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Does 14nm magically put Intel back on the lead smartphone lap?

Does 14nm magically put Intel back on the lead smartphone lap?
by Don Dingee on 02-27-2012 at 2:15 pm

I’ve often wanted to publish a book with nothing but photos of police cars, so that people wouldn’t have to slow down and gawk at them when they have someone pulled over on the side of the freeway. Intel roadmaps seem to have the same effect on people. No matter what is on them, even if there’s nothing really new, they… Read More


Yalta is Dead! Synopsys offensive in VIP restart the cold war

Yalta is Dead! Synopsys offensive in VIP restart the cold war
by Eric Esteve on 02-27-2012 at 11:29 am

Last year, you could claim (like I did in this blog) that Cadence was making money with large VIP port-folio, when Synopsys was managing sales of a large Design IP port-folio (thanks to a successful acquisition strategy in the 2000’s). But the latest acquisitions made by Synopsys of VIP centric companies like nSys or ExpertIO should… Read More


ISSCC 2012: Silicon Systems for Sustainability!

ISSCC 2012: Silicon Systems for Sustainability!
by Daniel Nenni on 02-26-2012 at 4:00 pm


What can we do for Earth’s sustainability? Besides sorting our garbage and recycling our lawn clippings? Sustainability must be the paramount theme for the future of human society! Semiconductors for a better life! Well, according to my kids, if you take away their smart phones there is no life!… Read More


Universal Flash Storage: Webinar

Universal Flash Storage: Webinar
by Paul McLellan on 02-24-2012 at 2:24 pm

There has been a general trend for over a decade now towards the use of very fast serial interfaces instead of wide parallel interfaces. This has been driven by a number of different factors ranging from the lack of pins on an SoC, the difficulty of keeping wide parallel interfaces free of skew, limitations on printed circuit board… Read More


Synopsys at DVCon: tutorial, lunch, keynote, exhibits and more

Synopsys at DVCon: tutorial, lunch, keynote, exhibits and more
by Paul McLellan on 02-24-2012 at 1:10 pm

DVCon is next week, which I’m sure you know already if you are in verification. Of course Synopsys has a rich product portfolio in verification and verification IP (VIP) so is pretty visible at the show.

On Wednesday they are sponsoring lunch. Several Synopsys customers will talk about their view of how the verification landscape… Read More


Call for Papers: International Gathering for Application Developers!

Call for Papers: International Gathering for Application Developers!
by Daniel Nenni on 02-22-2012 at 8:40 pm

SemiWiki would like to call you, your co-workers, and your company to participate at ERSA Conference in Las Vegas , July 16-19, 2012. I will be there and it would be a pleasure to work with you on this very important event!

ERSA, is Engineering of Reconfigurable Systems and Algorithms. Since this year, the emphasis will be on the commercialRead More


Seminar on IC Yield Optimization at DATE on March 14th

Seminar on IC Yield Optimization at DATE on March 14th
by Daniel Payne on 02-22-2012 at 3:59 pm

My first chip design at Intel was a DRAM and we had a 5% yield problem caused by electromigration issues, yes, you can have EM issues even with 6um NMOS technology. We had lots of questions but precious few answers on how to pinpoint and eliminate the source of yield loss. Fortunately, with the next generation of DRAM quickly introduced… Read More


Computer Architecture and the Wall

Computer Architecture and the Wall
by Paul McLellan on 02-22-2012 at 1:08 pm

There is a new edition of Hennessy and Patterson’s book Computer Architecture: A Quantative Approach out. The 5th edition.

There is lots of fascinating stuff in it but what is especially interesting to those of us who are not actually computer architects, is the big picture stuff about what they choose to cover. Previous … Read More


3D-IC Physical Design

3D-IC Physical Design
by Pawan Fangaria on 02-22-2012 at 10:00 am

When process nodes reached 28 nm and below, it appeared that design density is reaching a saturation point, hitting the limits of Moore’s law. I was of the opinion that the future of microelectronic physical design was limited to 20 and 14 nm being addressed by technological advances such as FinFETs, double patterning, HKMG (High-k… Read More