Webinar 800x100 (1)

Genevi, isn’t that a city in Switzerland?

Genevi, isn’t that a city in Switzerland?
by Paul McLellan on 06-14-2012 at 8:05 pm

I got an email from Mentor Embedded this morning about a webinar on Implementing a GENIVI-compliant System. I have to admit I had no idea what GENIVI is, which surprised me. I spent several years working in the embedded space and so I usually have at least a 50,000 foot view of most things going on there. One reason for my ignorance is … Read More


Semiconductor equipment returns to growth

Semiconductor equipment returns to growth
by Bill Jewell on 06-14-2012 at 7:37 pm

Semiconductor manufacturing equipment has returned to growth after a falloff in the second half of 2011. Combined data from SEMI (U.S. andEuropean companies) and SEAJ (Japanese companies) show billings peaked at a three-month-average of $3.2 billion in May 2011. Bookings and billings began todrop in June 2011, with billings… Read More


The Black Swan that Catapulted Intel into 2012

The Black Swan that Catapulted Intel into 2012
by Ed McKernan on 06-14-2012 at 7:30 pm

Black Swan Events are not to be embraced, they are to be feared, if conventional wisdom holds true. And yet, the 2011 Black Swan that slammed the PC market (i.e. the Thailand Floods that wiped out a large part of the disk drive market) has turned out to be the key catalyst for reshaping the semiconductor industry in 2012 and 2013. Instead… Read More


Fast Monte Carlo from Infiniscale at DAC

Fast Monte Carlo from Infiniscale at DAC
by Daniel Payne on 06-14-2012 at 10:56 am

Firas Mohamed, President and CEO (Ph.D.) of Infiniscale met with me on Monday at DAC to provide an overview of what EDA software they offer to IC designers at the transistor-level.


Vision – analog flow that Monte Carlo simulation is required, which is thousands of circuit simulations, however the higher the sigma the more… Read More


IC Layout Tools from Japan at DAC

IC Layout Tools from Japan at DAC
by Daniel Payne on 06-14-2012 at 10:29 am

Last Monday I met with Nobuto Ono, VP Business development at Jedat (Japan EDA Technologies) while attending the DAC conference.

The company started in Tokyo and is Ex Seiko Instruments, in 2004.

Main product – layout editor for IC (SX 9000). New system is ALpha SX in 2002. 2007 listed on JASDAQ market. Like Virtuoso tools,… Read More


TSMC Theater Presentation: Atrenta SpyGlass!

TSMC Theater Presentation: Atrenta SpyGlass!
by Daniel Nenni on 06-13-2012 at 9:10 am

Atrenta presented an update on the TSMC Soft IP Alliance Program at TSMC’s theater each day at DAC. Mike Gianfagna, Atrenta VP of Marketing, presented an introduction to SpyGlass, an overview of the program and a progress report. Dan Kochpatcharin, TSMC Deputy Director of IP Portfolio, was also there. Between Mike, Dan, and I there… Read More


Carbonize your Imagination

Carbonize your Imagination
by Paul McLellan on 06-13-2012 at 7:00 am

Just up the road from Cambridge-based ARM in Kings Langley is Imagination Technologies, their biggest competitor in the GPU market. Interestingly they also were a customer of VLSI Technology in the early days back when they were called Videologic. Tomorrow, jointly with Carbon, they are announcing that a wide range of their PowerVR,… Read More


How to Use Those Licenses Effectively

How to Use Those Licenses Effectively
by Paul McLellan on 06-12-2012 at 8:05 pm

So DAC is over and you are no longer thinking about the features and benefits of new tools or even the tools that you already own. But once you have lots of tools then you need to worry about how to use them efficiently.

But here are three things that you need to worry about to get the most out of your EDA investment:

  • how do you measure the actual
Read More

Jasper’s Kathryn Kranen Elected EDAC Chairman

Jasper’s Kathryn Kranen Elected EDAC Chairman
by Paul McLellan on 06-12-2012 at 8:05 pm


Kathryn Kranen, CEO of Jasper was elected chairman of EDAC for 2012-2014. She has has 20 years EDA industry. She started her career as a design engineer at Rockwell International and then joined Daisy Systems (one of the DMV, the second generation of EDA companies). She then moved to be VP of North American sales at Quickturn (emulation)… Read More


BDA TSMC Theater Presentation

BDA TSMC Theater Presentation
by Daniel Nenni on 06-12-2012 at 5:00 pm

I caught the Berkeley Design Automation presentation in the TSMC Theater, where Simon Young (BDA’s director of product marketing) described the Analog FastSPICE (AFS) nanometer circuit verification platform, built on their foundation of very fast, very accurate, high capacity circuit simulation.

BDA claims the AFS platform… Read More