At the end of last week I talked to Sanjiv Kaul, the new CEO of Calypto. Just to give a little background for those that haven’t been following along at home, Calypto was founded to try and solve the very hard problem of sequential logical equivalence checking (mostly by people from the engineering team that I managed at Ambit).… Read More
A Brief History of the Foundry Industry, part 2
Part 1 here.
The line between fabless semiconductor companies and IDMs has blurred over the last decade. Back in the 1990s, most IDMs manufactured most of their own product, perhaps using a foundry for a small percentage of additional capacity when required. But their own manufacturing was competitive, both in terms of the capacity… Read More
We are Live at CDNLive 2013!
Dr. Paul McLellan and I will be covering CDNLive this week, one of the premier EDA events of the year. Take a look at the agenda and exhibits, this year it looks like a full on Design Automation Conference! There is definitely something for everyone!
Get ready for two full days of content with more than a hundred tracks and keynotes by… Read More
Reliability is the New Power
It has be come a cliche to say that “power is the new timing”, the thing that keeps designers up at night and drives the major architectural decisions in big SoCs. Nobody is saying it yet but perhaps “reliability is the new power” will be tomorrow’s received wisdom.
I talked to Adrian Evans of IROCTech… Read More
Qualcomm and Intel Dynasty Scenario at 14nm
At a different time, but certainly within the past 12 months, Paul Otellini was asked if Intel would be a Foundry for Qualcomm. His reply was that it did not leave a good taste in his mouth. Nevertheless it was not rejected and the door that remained open just a crack is likely to swing open for Qualcomm, the premier mobile silicon supplier… Read More
Silicon Summit April 18th, 2013
Moore’s Law has transcended computing expectations; however, its promise will eventually reach scalability limitations due to extraordinary consumer demands. Future technology encompasses breakthroughs capable of interaction with the outside world, which the More than Moore movement achieves. Through integrating … Read More
Tanner EDA v16 OpenAccess is here!
Tanner EDA is a pleasure to work with, they are big on collaboration and customers absolutely love their tools. With the Synopsys acquisition of SpringSoft, Tanner needs to step up and fill the void of the affordable Laker tools. Take a close look at their new v16 release and let me know how they are doing.
New capabilities for back-end… Read More
Multiprotocol 10G-KR and PCIe Gen-3 PHY IP will support big data and smartphone explosion
We have frequently said in Semiwiki how crucial is it for the SC industry to benefit from high quality PHY IP… even if, from a pure business point of view (MBA minded), PHY IP business does not look so attractive. In fact, to be able to design on-the-edge SerDes and PLL (the two key pieces), you need to build and maintain a highly skilled… Read More
A Brief History of the Foundry Industry, part 1
The fundamental economics of the semiconductor industry are summed up in the phrase “fill the fab.” Building a fab is a major investment. With a lifetime of just a few years, the costs of owning a fab are dominated by depreciation of the fixed capital assets (the building, the air and water purification equipment, the manufacturing… Read More
Lithography from Contact Printing to EUV, DSA and Beyond
I used my secret powers (being a blogger will get you a press pass) to go to the first day of the SPIE conference on advanced lithography a couple of weeks ago. Everything that happens to with process nodes seems to be driven by lithography, and everything that happens in EDA is driven by semiconductor process. It is the place to find … Read More
The Data Crisis is Unfolding – Are We Ready?