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A Brief History of VLSI Technology, part 1

A Brief History of VLSI Technology, part 1
by Paul McLellan on 07-01-2013 at 8:15 pm

VLSI Technology was founded in 1981 by Dan Floyd, Jack Baletto and Gunnar Wetlesen who had worked together at Signetics. The initial investments were by Hambrecht and Quist, a cross between a VC and a bank, and by Evans and Sutherland, the simulation/graphics company.

The fourth person to join the company was Doug Fairbairn. He … Read More


Smartphone Shipment Explosion Sustained by $50-$75 devices, Mostly in China

Smartphone Shipment Explosion Sustained by $50-$75 devices, Mostly in China
by Eric Esteve on 07-01-2013 at 9:21 am

Until recently, talking about smartphone incredible shipment growth was understood as shipments of A5 iPhone or Galaxy Note, and this was true. Devices priced at $500 or more are shipping like baguette in Paris, but this fact is only true in Europe, Korea, Japan or USA. Does that means that people living populated countries like… Read More


When Atrenta celebrates with STM and CEA-Leti in Grenoble

When Atrenta celebrates with STM and CEA-Leti in Grenoble
by Eric Esteve on 07-01-2013 at 3:20 am

Grenoble is French city well-known within the Semiconductor industry to be one of the last location counting wafer fabs, not only in France but in fact in Europe. Back in the 70’s, under French government impulse, through the Commisariat à l’Energie Atomique (CEA) and the LETI subsidiary in charge of Electronic related research,… Read More


Workload-tuned cores seeing greater interest

Workload-tuned cores seeing greater interest
by Don Dingee on 06-30-2013 at 10:00 pm

Is it possible to design a processor with very high performance and low power consumption? To answer that, embedded illuminati are now focusing on designs tuned to specific workloads – creating a tailored processor that does a few things very efficiently, with nothing extra.… Read More


The Future of Mobile Semiconductor Devices

The Future of Mobile Semiconductor Devices
by Daniel Nenni on 06-30-2013 at 5:00 pm


During my trip to Taiwan I hopped on over to Hong Kong for a speaking engagement. One of the things I do as an “Internationally Recognized Industry Expert” is help the financial world understand the semiconductor landscape as it pertains to SoCs and mobile devices. Usually I do this over the phone or in writing but I prefer to do it in… Read More


Today’s Program is Brought To You by the Letter A

Today’s Program is Brought To You by the Letter A
by Paul McLellan on 06-28-2013 at 9:09 pm

What do nVidia, Freescale and GlobalFoundries have in common? They are semiconductor companies? They are ARM licensees? They are doing 28nm chips? They all have the letter ‘a’ in their names?

All true, but that’s not what I was thinking of. But the letter ‘a’ is a clue since Apache (and Ansys) begin with ‘a’. All three companies have… Read More


Design Test and Regression Management of SoCs

Design Test and Regression Management of SoCs
by Daniel Payne on 06-28-2013 at 2:26 pm

Eric Peersfounded Missing Link tools in 2008 and his company was acquiredby Methodics in 2012, so I met with him at DAC to understand how their EDA tools for Design, Test and Regression Management are used in an SoC design.


Eric Peers, MethodicsRead More