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Steve Wozniak in 1976 designed the Apple 1 while working at HP during the daytime, and he used standard parts to keep costs low, like:
- 6502 CPU from MOS Technology
- 8K of DRAM
- TTL logic for driving video and random logic
- PROM to hold the BASIC language and primitive OS
…
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As I blogged about recently, eSilicon have completely automated the quote process for their MPW shuttle service. You can use an online interface that runs in the browser but there is also an app that you can download from the App Store.
So I decided I had a few million dollars to burn and I’d get myself my very own TSMC 20nm parts.… Read More
Mobile World Congress 2014 has already showcased two very different mobile SoC machines in high gear. After watching one big US moment and Canada otherwise dominate everything involving ice and a stick at the Sochi Olympics, I’m reaching into the Wayne Gretzky pile of quotes for a metaphor to examine Intel’s move – and why they are… Read More
Big SoC designs typically break existing EDA tools and old methodologies, which then give rise to new EDA tools and methodologies out of necessity. Such is the case with the daunting task of verification planning and management where terabytes of data have simply swamped older EDA tools, making them unpleasant and ineffective… Read More
With a well-chronicled share inside cellular baseband interfaces for mobile devices, one might think that is the entire CEVA story, especially going into Mobile World Congress 2014 this week. MWC is still a phone show, but is becoming more and more about the Internet of Things and wearables, and CEVA and its ecosystem are showing… Read More
BitCoin Algorithm
Invented by a mystery person/group with the alias “Satoshi Nakamoto”. [You can read a consolidation of the paper here]. The essential elements are:
· Peer to Peer Network with self-validation
· Exponentially increasing compute cost
· Finite supply with exponential conversion
· Hidden in plain… Read More
Contextual awareness likely will emerge as one of the most exciting new user experiences enabled by wearable products. It happens when a mobile device, carried or worn, senses the user’s surroundings and presents information, offers advice, or controls itself and/or other devices according to that specific environment. This… Read More
Kandou Bus uses a novel form of spatial coding to transmit data between wired chips. The main idea is to introduce correlations between the signals sent on the interface, and choose the correlations judiciously to lower the power consumption, increase the speed, and lower the footprint. It is a generalization of differential … Read More
SEMICON is not just the event in San Francisco every July, there are other SEMICONs around the world. Coming up next, Shanghai China. In fact there are four colocated events:
- SEMICON China 2014, March 18th-20th
- The 8th PV fab managers’ forum, March 17th-18th (all things PhotoVoltaic)
- FPD China 2014, March 18th-20th (all
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As your SoC design can contain hundreds of IP blocks, how do you verify that all of the IP blocks will still work together correctly once assembled? Well, you could run lots of functional verification at the full-chip level and hope for the best in terms of code coverage and expected behavior. You could buy an expensive emulator to … Read More
Should Intel be Split in Half?