I bought my first personal computer in 1979, it was a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I with just 16KB of RAM, a BW monitor and casette tape for storage. The reason that I chose the Radio Shack over the Apple II was that it cost less, so I was always interested in Apple products and the engineers behind them since the early days. It was pure delight… Read More
My Design Automation and Test in Europe Conference Agenda (DATE 2012)
As this blog is being posted I’m on my way to Dresden for the 2012 Design Automation and Test Conference. DATE used to bounce between Munich and Paris, I have attended many times but not in the past couple of years. No excuse really, just busy with other things. DATE 2012 Highlights in Dresden include E-Mobility and More-than-Moore… Read More
Power Issues for Chip and Board: webinar
Last month Brian Bailey at EDN moderated an interesting webinar about power issues. Unusually, it combined two different domains: doing things by modeling and actually taking measurements off real chips and boards. The two participants were Arvind Shanmugavel from the Apache subsidiary of Ansys, and Randy White from Tektronix.… Read More
Common Platform Technology Forum: Peering into the Future
Next Wednesday is the Common Platform Technology Forum. “Common Platform” is a name that only a committee could have come up with, giving no clue as to what it actually is. As you probably know, there are various process clubs sharing the costs of technology development (TD) and one of them consists of IBM, Samsung and… Read More
Elpida and Japan Inc
Last week, the Japanese memory company Elpida filed for bankruptcy. There is worldwide overcapacity in DRAM and somebody had to go. Its strength and the weakness was that it was much more outward facing than most of the Japanese semiconductor and electronic industry. So it had to compete globally and wasn’t up to the task.… Read More
Apple’s New iPAD and the End of PC Benchmarks
With the introduction of the “New iPAD”, we now have the 2012 benchmark for the tablet market, including the offerings that will come from Amazon later in the year. As has been noted earlier, with each new mobile product iteration Apple unmoors itself from the PC foundations of Microsoft, Intel and even nVidia and AMD. At the unveiling… Read More
Formale Verifikation in München
With DATE next week in Dresden, all eyes turn to Germany. Not to be left out, Jasper has a seminar on formal verification coming up on March 19th in the Kempinski Hotel at Munich airport. Unlike most “airport” hotels the Kempinski is indeed right in the heart of the airport. And for those of us who like a good German beer,… Read More
TSMC absolutely did NOT halt 28nm production!
Once again industry professionals get duped! Tabloid journalism runs amok inside the semiconductor ecosystem! As if our industry does not face enough challenges, why are we wasting time on drivel like this? This is a TSMC 28nm wafer by the way and thousands of them are being shipped around the world, believe it.
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CDNLive: two days of all things Cadence
Next Tuesday and Wednesday, March 13-14th, is CDNLive in Silicon Valley at the DoubleTree Hotel (which I see we are now meant to call DoubleTree by Hilton, although I still have to think twice not to call it the Red Lion, the group whose CFO at one point was Ray Bingham who was CFO and then CEO of Cadence. Trivia fact for the day).
CDNlive… Read More
Kathryn Kranen Interview in San Jose Mercury News
There is an interview in the San Jose Mercury News with Kathryn Kranen, Jasper’s CEO. Of course the Mercury is a general newspaper and can’t expect most of its readership to have a clue what EDA is, never mind formal verification. It’s a similar problem to the one we all have when we try and explain to our families… Read More
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