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Low-power IC design in Switzerland

Low-power IC design in Switzerland
by Daniel Payne on 01-18-2012 at 7:17 pm

My wife and I have traveled to Switzerland on vacation and marveled at the natural beauty of the mountains, efficient train system, tasty chocolate, and wonderful foods. I only wished that our American dollar bought more in Swiss currency than it did. Recently I discovered a high-tech IC design company called Microdul that designs… Read More


NFC, Why is this a big deal?

NFC, Why is this a big deal?
by Daniel Nenni on 01-18-2012 at 7:00 am


NFCis all over the news. Payments from your phone, yeah! I was wondering why this is a big deal, and why it has taken so long to gain momentum. I was issued a RFID enabled employee badge (JavaCard) 10 years ago while working at Sun. RFID is now so prevalent that Walmart attaches RFID tags to clothes. I spent an hour wading around the internet… Read More


Addressing the Challenges of Tomorrow’s SoC Design

Addressing the Challenges of Tomorrow’s SoC Design
by Paul McLellan on 01-17-2012 at 5:28 pm

For the next few days Atrenta is running a series of 30 minute live webinars to discuss the new solutions and approaches that are required to improve the way SoC designs are created and modified.

The webinars are at the following times:

  • Jan 17th, 7-7.30am PST (sorry you missed that one)
  • January 18th 7.30-8pm PST (and January 19th in
Read More

Chip-Package-System workshops

Chip-Package-System workshops
by Paul McLellan on 01-17-2012 at 4:30 pm

Chips, packages and circuit boards (systems, hence CPS) used to be three separate domains with their own tools that barely interacted at all. If you were lucky, reassigning a pin on a package wouldn’t have to be done manually in all 3 places. But now, from a signal integrity, noise, power point of view these three domains must… Read More


What products shown at CES will drive electronics and semiconductor growth in 2012?

What products shown at CES will drive electronics and semiconductor growth in 2012?
by Bill Jewell on 01-17-2012 at 11:20 am

The International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) last week in Las Vegas, Nevada was the largest in history, with over 3,100 exhibitors and over 153,000 attendees – over 20% international. Hopefully this was a good sign of a solid recovery in the electronics and semiconductor industries. The major Japanese and Korean consumerRead More


Silicon IP has taken over CAE in EDAC results… showing how bad have been analyst in forecasting the IP market!

Silicon IP has taken over CAE in EDAC results… showing how bad have been analyst in forecasting the IP market!
by Eric Esteve on 01-16-2012 at 8:10 am

Thanks to Paul, who has shared EDAC resultsfor Q3 2011, we can see that Silicon IP has definitely passed CAE revenue! It does not appears clearly ($410 million for IP, 566.7 for CAE), but when you consider that ARM, among many other IP vendors, is not part of EDAC, it’s easy to see that SIP revenue is higher than CAE (ARM revenue for 2010… Read More


ARM vs Intel? Just look at ARM Top Customer in 2010!

ARM vs Intel? Just look at ARM Top Customer in 2010!
by Eric Esteve on 01-16-2012 at 3:47 am

Looking at the ARM Top Ten customers list (for 2010) brings useful information about the volumes production generated by the chip makers involved in the wireless handset segment. Revenue for an ARM licensee comes from upfront license and royalties. Upfront license are in the few $ million range (max), when the below listed contribution… Read More


CES 2012 Trip Wrap-Up!

CES 2012 Trip Wrap-Up!
by Daniel Nenni on 01-15-2012 at 4:00 pm


The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas is the premier electronics gadget exposition, a window into what we will be spending our hard earned money on next Christmas. Personally, I go to CES every year to try and guess what new innovative technology will drive future semiconductor design and manufacturing. Last year I bet… Read More


#49 Design Automation Conference Deadlines

#49 Design Automation Conference Deadlines
by Paul McLellan on 01-14-2012 at 10:53 pm

Note that there are several DAC deadlines coming up in the next couple of weeks.

The deadline for user track submissions is January 17th (next Tuesday). Submission requires an extended abstract. See here for details.

The deadline for DAC workshops is January 19th (next Thursday). A proposal is required. See here for details.

The… Read More


Thanks to Linkedin members: 24 “Like” given to “Interface Protocols, USB3, HDMI, MIPI… the winner and losers in 2011”

Thanks to Linkedin members: 24 “Like” given to “Interface Protocols, USB3, HDMI, MIPI… the winner and losers in 2011”
by Eric Esteve on 01-14-2012 at 12:53 pm

Just because it seems that the likes given to: Interface Protocols, USB3, HDMI, MIPI… the winner and losers in 2011 were numerous, I decided to count it.

Twenty-four likes received, in 11 Linkedin groups (see below), that’s good! Very goos! Thanks to all of you… And most probably thanks to IPNESTfor the quality of the… Read More