Power regimes for contemporary SOC’s now include a large number of voltage domains. Rail voltages are matched closely to the performance and power requirements of various portions of the design. Indeed, some of the supply voltages are so low that the noise margins in these domains is exceedingly low. Higher voltage domains are… Read More
On the high-speed digital design frontier with Keysight’s Hee-Soo LeeHigh-speed digital (HSD) design is one of the…Read More
Samtec Ushers in a New Era of High-Speed Connectivity at DesignCon 2026As I’ve discussed before, Samtec has a way…Read More
TSMC and Cadence Strengthen Partnership to Enable Next-Generation AI and HPC SiliconTSMC continues to reinforce its leadership in advanced…Read More
TSMC vs Intel Foundry vs Samsung Foundry 2026The global semiconductor industry sits at the foundation…Read MoreAltera 14nm and 10nm Update!
In preparation for this blog I Googled around to get the latest information made available by Altera to see if it matches up with what I know from discussions amongst the fabless semiconductor ecosystem companies. Unfortunately when I Googled Altera+20nm+14nm the first three entries from the Altera website were Error 404 Page… Read More
FinFET Design Enablement
We read about FinFET technology in the semiconductor press daily now, thanks to Intel introducing their TriGate transistors starting in 2011 and creating a race with foundries and IDMs to switch from planar CMOS nodes. To get some perspective about the progress of FinFET IP and EDA tools I spoke with two experts from Synopsys, Swami… Read More
2015, the Year of the Sheep…And the 16nm FPGA
If you live in California anyway, with its large Asian population, you can’t have helped noticing that it was the Lunar New Year a couple of weeks ago, the start of the year of the sheep. A couple of days after the New Year, Xilinx announced their new families of what they now call FPGAs, 3D ICs and MPSoCs. But which the rest of us … Read More
Why did Mentor Acquire Tanner EDA?
You have to love when a professional journalist leaks a story and cites a “source close to the acquisition.” News flash: Anyone “close” to the acquisition is under NDA which is a legally binding agreement, not very professional if you ask me. Bloggers however can write whatever they want but since I was actually “close” to … Read More
MIPI Ecosystem talk at Seattle this week
Sunday 8, March 2015. D-day minus one before the MIPI Alliance Face to Face meeting, starting in Seattle on Monday 9[SUP]th[/SUP] for five days. MIPI members are joining from all around the world to attend this one week meeting. If you take a look at www.mipi.org you will see the names of the 263 members from MIPI. A strong ecosystem… Read More
Apple Watch Announcement
Rock music, invitation only tickets, hollywood lighting, journalists from around the world, live streaming on the web, yes, another typical Apple-orchestrated product launch on Monday, March 9th at the Yerba Buena Center in California.
Up first was a video about Apple’s store opening in West Lake China with superb cinematography.… Read More
Voltage Limbo Dancing: How Low Can You Go?
All chips these days have to worry about power. Indeed it is typically the top of the priority list of concerns, above performance and even area. Transistors are effectively fast and free, but you can’t have too many of them (at least turned on at once). The most obvious way to reduce power is to lower the supply voltage. This … Read More
Is Cadence the Best EDA Company to Work for?
Apparently that is the case. Honestly my choice would have been Mentor but I can easily make an argument for Cadence based on my discussions with the foundries and their top customers but more on that later.
Fortune Magazine last week added Cadence to the 2015 list of “100 Best Companies to Work For” citing a cultural transformation… Read More
Semiconductor in China: Is 3rd Time a Charm?
China has recently announced extremely ambitious plans for becoming more self-sufficient in semiconductors. Today China is about 1/3 of the worldwide IC market but about 90% of that is imported. Think of something like the iPhone assembled in Shenzen with chips from TSMC, Samsung, Hynix, Toshiba/Sandisk , Micron and more (Taiwan,… Read More



Semidynamics Unveils 3nm AI Inference Silicon and Full-Stack Systems