Primarius 2B

Hybrids on BeO then, 3D-IC in silicon now

Hybrids on BeO then, 3D-IC in silicon now
by Don Dingee on 10-21-2012 at 8:10 pm

Once upon a time (since every good story begins that way), I worked on 10kg, 70 mm diameter things that leapt out of tubes and chased after airplanes and helicopters. The electronics for these things were fairly marvelous, in the days when surface mount technology was in its infancy and having reliability problems in some situations.… Read More


Why Blog on SemiWiki.com?

Why Blog on SemiWiki.com?
by Daniel Nenni on 10-21-2012 at 7:00 pm

The Semiconductor Wiki Project, the premier semiconductor collaboration site, is a growing online community of professionals involved with the semiconductor design and manufacturing ecosystem. Since going online January 1st, 2011 more than 400,000 unique visitors have landed at www.SemiWiki.com viewing more than 3M pages… Read More


TSMC OIP Forum 2012 Trip Report!

TSMC OIP Forum 2012 Trip Report!
by Daniel Nenni on 10-21-2012 at 6:00 pm

The second annual TSMC Open Integration Platform Ecosystem Forum was last week and let me tell you it was excellent. Great update on the TSMC process technology road maps, great for networking within the fabless semiconductor ecosystem, great for seeing what’s new in EDA and IP, and great for SemiWiki. It was time well spent for … Read More


A Brief History of Aldec

A Brief History of Aldec
by Daniel Payne on 10-20-2012 at 5:31 pm

Dr. Stanley Hyduke founded Aldecin 1984 and their first product was delivered in 1985, named SUSIE (Standard Universal Simulator for Improved Engineering), a gate-level, DOS-based simulator. The SUSIE simulator was priced lower than other EDA vendor tools from the big three: Daisy, Mentor and Valid (aka DMV). Aldec maintains… Read More


DAC: It’s the Last Week for Many Submissions

DAC: It’s the Last Week for Many Submissions
by Paul McLellan on 10-19-2012 at 2:36 pm

The deadline is coming up at the end of next week (technically on Monday October 29th for those of you who like real brinkmanship) for several aspects of DAC (not submission of papers for the conference itself) but most of the less academic-oriented things.

Proposals for:

  • Special Sessions
  • Tutorials
  • Panel sessions (in the conference
Read More

Intel Quarterly Report: Needs to Do Better

Intel Quarterly Report: Needs to Do Better
by Paul McLellan on 10-19-2012 at 11:51 am

Intel announced its quarterly results a couple of days ago. They had previously downgraded 3rd quarter sales estimates but they managed to beat the downgraded numbers. If you look at the transcript of the call (I didn’t listen live) you’ll see very little mention of mobile and Atom. This is bad news for Intel. Its core… Read More


A Brief History of Mobile: Generations 3 and 4

A Brief History of Mobile: Generations 3 and 4
by Paul McLellan on 10-18-2012 at 8:30 pm

The early first generation analog standards all used a technique known as Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA). All this means is that each call was assigned its own frequency band in the radio spectrum. Since each band was only allocated to one phone, there was no interference between different calls. When a call finished… Read More


Virtuoso Has Twins

Virtuoso Has Twins
by Paul McLellan on 10-18-2012 at 6:01 pm

Cadence has apparently announced that going forward the Virtuoso environment is going to be split into two and offered as two separate code-streams, the current IC6.x and a new IC12.x. The idea is to introduce a new product with features that were specifically developed for new technologies such as double patterning aware layout… Read More


iPhone5 Versus Samsung S3: the Key Question

iPhone5 Versus Samsung S3: the Key Question
by Paul McLellan on 10-18-2012 at 8:29 am

In all the discussion about iPhone versus Samsung, the profit leader and the volume leader in the handset business, there is way too much discussion about boring stuff like how many MIPS the A6 chips has and whether the maps are any good on iPhone (no) and is there enough 28nm capacity for Qualcomm. Boring.

The real question that everyone… Read More


TSMC dilemma: Cadence, Mentor or Synopsys?

TSMC dilemma: Cadence, Mentor or Synopsys?
by Eric Esteve on 10-18-2012 at 4:49 am

Looking at the Press Release (PR) flow, it was interesting to see how TSMC has solved a communication dilemma. At first, let’s precise that #1 Silicon foundry has to work with each of the big three EDA companies. As a foundry, you don’t want to lose any customer, and then you support every major design flow. Choosing another strategy… Read More