SoCs face a lot of issues related to security and the Network-on-Chip (NoC) is in a good position to facilitate system-wide services. SoCs are now so complex that one of the challenges is to make sure that the chip does what it is meant to do and doesn’t do what it isn’t meant to do. Just as in software, security used to be … Read More
Somebody at the NSA has a sense of humor
We have to go way back in the annals of entertainment history to find the origin of the word “Jeep”, not just a term of endearment hung on a WWII utility vehicle. Pictured is Eugene the Jeep, a mystical creature belonging to the 4th Dimension, who first appeared to torment Popeye the Sailor in 1936.… Read More
SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium
The SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium (ISS) is Jan 13th-15th at the Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay. When I discussed this with my beautiful wife as a possible business trip for us and mentioned the agenda she stopped me and said, “You had me at Ritz-Carlton!” As you can see by the picture it has a beautiful ocean view and includes a world… Read More
SemiWiki 2013 in Review!
This certainly was an interesting year. The fabless semiconductor ecosystem definitely got stronger and I see nothing but clear skies in 2014. Judging by the SemiWiki 2013 analytics and key search terms we all have an interesting year ahead of us with even more opportunities to grow and innovate. 2013 was also a year of growth and… Read More
2013 Awards, and the Winner is…Power
Of all the things that designers have to worry about in the power-performance-area (PPA) equation, the most challenging is power. SoCs have reached a point that we can put a lot of stuff on them, but if we are not careful we cannot light it all up at once. Dark silicon, where we put subsystems on a chip but then don’t have enough … Read More
ClioSoft at Arasan
Arasan recently adopted ClioSoft for data management (DM) for design and development of Arasan’s Silicon IP products. This morning I talked to Erik Peterson, Senior CAD and Verification Engineer AMS Design about their experiences bringing up ClioSoft.
Data management infrastructure is critical with engineering projects… Read More
Quick MEMS Development Through Virtual Fabrication
The design and manufacture of MEMS is very different and in many ways more complex process than even the most advanced ICs. MEMS involve multiple degrees of freedom (i.e. the device to exhibit different characteristics under different physical state, motion or mechanics), making fabrication of MEMS extremely complex; and hence… Read More
2014: Keep calm, and program gates
I was tempted to call this piece “if you’re not using an FPGA, you’re doing it wrong,” but that didn’t quite capture the whole picture. Social memes aside, the FPGA as we know it is undergoing a serious transformation into a full blown SoC, and 2014 is the year that will usher in one of the biggest changes in the history of embedded design.… Read More
Early Thermal and Power Simulation Using Virtual Prototyping for Pedestrian Detection Applications
In the 1970’s we designed ICs first and when silicon came back then we measured the power and junction temperature. At that time there were no EDA simulation tools or models for full-chip power and temperature analysis. Fast forward to 2013 and we find that temperature and power are still demanding requirements for MPSoC … Read More
Will You Take the Password Pill?
As smartphone and tablet makers desperately search for points of differentiation they will try to push the limits of performance on several fronts to extremes. The password pill and the display-cover display are two of the stranger extreme features on the way.
Extreme inter-connectivity is one of the more useful features that… Read More
The Data Crisis is Unfolding – Are We Ready?