Interconnect plays a significant role in the semiconductor design of a SoC; if not architected and handled well, it can lead to an overdesigned SoC impacting on its power, performance and area. Since a SoC generally contains multiple IPs requiring different data paths to satisfy varying latency and performance cycles, it has … Read More




Mobile Maturity Leads to Extremes
The smartphone is becoming a commodity, a lifecycle stage where the strong get stronger, the weak get weaker, and the products standardize and start to look alike. This dynamic is driving innovation in existing products to extremes and spawning a new class of wearable devices.
Today two major players are leading the mobile hardware… Read More
Xilinx Pulls Back the 20nm UltraScale Curtain
This week Xilinx has announced that “The Xilinx 20nm All Programmable UltraScale™ portfolio is now available with detailed device tables, product documentation, design tools and methodology support.”
Do you know what 20nm is? It’s small, tiny. Think about it this way, as I just learned today that one nanometer is about as long… Read More
Impact Conference: Focus on the IP Ecosystem
Jim Feldhan, President of Semico Research presented earlier this month at the Impact Conference on the topic: Focus on the IP Ecosystem. I’ve reviewed his 19 page presentation, and summarize it with:
- End markets like smart phones and tablets are dominant
- Growth drivers include the Internet of Things (IoT)
- World semi forecast
Known Unknowns and Unknown Unknowns
Donald Rumsfeld categorized what we knew into known unknowns and unknown unknowns. In a chip design, those unknown unknowns can bite you and leave you with a non-functional design, perhaps even intermittent failures which can be among the hardest problems to debug.
Chips are too big to do any sort of full gate-level simulation,… Read More
Designing a DDR3 System to Meet Timing
My very first thought when hearing about HSPICE is using it for IC simulation at the transistor-level, however it can also be used to simulate a package or PCB interconnect very accurately, like in the PCB layout of a DDR3 system where timing is critical. I attended a webinar this morning that was jointly presented by Zuken and Synopsys… Read More
Why CEVA Is My Favorite Semiconductor IP Stock For 2014
As a full time financial writer/investor, I am always on the lookout for compelling risk/reward opportunities, particularly in small-cap tech. While the world of large-cap tech is generally well understood by the investment/analyst community, smaller cap names are usually under-followed and often misunderstood. One such… Read More
Cadence CEO Keynotes DVCON 2014!
Next year’s DVCon attendees can expect to learn about both practical solutions to their pressing problems that can be applied today and also receive a preview of the technologies that will affect them in the near future. DVCON is March 3-6, 2014 @ the DoubleTree Hotel in San Jose.
KEYNOTE: An Executive View of Trends and Technologies… Read More
Could FD-SOI be Cheaper too?
We agree now that FD-SOI technology is Faster, Cooler, Simpler. But can it also be a cheaper technology? Let start with an overview of the current estimation of the development cost for complex SoC on advanced technology nodes. The following data are extracted from International Business Strategies, Inc 2013 report. The first… Read More
Equipment Spending Down 2013; Expect 33% Growth in 2014
SEMI’s World Fab Forecast report, published in November, predicts that fab equipment spending will decline about -9 percent (US$32.5 billion) in 2013 (including new, used and in-house manufactured equipment). Setting aside the used 300mm equipment Globalfoundries acquired from Promos at the beginning of 2013 (NT$20-30 … Read More
Should the US Government Invest in Intel?