In the first post of this series, we named the popular methods for texture compression in OpenGL ES, particularly Imagination Technologies PVRTC on all Apple and many Android mobile devices. Now, let’s explore what texture compression involves, what PVRTC does, and how it differs from other approaches.… Read More



Samsung 28nm Beats Intel 22nm!
There was some serious backlash to the “Intel Bay Trail Fail” blog I posted last week, mostly personal attacks by the spoon fed Intel faithful, but there are however some very interesting points made amongst the 30+ comments so be sure and read them when you have a chance.
The Business insider article “The iPhone… Read More
How Do You Do Computational Photography at HD Video Rates?
Increasingly, a GPU is misnamed as a “graphics” processing unit. They are really specialized architecture highly parallel compute engines. You can use these compute engines for graphics, of course, but people are inventive and find ways of using GPUs for other tasks that can take advantage of the highly parallel… Read More
Early Test –> Less Expensive, Better Health, Faster Closure
I am talking about the health of electronic and semiconductor design, which if made sound at RTL stage, can set it right for the rest of the design cycle for faster closure and also at lesser cost. Last week was the week of ITC(International Test Conference) for the Semiconductor and EDA community. I was looking forward to what ITC… Read More
Mentor Teaches Us About the Higg’s Boson
Once a year Mentor has a customer appreciation event in Silicon Valley with a guest speaker on some aspect of science. This is silicon valley, after all, so we all have to be geeks. This year it was Dr Sean Carroll from CalTech on The Particle at the End of the Universe, the Hunt for The Higg’s Boson and What’s Next.
Wally … Read More
EDAC Export Seminar: Don’t Know This Stuff…Go Directly to Jail…Do Not Pass Go
I am not making this up: All exports from the United States of EDA software and services are controlled under the Export Administration Regulations, administered by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS). You need to understand these regulations. Failure to comply can result in severe … Read More
Are 28nm Transistors the Cheapest…Forever?
It is beginning to look as if 28nm transistors, which are the cheapest per million gates compared to any earlier process such as 45nm, may also be the cheapest per million gates compared to any later process such as 20nm.
What we know so far: FinFET seems to be difficult technology because of the 3D structure and so the novel manufacturing… Read More
TSMC’s 16FinFET and 3D IC Reference Flows
Today TSMC announced three reference flows that they have been working on along with various EDA vendors (and ARM and perhaps other IP suppliers). The three new flows are:
- 16FinFET Digital Reference Flow. Obviously this has full support for non-planar FinFET transistors including extraction, quantized pitch placement, low-vdd
How to Design an LTE Modem
Designing an LTE modem is an interesting case study in architectural and system level design because it is pretty much on the limit of what is possible in a current process node such as 28nm. I talked to Johannes Stahl of Synopsys about how you would accomplish this with the Synopsys suite of system level tools. He is the first to admit… Read More
Intel Bay Trail Fail
Now that the IDF 2013 euphoria is fading I would like to play devil’s advocate and make a case for why Intel is still not ready to compete in the mobile market. It was very clear from the keynotes that Intel is a chip company, always has been, always will be, and that will not get them the market share they need to be relevant in mobile electronics,… Read More
Should Intel be Split in Half?