HSPICE users gathered in January 2012 at the HSPICE SIG(Special Interest Group) to talk about their experiences using this circuit simulator for a variety of IC and signal integrity issues. I wasn’t able to attend in person however I did watch the video and wanted to summarize what I heard:… Read More
Does 14nm magically put Intel back on the lead smartphone lap?
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
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!
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
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
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
Will HP Seek to Merge with Dell?
It has come to that point in time when former great computer companies in the twilight of their years should consider a marriage of convenience that ends … Read More
Call for Papers: International Gathering for Application Developers!
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 commercial… Read More
Seminar on IC Yield Optimization at DATE on March 14th
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
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
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