Behind great humor often lies irony. In the midst of a struggle by the European Union to extract $1.3B from Intel in an ages old Anti-Trust case, the latter makes a strategic move to embolden the Dutch firm ASML to accelerate the development of 450mm and EUV and thus save a continental jewel. What now say EU? When disfunction and bankruptcy… Read More
SPICE Timing Correlation for IC Place and Route
SPICE circuit simulation is used for transistor-level analysis while Place and Route tools are typically used to connect cells and blocks of an SoC, so why would there be a connection between these two EDA tools?
I read a press release today from ATopTech and Berkeley Design Automation that talked about how SPICE and P&R are … Read More
High-Productivity Analog Verification and Debug
See how Synopsys’ advanced analog verification solution can dramatically increase your verification productivity with CustomExplorer Ultra, along with CustomSim and CustomSim-VCS. CustomExplorer Ultra is a comprehensive simulation and debug environment for analog and mixed-signal design verification.
Web … Read More
DAC 2012 Cheerleader Controversy!
First, I must say that I’m biased. I like Cheerleaders, they are lots of fun, I even married one. Second, I’m not a fan of Peggy Aycinena. She has been on her EDA feminist rant for years now and I have been targeted multiple times. My solution has been to ignore her and any publication that supports her but this time she has gone too far.… Read More
Testing ARM Cores – Mentor and ARM Lunch Seminar
If you are involved in testing memory or logic of ARM-based designs, you’ll want to attend this free seminar on July 17, 2012 in Santa Clara. Mentor Graphics and ARM have a long standing partnership, and have optimized the Mentor test products (a.k.a Tessent) for the ARM processors and memory IP.
The lunch seminar runs from 10:30-1:00… Read More
NVM IP: Novocell Semiconductor has announced an expansion of their product line
Novocell Semiconductor, core antifuse-based OTP Smartbit™ technology was first patented in 2001 and 2002, and created a solid foundation for the first ten years,” stated Walt Novosel, President and CTO, “Since then, our customer-driven focus has led to numerous innovations in our original high reliability Smartbit-based… Read More
Intel Goes Vertical to Guarantee PC Growth
A Bloomberg article from early July caught my eye as it portends further changes in the competitive mobile market landscape. Intel is now in the business of paying Taiwanese panel suppliers to ensure the supply of touch-screen panels for PC ultrabooks. In essence it says that to win in the PC market, Intel has to mimic Apple and go … Read More
Intel’s finfets too complex and difficult?
Thanks to SemiWiki readers for the feedback and comments on the previous “Introduction to FinFET Technology” posts – very much appreciated! The next installment on FinFET modeling will be uploaded soon.
In the interim, Dan forwarded the following link to me “ Intel’s FinFETs too complicated and difficult, says … Read More
TSMC: Production Proven Design Services Driving SoC Innovation!
One of the truisms of today’s disaggregated semiconductor design and manufacturing model is counter-intuitive to the do-it-yourself focus that is at the heart of every engineer. And yet, time and time again, success rewards those who understand that with today’s ever increasing complexity, it is difficult, if… Read More
Mind the Gap — Overcoming the processor-memory performance gap to unlock SoC performance
Remember the processor-memory gap— a situation where the processor is forced to stall while waiting for a memory operation to complete? This was largely a result of the high latency required for off chip memory accesses. Haven’t we solved that problem now with SoCs? SoCs are typically architected with their processors … Read More
Bluetooth 6.0 Channel Sounding is Here