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Fast buses at DAC

Fast buses at DAC
by Paul McLellan on 04-24-2012 at 10:05 pm

UPDATE: there is free WiFi on all buses.

OK, these are not the 128 bit 1GHz buses we have to hear about every day. They go roughly 40 miles in roughly an hour. But they take you from Silicon Valley to DAC and back, and they are cheaper than BART or Caltrain.

For the first time this year, DAC has buses from Silicon Valley to Moscone for DAC. … Read More


Audio, not your father’s MP3

Audio, not your father’s MP3
by Paul McLellan on 04-24-2012 at 9:26 pm

Chris Rowen, Tensilica’s CTO, presented in Santa Cruz at the Globalpress briefing. He was basically presenting Tensilica’s audio strategy, which I’ve written about before. But he provided an interesting perspective. Globalpress (which flies journalists in from all over the world and then fills the few… Read More


Smart mobile SoCs: Texas Instruments

Smart mobile SoCs: Texas Instruments
by Don Dingee on 04-24-2012 at 9:00 pm

TI has parlayed its heritage in digital signal processing and long-term relationships with mobile device makers into a leadership position in mobile SoCs. They boast a relatively huge portfolio of design wins thanks to being the launch platform for Android 4.0. On the horizon, the next generation OMAP 5 could change the entire… Read More


Broadcom announces an HFC

Broadcom announces an HFC
by Paul McLellan on 04-24-2012 at 8:00 pm

For a long time Cisco had a very high end product whose official internal name during its years of development was HFR, which stood for Huge F***ing Router (the marketing department insisted it stood for ‘fast’). Eventually it got given a product number, CRS-1, but not before I’d read an article about it in the… Read More


TSMC versus Intel at 20nm!

TSMC versus Intel at 20nm!
by Daniel Nenni on 04-24-2012 at 7:00 pm

The biggest news out of the TSMC Symposium last week was the 20nm update. Lots of debate and speculation, just why is TSMC releasing one version of 20nm (20nm SoC) versus multiple versions like in 40nm (LP, G, LPG) and 28nm (HP, HPM, HPL, LP)? Here are my thoughts, I would also be interested in your feedback in the comment section. This… Read More


Mergers and Acquisitions in EDA should spark Innovation and Start ups

Mergers and Acquisitions in EDA should spark Innovation and Start ups
by Rich Goldstein on 04-23-2012 at 8:13 pm

With the recent closure of the Synopsys Magma deal and the economy showing a bit of uptick and some positive outlook compared to the last 3-4 years, I believe it’s time for some of the creative minds that find themselves looking for new opportunity to consider starting their own point tool as well as IP companies.

Many of these people… Read More


DAC 2012 Must-See! Hogan’s Heros: Learning from Apple

DAC 2012 Must-See! Hogan’s Heros: Learning from Apple
by Holly Stump on 04-23-2012 at 6:30 pm


Who doesn’t love the perennial Hogan’s Heros panel at DAC? Always provocative and illuminating, for technologists, entrepreneurs, and strategists.

At DAC 2012, Jim Hogan’s panel is “Learning from Apple”:Apple. We admire their devices, worship their creators and praisetheir stock in our portfolios. Apple is synonymous withRead More


Channel Routing Memories

Channel Routing Memories
by Paul McLellan on 04-23-2012 at 1:12 pm

Back in the early days of ASIC when we had just two and then (wow!) three layers of metal, place and route was done by putting the standard cells in rows with gaps between them and then using a specialized router to do the interconnection. It would use one layer of metal horizontally and one vertically and avoid jogs. This was called a … Read More


AMS Design using Co-Simulation

AMS Design using Co-Simulation
by Daniel Payne on 04-23-2012 at 11:13 am

The big three vendors in EDA offer AMS simulation tools but what about simulation choices from other EDA vendors?

It turns out there are two privately held EDA companies that have done business since the 1980’s and have just integrated a Verilog A simulator with a SPICE circuit simulator. The two companies are Aldec with a … Read More


UMC Wins Qualcomm 28nm Second Source Contract!

UMC Wins Qualcomm 28nm Second Source Contract!
by Daniel Nenni on 04-22-2012 at 7:00 pm

This is common knowledge in Taiwan but apparently the guys over at SemiAccurate.com did not get the memo. I hear a name change is in the works: www.RarelyAccurate.com. Remember, these are the same clairvoyants who said TSMC shut down 28nm which as we now know is absolutely false. The QCOM elite stay at the Hsinchu Royal Hotel which… Read More