In an article published this week in microprocessor report and highlighted in Barron’s, Linley Gwennap makes the argument that Intel should stay the course and fix the PC instead of trying to offset its declines with sales into the Smartphone and Tablet space. He cites that lower PC sales growth was due to a dramatic slowdown in processor… Read More




Cortex-A9 speed limits and PPA optimization
We know by now that clock speeds aren’t everything when it comes to measuring the goodness of a processor. Performance has direct ties to pipeline and interconnect details, power factors into considerations of usability, and the unspoken terms of yield drive cost.
My curiosity kicked in when I looked at the recent press release… Read More
Intel not interested by NVELO? Samsung was…
Short news came during last week-end and Linkedin was the most efficient media to learn that NVELO has been acquired. Probably very few people out of the SSD ecosystem knew about NVELO. Based in Santa Clara, the company was a spin off from Denali, privately owned and if you look at the top management, you will recognize a few name, like… Read More
A Brief History of Berkeley Design Automation
Analog, mixed-signal, RF, and custom digital circuitry implemented in GHz nanometer CMOS introduce a new class of design and verification challenges that traditional transistor‑level simulators cannot adequately address. Berkeley Design Automation, Inc., (BDA) was founded in 2003 by Amit Mehrotra and Amit Narayan,… Read More
FinFET Modeling and Extraction at 16-nm
In 2012 FinFET is one of the most talked about MOS technologies of the year because traditional planar CMOS has slowed down on scaling below the 28nm node. To learn more about FinFET process modeling I attended a Synopsys webinar where Bari Biswas presented for about 42 minutes include a Q&A portion at the end.
Bari Biswas, Synopsys… Read More
Double Patterning Tutorial
Double patterning at 20nm is one of those big unavoidable changes that it is almost impossible to know too much about. Mentor’s David Abercrombie, DFM Program Manager for Calibre, has written a series of articles detailing the multifaceted impacts of double patterning on advanced node design and verification. There is… Read More
Apache/Ansys presents: 3DIC thermal, transmission lines, low frequency analysis
Late in January it is DesignCon at the Santa Clara convention center from January 28th-31st. Details are here.
On Tuesday from 11.05 to 11.45 Apache and Ansys will be presenting on Thermal Co-analysis of 3D IC/packages/system. This is being presented by a whole team of people: Stephen Pan, senior product specialist at ANSYS; Norman… Read More
TSMC 28nm and 20nm Update Q4 2012
The big news in Taiwan last week was another increase in TSMC capital expenditures to $9B in 2013. That number could grow however. Last year TSMC CAPEX was set at $6B and ended up at $8.3B due to rapid 28nm capacity expansion and an accelerated 20nm program. 2013 will be all about FinFETs and manufacturing Apple SoCs so $9B may not cover… Read More
Novocell team finishes record-breaking year with record number of new customers
In this pretty shaky NVM IP market, where articles frequently mention legal battles rather than product features, it seems interesting to take a look at this Newsletter from Novocell Semiconductor starting with these words: “As the Christmas carols and festive music floods the airwaves (and the shopping areas) here in western… Read More
Apache Presents: ESD analysis
The 26th Conference on VLSI Design will be in Pune, India from January 5th to 10th at the Hyatt Regency. Details on the conference here. Registration here. I happened to be involved in the first of these conferences, which was held in Edinburgh where I was wrapping up my PhD. It was in the considerably less palatial surroundings of … Read More
Flynn Was Right: How a 2003 Warning Foretold Today’s Architectural Pivot