CAST Compression IP Webinar 800x100 (2)

Front-End Design Summit: Physically Aware Design

Front-End Design Summit: Physically Aware Design
by Daniel Nenni on 11-24-2013 at 12:00 pm

Save closure time and boost performance by incorporating knowledge of physically aware design early into your front-end design implementation flow

With the adoption of advanced process nodes, design closure is becoming increasingly difficult due to the lack of convergence between the front end and the back end of the register-transfer… Read More


Intel’s Mea Culpa!

Intel’s Mea Culpa!
by Daniel Nenni on 11-24-2013 at 11:00 am

The Intel analyst meeting last week reads like an absolute train wreck with INTC stock dropping 5%+ the very next day. Since I work in the fabless semiconductor ecosystem during the day I was not able to listen to it live like the other pundits. Nor am I as easily fooled by Power Point slides. I did however review the materials and would… Read More


Better License Usage vs More Licenses

Better License Usage vs More Licenses
by Paul McLellan on 11-22-2013 at 11:00 am

When you see a new product announcement from an EDA company, it is always put in terms that make it seem as if the engineer is sitting at his or her desktop with a big server and is running the new tool to wondrous effect. But the reality in the real world is that most companies have a computing infrastructure of server farms, often several… Read More


Signoff Summit and Voltus

Signoff Summit and Voltus
by Paul McLellan on 11-22-2013 at 10:21 am

Yesterday Cadence had an all-day Signoff Summit where they talked about the tools that they have for signoff in advanced nodes. Well, of course, those tools work just fine in non-advanced nodes too, but at 20nm and 16nm there are FinFETs, double patterning, timing impacts from dummy metal fill, a gazillion corners to be analyzed… Read More


Thermal Analysis for 3D SoC Integration

Thermal Analysis for 3D SoC Integration
by Daniel Payne on 11-21-2013 at 7:01 pm

The first time that I saw a DRAM in a ceramic package running on a tester I made the mistake of touching my finger to the metal lid, scorching my finger and teaching me a lesson that ICs can run extremely hot. I’ve read a lot the past few years about 3D IC design, and immediately my mind becomes curious about how an engineer would go… Read More


It’s about the mobile GPU memory bandwidth per watt, folks

It’s about the mobile GPU memory bandwidth per watt, folks
by Don Dingee on 11-21-2013 at 4:00 pm

There has been a lot of huffing and puffing lately about 64-bit cores making it into the Apple A7 and other mobile SoCs, and we could probably dedicate a post to that discussion. However, there are a couple other wrinkles to the Apple A7 that should be getting a lot more attention.

There are two primary causes of user frustration in multimedia… Read More


QCOM delivers first TSMC 20nm mobile chips!

QCOM delivers first TSMC 20nm mobile chips!
by Daniel Nenni on 11-21-2013 at 3:00 pm

QCOM is now sampling the TSMC 20nm version of its market dominating Gobi LTE modem. The announcement also included a new turbo charged version of their 28nm Snapdragon 800 SoC with a Krait 450 quad core CPU and Adrino 420 GPU. Given the comparable benchmarks between the Intel 22nm SoC and the 28nm SoCs from Apple and QCOM, the new 20nm… Read More


Semiconductor market could grow 15% in 2014

Semiconductor market could grow 15% in 2014
by Bill Jewell on 11-20-2013 at 8:00 pm

The global semiconductor market has grown 4% for the first three quarters of 2013 compared to a year ago, according to World Semiconductor Trades Statistics (WSTS). Guidance for 4Q 2013 revenue change versus 3Q 2013 varies widely for key semiconductor companies. Texas Instruments (TI), Broadcom, Infineon and Renesas all expect… Read More


The Rosetta Stone of Lithography

The Rosetta Stone of Lithography
by Paul McLellan on 11-20-2013 at 3:14 pm

At major EDA events, CEDA (the IEEE council on EDA, I guess you already know what that bit stands for) hosts a lunch and presentation for attendees and others. This week was ICCAD and the speaker was Lars Liebmann of IBM on The Escalating Design Impact of Resolution-Challenged Lithography. Lars decided to give us a whirlwind tour … Read More


Revisiting Andy Grove’s "Only the Paranoid Survive"

Revisiting Andy Grove’s "Only the Paranoid Survive"
by Ed McKernan on 11-19-2013 at 10:00 pm

Over the course of the last fifty years there have been two significant books that have delivered emotional and operational clarity on the rise and fall of high tech companies and industries: The Innovator’s Dilemma and Only the Paranoid Survive. Amazingly, these two books were released within a year of each other (1996, 1997) … Read More