is that critical software technology that enables the development… Read More
TSMC 10nm Readiness and 3DIC
At the TSMC Technology Symposium last month Suk Lee presented a lot of information on design enablement. Suk is an interesting guy with a unique background in ASIC, Semiconductor, EDA, and now Foundry. In baseball terms that would be like playing infield, outfield, home plate, and umpire!
Around the turn of the millennium Suk actually… Read More
Crossing the Chasm: From Technology to Valuable Enterprise
One of the advantages of being an independent consultant is that I get to choose who I work with and what type of projects I accept. In fact, that is why I originally started blogging, to get exposure to a wide range of topics and brand myself as a strategic semiconductor business development professional. Now rather than wasting time… Read More
Why Intel will Never Succeed in IoT Market?
Let me precise that by “IoT” I think about the IoT devices market, made of hundreds of application, wearable gadget to medical, home automation, and so on. One direct consequence of IoT (device) market explosion will be the strong growth of the server market (cloud), to transfer, compute and store information generated by the billions… Read More
Fractal at DAC 2015 – What’s new?
I have been observing Fractal Technologiesexhibiting at DACyear after year, and every year they have demonstrated good value added features in their tools for SoC and IP development. This year at 52[SUP]nd[/SUP] DAC Fractal’s booth number is 1110. Earlier in this year Fractal had added a new ‘Cdiff’ feature in its flagship product… Read More
Memory Innovation at the Edge: Power Efficiency Meets Green Manufacturing