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The Total ARM Platform!

The Total ARM Platform!
by Daniel Nenni on 07-24-2012 at 7:30 pm

In the embedded world that drives much of today’s ASIC innovation, there is no bigger name than ARM. Not to enter the ARM vs. Intel fray, but it’s no exaggeration to say that ARM’s impact on SoCs is as great as Intel’s on the PC. Few cutting edge SoCs are coming to market that do not include some sort of embedded… Read More


Media Tablet Strategy from Google and Microsoft: illusion about the effective protection of NDAs…

Media Tablet Strategy from Google and Microsoft: illusion about the effective protection of NDAs…
by Eric Esteve on 07-24-2012 at 10:26 am

Extracted from an interesting article from Jeff Orr from ABI research, “We have all heard about leaked company roadmaps that detail a vendor’s product or service plans for the next year or two. Typically, putting one’s plans down in advance of public announcement has two intended audiences: customers who rely on Read More


How Many Licenses Do You Buy?

How Many Licenses Do You Buy?
by Paul McLellan on 07-23-2012 at 6:16 pm

An informal survey of RTDA customers reveals that larger companies tend to buy licenses based on peak usage while smaller companies do not have that luxury and have to settle for fewer licenses than they would ideally have and optimize the mix of licenses that they can afford given their budget. Larger companies get better prices… Read More


Libraries Make a Power Difference in SoC Design

Libraries Make a Power Difference in SoC Design
by Daniel Payne on 07-23-2012 at 4:37 pm

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At Intel we used to hand-craft every single transistor size to eek out the ultimate in IC performance for DRAM and graphic chips. Today, there are many libraries that you can choose from for an SoC design in order to reach your power, speed and area trade-offs. I’m going to attend a Synopsys webinar on August 2nd to learn more Read More


EUV: No Pellicle

EUV: No Pellicle
by Paul McLellan on 07-22-2012 at 10:00 pm

There’s a dirty secret problem about EUV that people don’t seem to to be talking about. There’s no pellicle on a EUV mask. OK, probably you have no idea what that means, a lot of jargon words, nor why it would be important, but it seems to me it could be the killer problem for EUV.

In refractive masks, you print a pattern… Read More


Re-defining Semiconductor Collaboration!

Re-defining Semiconductor Collaboration!
by Daniel Nenni on 07-22-2012 at 7:00 pm

GlobalFoundries did a nice response to my “How has 20nm Changed the Semiconductor Ecosystem?” and redefined the word collaboration. Our industry is plagued with sound bites and acronyms so let us agree on a semiconductor ecosystem definition of collaboration.

Mojy Chianis senior vice president, design enablement at… Read More


Directed Self Assembly

Directed Self Assembly
by Paul McLellan on 07-19-2012 at 9:00 pm

At Semicon, Ben Rathsack of Tokyo Electron America talked about directed self assembly (DSA) at the standing-room only lithography morning. So what is it? Self assembly involves taking two monomers that don’t mix and letting them polymerise (so like styrene forming polystyrene). Since they won’t mix they will … Read More


Electronics markets showing signs of recovery

Electronics markets showing signs of recovery
by Bill Jewell on 07-19-2012 at 8:10 pm

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Electronics markets bounced back strongly in 2010 from the 2008-2009 recession. The recovery stalled in 2011 as a series of natural and human-made disasters hit various parts of the world. Japan was hit by an earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. Thailand was affected by floods which disrupted HDD production and thus impacted … Read More


Shorter, better and easier PCIe and NVM Express Verification flow with advanced technologies

Shorter, better and easier PCIe and NVM Express Verification flow with advanced technologies
by Eric Esteve on 07-19-2012 at 8:05 pm

We have talked about Cadence subsystem IP strategy, illustrated by NVM Express subsystem IP, in a previous blog. What we said was that “A subsystem IP based approach will also speed up the software development and validation phase: if the IP provider is able to propose the right tools, like the associated Verification IP (VIP), … Read More


Morris Chang Comments on Q2 2012: 28nm, 20nm, 16nm, FinFets, CAPEX, etc…

Morris Chang Comments on Q2 2012: 28nm, 20nm, 16nm, FinFets, CAPEX, etc…
by Daniel Nenni on 07-19-2012 at 5:42 pm

Twenty eight nanometer is progressing very well. Our output and our yields are both above the plans that we set for ourselves and the plans that we communicated to our customers early in the year. Early in the year means January-February of the year, we set our plans in output and in yields and we, of course, ever since then we tried toRead More