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Xilinx’s 16nm vs. Altera 14nm

Xilinx’s 16nm vs. Altera 14nm
by Luke Miller on 06-04-2014 at 8:00 pm

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

Non-separation of power and performance
by Don Dingee on 06-04-2014 at 2:00 pm

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


IoT Breakfast Panel at DAC

IoT Breakfast Panel at DAC
by Daniel Payne on 06-03-2014 at 7:21 pm

Tuesday morning at DAC I enjoyed a free breakfast courtesy of Synopsysand GLOBALFOUNDRIESwhere I learned more about the emerging market of IoT, and what it means to semiconductor, EDA and IP vendors. Panelists included: Semico Research, HP, Synopsys, GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Broadcom. … Read More


Ceaseless Field Test for Safety Critical Devices

Ceaseless Field Test for Safety Critical Devices
by Pawan Fangaria on 06-03-2014 at 3:00 am

While focus of the semiconductor industry has shifted to DACin this week and unfortunately I couldn’t attend due to some of my management exams, in my spare time I was browsing through some of the webpages of Cadenceto check their new offerings (although they have a great list of items to showcase at DAC) and to my pleasure I came across… Read More


High Sigma Yield Analysis and Optimization at DAC

High Sigma Yield Analysis and Optimization at DAC
by Daniel Payne on 06-02-2014 at 7:20 pm

When I hear the phrase “high sigma” I think of the EDA vendor Solido, however at DAC on Monday I visited another EDA company called MunEDAthat has several products of interest to transistor-level IC designers. I was able to speak with three different people from MunEDA and here’s what I learned.… Read More


Getting the best from a Radio Spectrum: MIMO

Getting the best from a Radio Spectrum: MIMO
by Eric Esteve on 06-02-2014 at 8:21 am

Exchanging data through wireless network is that we are doing every day, every hour if not every minute. Not only we use our smartphone to discuss or exchange Emails, but also to download, or upload, massive amounts of data. Thus, the radio spectrum has become to be busy, and is an expansive piece for carriers. Optimizing this radio… Read More


Advice for Out-of-towners

Advice for Out-of-towners
by Paul McLellan on 06-02-2014 at 3:29 am

You are visiting San Francisco and you have dutifully read your guide book. Let me give you some contrarian advice.

See the Golden Gate Bridge. The best way is not to drive there or get a taxi, but to rent a bicycle (lots of places on that side of the city, try Googling “blazing saddles”) and cycle across the bridge. You can then go down … Read More