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IC Design for Implantable Devices Treating Epilepsy

IC Design for Implantable Devices Treating Epilepsy
by Daniel Payne on 06-09-2013 at 8:05 pm

I’m utterly amazed at how IC-based products are improving our quality of life by implantable devices. The modern day pacemaker has given people added years of life by electrically stimulating the heart. A privately-held company called NeuroPace was founded in Mountain View, California to treat epilepsy by using responsive… Read More


First FinFETs Manufactured at #50DAC!

First FinFETs Manufactured at #50DAC!
by Daniel Nenni on 06-09-2013 at 5:00 pm


This was my 30[SUP]th[/SUP] DAC and the second most memorable. The most memorable was my second DAC (1985) in Las Vegas with my new bride. We had a romantic evening ending with ice cream sundaes at midnight that we still talk about. This year SemiWiki had Dr. Paul McLellan, Dr. Eric Esteve, Daniel Payne, Don Dingee, Randy Smith, and… Read More


Metastability and Fatal System Errors

Metastability and Fatal System Errors
by Daniel Nenni on 06-09-2013 at 3:00 pm

Metastability is an inescapable phenomenon in digital electronic systems. This phenomenon has been known to cause fatal system errors for half a century. Over the years, designers have used convenient rules of thumb for designing synchronizers to mitigate it. However, as digital circuits have become more complex, smaller … Read More


DAC IP Workshop: Are You Ready For Quality Control?

DAC IP Workshop: Are You Ready For Quality Control?
by Paul McLellan on 06-07-2013 at 3:08 am

On Sunday I attended an IP workshop which was presented by TSMC, Atrenta, Sonics and IPextreme. It turns out that the leitmotiv of the afternoon was SpyGlass.

Dan Kochpatcharin of TSMC was first up and gave a little bit of history of the company. They built up their capacity over the years, as I’ve written about before, and last… Read More


Hierarchical Design Management – A Must

Hierarchical Design Management – A Must
by Pawan Fangaria on 06-06-2013 at 8:30 pm

Considering the technological progress, economical pressure, increased outsourcing and IP re-use, semiconductor industry is one of the most challenged industry today. Very frequently products get outdated leading to new development cycles. It becomes very difficult and costly to build the whole scheme of data foundation… Read More


Reshoring Semiconductor Manufacturing

Reshoring Semiconductor Manufacturing
by Paul McLellan on 06-06-2013 at 5:29 pm

So where in the world do you think semiconductor manufacturing is increasing the fastest? OK, Taiwan, that was pretty easy. But in second place, with over 20% of the world’s semiconductor equipment capital investment is the US. Growing faster than Europe, China, Japan and equal with Korea.

This was not the case half a dozen… Read More


ARM: AMBA 5, Cortex-A12, Mali, video, POP…

ARM: AMBA 5, Cortex-A12, Mali, video, POP…
by Paul McLellan on 06-06-2013 at 4:39 pm

ARM announced several new products at DAC in a number of different spaces. In addition I got invited to a briefing with Simon Segars, 30 days from when he takes over as CEO of ARM. I asked Simon if he expected to make any major changes and he basically said ‘no’. ARM’s basic strategy in both mobile and now enterprise… Read More


DAC: Tempus Lunch

DAC: Tempus Lunch
by Paul McLellan on 06-06-2013 at 4:03 pm

I had time for lunch on Monday. That is to say, there was a Cadence panel session about Has Timing Signoff Innovation has become and Oxymoron? What Happened and How Do We Fix It?

The moderator was Brian Fuller, lately of EE Times but now Editor-in-Chief at Cadence (I’m not sure quite what it means either). On the panel were Dipesh… Read More


DAC: Wally’s Vision

DAC: Wally’s Vision
by Paul McLellan on 06-06-2013 at 3:07 pm

One new feature at DAC this year is that several of the keynotes are preceded by a ten minute vision of the future from one of the EDA CEOs. Today it was Wally Rhines’s turn. Wally is CEO of Mentor Graphics. He titled his talk Changing the World Through EDA. Since EDA as we know it started in the late 1970s, the number of transistors… Read More


DAC: Gary Smith: Don’t Give Away Your Models

DAC: Gary Smith: Don’t Give Away Your Models
by Paul McLellan on 06-06-2013 at 4:10 am

As is now traditional, Gary Smith kicked off DAC proper (there were workshops earlier and some co-located conferences started days before). He started by dismissing the idea that it costs $170M to do an SoC design.

In fact he looked at 3 different cases. Firstly, the completely unconstrained design. Well, no design is completely… Read More