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eSilicon Just Taped-out a SonicsGN-based SoC. And It’s Not a Secret

eSilicon Just Taped-out a SonicsGN-based SoC. And It’s Not a Secret
by Paul McLellan on 02-24-2015 at 7:00 am

I slipped into the shadows at the back of the bar in the Tenderloin. Mid-afternoon on a weekday, almost nobody in there.

“So you’re with the NSA?” I asked.

“I can’t confirm that,” the man said.

“The Network Stealing Agency.”

“That’s not what it stands for,” he said indignantly. “It’s the National Security Agency. We ensure…well, … Read More


Advantages when Designing with FD-SOI

Advantages when Designing with FD-SOI
by Daniel Nenni on 02-23-2015 at 7:00 pm

In total we have blogged 41 times about FD-SOI on SemiWiki which has drawn an audience of 202,960 thus far. Of that traffic 31.68% came directly to SemiWiki (Newsletter), 30.13% came from search, 26.17% from social media (LinkedIn, FaceBook, Twitter, Google+, Reddit, etc…), and 11.99% came from other referring sites. The most… Read More


CEVA Showcasing Image Processor at MWC Barcelona

CEVA Showcasing Image Processor at MWC Barcelona
by Majeed Ahmad on 02-23-2015 at 1:00 pm

Cameras are becoming ubiquitous thanks to a new wave of applications that span GoPro for sports, smart glass for the Internet eyewear, ADAS for car safety, and more. However, while these cameras boast an increasing amount of megapixels to enhance the quality of vision, what they increasingly need is more processing power to analyze… Read More


GlobalFoundries 2014: a Year of Change

GlobalFoundries 2014: a Year of Change
by Paul McLellan on 02-23-2015 at 7:00 am

GlobalFoundries at the end of 2014 is a very different company from what it was a the beginning of the year.

At the start of 2014, GF was a company with:

  • a CEO in Ajit Manocha who was reputed to be just a safe pair of hands while the company found a new CEO
  • several 200mm fabs in Singapore (the old Chartered fabs) running mature processes,
Read More

Synchronizer Optimization 101

Synchronizer Optimization 101
by Daniel Nenni on 02-22-2015 at 9:00 pm

A webinar presented Last week introduced two free aids to evaluating synchronizer Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF). The first, MetaACE LTD, is used to characterize the intrinsic parameters needed to calculate MTBF (tau and Tw). This limited version of MetaACE supports up to 250 circuit nodes, which is enough for a typical C-only-extracted… Read More


Product Review: Google Chromecast

Product Review: Google Chromecast
by Daniel Payne on 02-22-2015 at 1:00 pm

Our household members own both Apple and Android devices, so we wanted a way to share our photos or videos on the Samsung TV. The device we ended up buying is called Chromecast from Google, and it’s a small media streaming device that plugs into an HDMI port on our TV. We’ve had Chromecast for about six weeks now.… Read More


Simply the Highest Performing Cortex-M MCU

Simply the Highest Performing Cortex-M MCU
by Eric Esteve on 02-22-2015 at 11:30 am

If you target high growth markets like wearable (Sport Watches, Fitness Bands, Wearable medical) industrial (mPOS, Telematics, etc.) or Smart Appliances, you expect using a power efficient MCU delivering high DMIPs count. We are talking about systems requiring a low Bill of Material (BoM) both in term of cost and devices count.… Read More


Analyzing Power Nets Early and Often, a New White Paper

Analyzing Power Nets Early and Often, a New White Paper
by Paul McLellan on 02-22-2015 at 7:00 am

One of the big challenges in designing ICs today is designing a robust power net capable of delivering necessary current levels to all areas of the die. Getting it wrong can, of course, lead to circuit failures that range from non-functional silicon, through intermittent performance and functional problems, to early EM-driven… Read More


IoT Sensor Node Designs Call for Highly Integrated Flows

IoT Sensor Node Designs Call for Highly Integrated Flows
by Tom Simon on 02-21-2015 at 7:00 pm

Applications for IoT sensors are becoming more sophisticated, especially for industrial usage. Building optimal sensors for different applications requires multi-domain design, optimization and verification flows. The sensor devices are usually MEMS, and as such have electrical properties that need to be tailored to … Read More


The PTAB Inter Partes Review process: Danger, Will Robinson

The PTAB Inter Partes Review process: Danger, Will Robinson
by Scott Griffith on 02-21-2015 at 7:00 am

Companies with significant investment in their patent portfolios have recently faced a harsh reality: their intellectual property has become a collection of paper with large targets on them. Taking aim is the US Patent and Trademark Office’s Patent Trials and Appeal Board (PTAB), and recent figures on dismissed claims shows… Read More