In January 2001 we had a new American president, George W. Bush, I was working at Mentor Graphics, and Apple introduced an MP3 player called the iPod with a hard drive capable of holding 1,000 songs. In the previous decades we enjoyed portable music from tape-based, CD, or mini-CD devices like the Sony Walkman. The first several generations… Read More
A Principled AI Path to Spec-Driven VerificationI have seen a flood of verification announcements…Read More
448G: Ready or not, here it comes!The march toward higher-speed networking continues to be…Read More
Should the US Government Invest in Intel?“Most companies don’t die because they are wrong;…Read More
PDF Solutions and the Value of Fearless CreativityPDF Solutions has been around for over 30…Read More
Xilinx’s Mixed Signal FPGA
Something in all the Xilinx chatter of UltraScale 20nm, 16nm, having massive amounts of Gigabit transceivers, DSP blocks, RAM, HLS, Rapid Design Closure gets lost… and that is Xilinx’s ability for Mixed Signals. I do not mean when you are talking with the wife (Remember Listen!), but a wonderful block that lives within… Read More
TSMC OIP presentations available!
Are you a TSMC customer or partner? If so, you’ll want to take a look at these presentations from the 2013 TSMC Open Innovation Platform conference:
- Design Reliability with Calibre YE-SmartFill and Calibre PERC (Broadcom & Mentor Graphics)
New methodologies were developed for 28nm designs using Calibre SmartFill and Calibre
Compositions allow NoCs to connect easier
I blame it on Henry Ford, William Levitt, and the NY State Board of Regents, among others. We went through a phase with this irresistible urge to stamp out blocks of sameness, creating mass produced clones of everything from cars to houses to students.
Thank goodness, that’s pretty much over. The thinking of simplifying system design… Read More
Simulation of Novel TFT Devices
Traditionally logic devices built on top of thin-film-transistors (TFTs) have used one type of device, either an NMOS a-Si: TFT (hydrogenated amorphous silicon) or a PMOS organic device. Recently a-Si:H and pentacene PMOS TFTs have been integrated into complementary logic structures similar to CMOS. This, in turn, creates… Read More
TSMC projects $800 Million of 2.5/3D-IC Revenues for 2016
At TSMC’s latest earnings call held mid January 2014, an analyst asked TSMC for a revenue forecast for their emerging 2.5/3D product line. C.C. Wei, President and Co-CEO answered: “800 Million Dollars in 2016 ”. TSMC has demonstrated great vision many times before. For me, an enthusiastic supporter of this technology, this statement… Read More
What will drive MEMS to drive I-o-T and I-o-P?
By I-o-P, I mean Internet-of-People- I couldn’t think of anything better than this to describe a technology which becomes your custodian for everything you do; you may consider it as your good companion through life or an invariably controlling spy. This is obvious with the embedded sensor techno-products such as Kolibree, a … Read More
SPICE Circuit Simulator Gets a Jolt
I’ve been using SPICE circuit simulators since 1978, both internally and commercially developed, and a lot has changed since the early days where netlists were simulated in batch mode on time-share mainframes. We used to wait overnight for our simulations to complete, and in the morning had to pickup our output results … Read More
Stop TDDB from getting through peanut butter
There are a few dozen causes of semiconductor failure. Most can be lumped into one of three categories: material defects, process or workmanship issues, or environmental or operational overstress. Even when all those causes are carefully mitigated, one factor is limiting reliability more as geometries shrink – and it… Read More
Is Altera Leaving Intel for TSMC?
There is a rumor making the rounds that Altera will leave Intel and return to TSMC. Rumors are just rumors but this one certainly has legs and I will tell you why and what I would have done if I were Altera CEO John Daane. Altera is a great company, one that I have enjoyed working with over the years, but I really think they made a serious mistake… Read More
Intel’s Pearl Harbor Moment