We have entered the Summer lull, the quiet period before what is likely to be Apple’s largest volume launch of smartphones ever. While the launches are coming in like clockwork, it is the magnitude of the ramp that is likely to surprise many and it will be due not just to the features of iOS7, but also to the adoption of a well-worn Microsoft… Read More




Intel Versus the Fabless Semiconductor Ecosystem!
In case you missed it, there is an interesting conversation on my blog, The Future of Mobile Devices and the Semiconductor Landscape!, between Ashraf Eassa and myself. Ashraf and I also converse privately, he’s a very respectful and intelligent young man. For the last year Ashraf has been writing financial articles for Seeking… Read More
4th Fundamental Circuit Element – Can it be a boon to Semiconductor Industry?
It was a nice break after my vacation, indulging into some of the pure science stuff, when an old colleague of mine, Dr. Gaurav Gandhi, founder of mLabs in Delhi came across introducing me to his new research and possible developments in this field. Gaurav was actually in my product validation team while I was at Cadence, very passionate… Read More
Should an IP vendor become a PHY IP Dealer?
This is not a theoretical question. Imagine that you are developing and selling digital IP, like Interface Controller, PCI Express or USB 2.0 or 3.0, or MIPI Camera Serial Interface (CSI) or Display Serial Interface (DSI). If you look at companies like Synopsys, they have built their success on the “Integrated Interface IP” concept.… Read More
Calypto 2013 Report
Each year Calypto runs a survey of end-users. This year’s survey and report has two parts, power reduction and high level synthesis (HLS).
The topics covered are:
- survey methodology and demographics
- top methods used to reduce power
- engineering time spent on specfiic RTL tasks to reduce power
- plans to deploy RTL power reduction
GSA Awards Deadline Looming + GSA Entrepreneurship Conference
GSA has award for various categories that are presented at their annual awards dinner. This year’s dinner will be on Thursday December 12th at the Santa Clara Convention Center.
Some of the awards have now passed their cutoff date. But a few remain open until July 12th (hurry, just one more week):
- Startup to Watch Award
- Most
Should the Design Automation Conference Colocate with SEMICON West?
My friend and fellow blogger Kurt Shuler wrote recently, “DAC Is Dead? Long Live DAC!”, which is worth a click over. In addition to providing a nice attendance graph and the top three reasons why it is NOT all rosy, Kurt suggests colocating DAC with other conferences (DESIGN West) but fails to mention SEMICON West.
SEMICON West is … Read More
Easy SystemC Debugging
Electronic system design has been slowly migrating to higher level languages such as SystemC for more than a decade now. SystemC is an open source C++ library that has emerged as a standard for high-level design and system modeling. Writing code in SystemC has several advantages which I won’t elaborate on in this article, though… Read More
Free Pass to SEMICON West!
SEMICON West is next week, July 9-11 in San Francisco. If you haven’t signed up, and want to attend for free instead of $100,
1) Send an email to silicon_test@mentor.com with subject line “Semicon pass.”
2) Register for SEMICON West
3) After registering, download the SEMICON West mobile app and start building your schedule. Here… Read More
LicenseMonitor Users’ Group Silicon Valley
If DAC is the most general event in our industry, then the LicenseMonitor Users’ Group Silicon Valley has to be one of the most focused. It was held back in May but one of the key presentations was Brian Janes of RTDA talking about what is new in the latest version of LicenseMonitor which is 2013.03.
Like a number of people at RTDA,… Read More
TSMC N3 Process Technology Wiki