Mind you, this post is being written by the same guy who wrote8 Reasons Why I Hate My iPhone 5. I’ve been living with the Samsung S4 for about a year, and am ready to return to the Apple fold. It’s partially that too many, or perhaps the wrong apps running on my phone cause big problems. This manifests itself anywhere from … Read More
Always-on and the new wearable core
Recently, I mentioned smartphone SoCs consume one, maybe two orders of magnitude too much power for broader use in wearables. However, that is only when they are “on”. To save power and stretch battery life, smartphones spend a lot of time napping – display off, sitting still with MEMS sensors powered down, waiting for an incoming… Read More
Fabless Book Giveaway at #51DAC Reception!
eSilicon will be providing books for the first 300 people to attend the Tuesday night networking reception sponsored by SemiWiki. To avoid confusion they will be giving out BOOK COUPONS when you arrive to be redeemed when the event starts so grab a coupon, enjoy the food and drinks! I can assure you this will be the ultimate networking… Read More
We Need One MILLION Design Starts!
Design starts are the lifeblood of the semiconductor industry. It’s not just the design start itself, it’s the innovation that goes with it. As the semiconductor industry consolidates and the cost of modern semiconductor design increases you have to ask yourself: Where are the next generation of design starts going to come from?… Read More
Active Power Management in UPF Using SPICE, VHDL-AMS or Verilog-AMS
My former co-worker, Kenneth Bakalar at Mentor Graphics is an expert in AMS modeling languages and UPFmethodology, so he recently teamed up with Eric Jeandeau to author an interesting white paper: Interpreting UPF for a Mixed-Signal Design Under Test. This white paper is based on a presentation made at DVCon earlier this year.… Read More
Don’t Eat Rubber Chicken in the Best Food City in the World
You are going to DAC next week. And you don’t want to eat a Moscone Center rubber chicken Caesar salad for lunch. But you lack local knowledge. So here are some places within a 10 minute walk (these are just places I like. Nobody is paying me to recommend them).
The food court in the San Francisco Center on Market Street between … Read More
DAC is Next Week!
DAC starts on Sunday. If you are in San Francisco on Sunday then the first event is the normal welcome reception. This is the ultimate networking event in EDA. It is in the Intercontinental Hotel about a block from the convention center and runs from 5.30 to 7pm. This is preceded by Gary Smith’s traditional kickoff from 5pm to… Read More
Context Aware Library Models for Improved Static Analysis Accuracy
Digital semiconductor design flows predominantly use library models (typically verilog and liberty formats) for static analyses. Design sizes continue to grow and geometry continues to shrink. Demand for superior performance continue to increase. Accuracy of the library models has become more critical than ever before … Read More
Google Robot Cars are Coming!
Paul McLellan and I attended the 2014 Embedded Vision Summit in Silicon Valley this week. The most interesting session for me was on the new Google car that was announced earlier in the week. But first, to set the stage, let’s look at a new study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that shows motor vehicle… Read More
Sidense NVM IP clears TSMC9000 at 28nm
Maybe I’ve spent too many years whiffing solder flux fumes and absorbing doses of X-band radiation in anechoic chambers, but I’m a firm believer in the axiom: “Give me enough engineers, and I can get 10 of anything to work right, once.” We have to make this … fit into this … using only this stuff … is what legends are made of.… Read More
Real men have fabs!