By definition the pure-play foundry business model separates the design and manufacturing of a semiconductor device. TSMC was the first dedicated (pure-play) foundry which enabled the incredible fabless semiconductor ecosystem we have today. If not for the fabless business model we would not have the supercomputer class … Read More
A Recipe for Performance Optimization in Arm-Based SystemsAround the mid-2000’s the performance component of Moore’s…Read More
Synopsys Accelerates Innovation on TSMC Advanced ProcessesWe all know that making advanced semiconductors is…Read More
Tools for Chips and Dips an Overview of the Semiconductor Tools MarketFrom humble beginnings in military applications, the semiconductor…Read More
How Samtec Helps Achieve 224G PAM4 in the Real World224 Gbps PAM4 gets attention for applications such…Read More
SoC Power Islands Verification with Hardware-assisted VerificationThe ever-growing demand for longer battery life in…Read More
Hogan’s Internet of Things Panel
Jim Hogan organized a panel on the Internet of Things (IoT) on Wednesday afternoon. The panellists were Randy Smith of Sonics, Bernard Murphy of Atrenta, Gary Smith (himself) and Frank Shirrmeister of Cadence.
Gary reckons that IoT is a Wall Street buzzword being used to get stock prices up. If you go to a series of presentations … Read More
Seen at DAC! Self-Driving Cars –Victory Lap or Pile-Up?
It is axiomatic that the DAC vendor community would love to serve the exciting and expanding automotive market; and the auto community would love to continue to increase their value through innovative software/ hardware solutions, which will one day lead to the self-driving car. But how do we team to lap the track?
Jim Hogan set … Read More
The Best and Worst of #51DAC!
When people ask which DAC is the most memorable I used to say my first because I was a new college grad and it really was exciting. The next DAC was memorable since it was in Las Vegas and my beautiful wife joined me. This year was DAC number 30 for me and of course it will be the most memorable since I signed hundreds of copies of “Fabless: … Read More
Embedded Vision Summit
I was a the embedded vision conference last week. Jeff Beir, the founder of the embedded vision alliance gave an introduction to the field. The conference was much bigger than previous years and almost everyone is designing some sort of vision product. Half of your brain is used for vision so it goes without saying that vision requires… Read More
SystemC: User Group update from DAC
I always enjoy attending the SystemC User group to see what is being done by users of SystemC. This time was no exception. Not only is it FREE, but the professional networking around the meeting, presentations, and break times are terrific.
There were 5 paper presentations at the North American SystemC User Group (NASCUG) on Monday,… Read More
Synopsys Galaxy Platform & Lynx Design System supports FD-SOI
This is a new brick that Synopsys brings to build FD-SOI credibility. We have talked at Semiwiki about FD-SOI technology developed by the LETI and STM, and recently endorsed by Samsung Foundry, offering a more than credible second source to STM. And we have said that the FD-SOI introduction will need to be supported by EDA and IP vendors… Read More
Impressions of #51DAC
So what was the overall theme of DAC this year? Usually there seems to be some trend that is hot. A few years ago it was power, then more recently all the stuff associated with 20nm and 16nm such as FinFETs and double patterning. Those things are still around, of course, and there are new generations of tools.
One theme is that more design… Read More
Xilinx’s 16nm vs. Altera 14nm
You will not believe this, but the family was picking me up Friday evening from the airport and on the way home… Get this, for real, the wife asks me to cut her hair tomorrow. Now the three of you that read my stuff, know what happened before. I resisted, and firmly said ‘No’…The wife seeing my macho stance began appealing to my engineer’s… Read More
Non-separation of power and performance
How much power does a system consume? The simplistic path to power estimation for a system used to be tossing a few metrics – standby, typical, worst case, with figures pulled from a datasheet, simulation, or physical measurement – into a spreadsheet. After filling the remaining holes with SWAG (scientific wild-ass guesses), … Read More
Application-Specific Lithography: Sense Amplifier and Sub-Wordline Driver Metal Patterning in DRAM