During my long career in semiconductor, EDA, I have heard, believed and experienced that this is a knowledge industry swamped with rapid innovation and technology drivers; typical manufacturing product development processes like Gantt charts and others do not apply here. The fallback is that most of the time estimations are… Read More




On Resistive RAM Product Announcements and Meetings
A lot has been happening in the ReRAM world over the past couple of months. At the ISSCC Conference in February Toshiba/SanDisk presented a paper describing a 32Gbit ReRAM chip.… Read More
Using Android Multimedia Framework drastically reduces power consumption in mobile
The multiplication of chips capable to run Multimedia processing (sound, image or video) in a mobile device, smartphone or media tablet, like Application Processor (AP), Baseband (BB), Codec or companion chip, each of these embedding one or multiple processor can be seen as a good opportunity to simplify the device architecture…… Read More
The Nokia Diet: shedding pounds and adding margin
I was trying to find the comment one of my counterparts here made eight months ago that given the cash burn rate, Nokia would be out of business in eight months, so I could gloat a bit. Bzzzzzzt – cash position actually increased in 1Q13. The numbers tell a painful story about a company on a difficult diet to survive, one that analysts… Read More
Prediction is very difficult… is it a reason for writing down everything that springs to mind?
Smartphone and Media tablet markets are exploding, generating huge level of profit for the Apple, Samsung or Qualcomm, and we don’t see yet when the growth will stop. That’s a point. But is it a reason for analyst to write down everything that springs to mind, including obvious insanity? Let’s have a look at the diagram below, and … Read More
Kilopass Sidense Legal Battle
The decision made by United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, “Affirming” the District Court for the Northern District of California’s summary judgment of non-infringement on Kilopass’ patent claims and its dismissal, with prejudice, of all remaining claims against Sidense, is certainly a good news for IP and… Read More
Denali+Tensilica+Cosmic = Cadence
I won’t be able to attend Chris Rowen’s presentation here at the GlobalPress Electronic Summit since I’m going to the first day of the Linley Mobile Microprocessor conference. In fact I wonder if Chris himself will make it since he was running in the Boston marathon on Monday. He finished about 10 minutes before… Read More
FPGAS – The New Single Board Computers?
I have always felt that FPGAs have been the red haired step child of Silicon Valley. Software weenies have hated them, they are mysterious and take too long to route. Even though they can be massively parallel and the most deterministic piece of silicon you can buy besides a million dollar ASIC, the GPU steals their glory, for now. … Read More
Atrenta, Forte and Jasper LOVE DAC
I LOVE DAC is back. This year the sponsors are Atrenta, Jasper and Forte (hey, all semiwiki subscribers). The way it works is that you register on the DAC website here and you get a free three-day exhibit pass. In addition to everything going on in the exhibit hall, including the pavilion panels held there, the pass also gives access… Read More
Wally Rhines: Embedded Software the Next Revolution?
As seems to be traditional, Wally Rhines gave a keynote here at the GlobalPress Electronics Summit here in sunny Santa Cruz. It was entitled Embedded Software, the Next Revolution in EDA. Unlike Cadence and Synopsys, Mentor has a strong position in embedded software. It has been build up over a long time through a series of acquisitions… Read More
Flynn Was Right: How a 2003 Warning Foretold Today’s Architectural Pivot