Going to Munich in May could be a very good idea, as it will give you the opportunity to listen to the keynote talk from Lip-Bu Tan. Who knows if you will learn in direct live the name of the next acquisition from Cadence in 2013, after Tensilica and Cosmic Circuits? In fact, there may not be new acquisition announcement, then this keynote… Read More



Mary Meeker’s Annual Internet Trends is Out
Every year, analyst Mary Meeker produces a large presentation (88 slides this year) about internet trends. This year’s oneis just out. So much of the semiconductor industry is driven by trends in mobile and PCs. Increasingly, just by mobile since it has already overtaken PCs in terms of units and will soon overtake in terms… Read More
Mentor Graphics’ Best User2User Ever
Calling all Mentor users! Don’t forget to register for the U2U in San Jose on Thursday, April 25.
In addition to three worthy keynotes, you will find a more interactive and solution-focused day than in the past. There are sessions on place & route, custom/AMS, emulation, test and yield analysis, functional verification, Calibre… Read More
Forte Rises
Over the past few months there has been a bit of back-and-forth concerning the 2012 market data indicating that Forte Designs Systems had taken over the top spot (by revenue) in the high-level synthesis (HLS) market (see stories hereand here). Having worked in this segment for Synfora as VP of Marketing, and as a consultant to AutoESL,… Read More
FinFET Day Presentations at EDPS Monterey!
If you are ever asked to organize a conference session do not hesitate, accept immediately and jump right in. When John Swan, EDPS General Chair, asked me to organize a day I hesitated. Fortunately he is not one to take no for an answer. It was an unforgettable experience on many levels and I hope to be involved with EDPS again next year.… Read More
Happy Birthday to Synopsys VIP
I met Mike Sanie around DVCon time and planned to write a blog about the one year anniversary of Synopsys Discovery VIP which was announced during Aart’s keynote at DVCon in 2012. Eric covered it for SemiWiki here. But Synopsys had other stuff they wanted me to blog about and so it is a couple of months late. The 14th month anniversary… Read More
Mentor’s New Embedded Strategy
If there is a trend I can detect in verification in 2013, it is taking verification environments and making the user interface, scripts, and tools work uniformly across the whole spectrum of possible verification “substrates” from virtual platforms, FPGA boards, emulation, actual chips, RTL simulation and so … Read More
A Brief History of Methodics
Methodics was founded in 2006 by 2 ex-Cadence experts in the Custom IC design tools space, Simon Butler and Fergus Slorach. They had a consulting company called IC Methods, active in Silicon Valley from 2000-2006, and when they needed to create a new company to service a consulting engagement that had turned into a product, they … Read More
ISCUG – Excellent Indian Conference, needs to grow
Promoted by Accellera, SystemC User Groups are in work worldwide; NASCUGin North America, ESCUGin Europe and ISCUG in India. While I was shuffling between my day-to-day work and strategy management course/exams, I received an invitation from my long time colleague, President and CEO of Circuitsutra Technologies, Mr. Umesh… Read More
FPGA + MATLAB = FATLAB
Now Michael Bloomberg probably wouldn’t want FATLAB but let’s face it, to think like him you need a lot of education, alot. He may be banning 14nm because it will increase FPGAs densities and thus the consumer as well. Stay tuned. After some comments from my dear readers, one who said to watch it with respect to my harshness about… Read More
Flynn Was Right: How a 2003 Warning Foretold Today’s Architectural Pivot