Most IC engineers learn best by hands-on experience when another more experienced person can show us what to do. If you cannot find that experienced person, then the next best thing is a video from an expert. I was surprised to find out that video was so important today that the #2 most viewed web site on the Internet was www.youtube.com… Read More




Fast & Accurate Thermal Analysis of 3D-ICs
As Moore’s law started saturating on a single semiconductor die, the semiconductor community came up with the approach of growing vertically by stacking dies one above other in a 3D-IC arrangement. However, a major concern with a 3D-IC is that the heat generated by each die can get trapped in the stack, and hence it’s extremely important… Read More
A Brief History of Functional Verification
Usually these brief history pieces are totally written by the SemiWiki blogger whose name is at the top. Often me since that was how I prototyped book chapters (buy). Well, OK, I did actually write this but it is completely cribbed from a presentation earlier this week by Wally Rhines who gave a sort of keynote at the announcement of… Read More
Semiconductor Meme Contest!
Hopefully we all know what memes are, if not, ask one of your children or grandchildren. Having four grown children of my own I see memes posted on my FaceBook page now and again in support of my superior parenting skills. Remember when EETimes used to run a picture and readers would send in funny captions? An early form of meme, not that… Read More
Expert Constraint Management Leads to Productivity & Faster Convergence
The SoC designs of today are much more complex than ever in terms of number of clocks, IPs, levels of hierarchies, several modes of operations, different types of validations and checks for growing number of constraints at various stages in the design flow. As a semiconductor design evolves through several stages from RTL to layout,… Read More
4G shalt thou not count, neither count thou 2G
Five years from now, what will be the leading mobile connectivity standard? If you said 4G, please report to the brainwashing remediation center nearest you immediately. 3G is not only here to stay for the long haul, it’s growing – and will quickly become the preferred choice for M2M deployments.… Read More
U2U: Things You Might Not Know About TSMC
At Mentor’s U2U this afternoon I attended a presentation on TSMC’s use of Calibre PERC (it is a programmable electrical rule checker) for qualification of IP in TSMC’s IP9000 program. I’ve written about this before here. Basically IP providers at N20SOC, N16FF, and below are required to use PERC to guarantee… Read More
GSA 3DIC
At the GSA Silicon Summit this afternoon there was a discussion of 3D IC and 2.5D IC. The session was moderated by Javier DeLaCruz of eSilicon and the panelists were:
- Calvin Cheung of ASE (an OSAT)
- Gil Lvey of OptimalTest (a test house)
- Bob Patti of Tezzaron (semiconductor company specializing in TSV-based designs)
- Riko Radojcic
Advancements in Nanoscale Manufacturing
I’m at the GSA Silicon Summit today, at the computer history museum. The first panel session this morning was about future process technology. It was moderated by Joe Sawicki of Mentor with a panel consisting of Rob Aitken from ARM, Paul Farrar of G450C, Peter Huang of TSMC, John Kibarian of PDF Solutions and someone from Applied… Read More
Death to ‘content marketing’
If you ask me: Are you blogging for Semiwiki? The real answer could be:
No, I am just telling stories, but these are true stories! This idea is perfectly illustrated by this post that I found on:
http://www.pivotalpod.com/death-to-content-marketing/
And in particular this extract, as it is something that I could have written … Read More
Flynn Was Right: How a 2003 Warning Foretold Today’s Architectural Pivot