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nVidia: "30 Days From Going Out of Business"

nVidia: "30 Days From Going Out of Business"
by Ed McKernan on 08-11-2011 at 9:36 pm

Jen Hsun Huang, the CEO of nVidia, has a phrase he often repeats to his employees: “We are 30 days from going out of business.” With product cycles as short as 6 months, the troops are on a constant march to revenue. The earnings conference call on August 11th highlighted two critical pieces of information. First, is the success that… Read More


Altera and Xilinx Eyeing 28nm FPGA Dominance

Altera and Xilinx Eyeing 28nm FPGA Dominance
by Ed McKernan on 08-11-2011 at 7:00 am

28nm FPGAs are finally hitting the market and the next round in the battle between Altera and Xilinx is heating up. At 40nm, Altera beat Xilinx out the door by a year and as a consequence won a lot of new sockets in the high end Communications market. In the past year, Altera has closed the revenue and market share gap with Xilinx. This … Read More


Reducing SoC Power Consumption using Integrated Voltage Regulators

Reducing SoC Power Consumption using Integrated Voltage Regulators
by Daniel Nenni on 08-10-2011 at 5:00 pm

Last month I had the pleasure of meeting Mr Wonyoung Kim, a PhD candidate from Harvard University. Like many candidates, Wonyoung is shopping his thesis for capital in hopes of starting a semiconductor IP company. Here is a brief summary of the technology, please provide appropriate feedback and let’s see if we can get him… Read More


Best EDA company for work life balance?

Best EDA company for work life balance?
by Daniel Payne on 08-10-2011 at 1:25 pm

What was the first EDA company name that came to your mind after reading that title?

At Forbes magazine they rated both Mentor Graphics and Synopsys in the top 25 best companies for work life balance.

That’s quite an honor for both Mentor and Synopsys so I can say that EDA dominated the list this year.

Here are some of the factors… Read More


Yalta in EDA: but Synopsys ultra dominant in Interface IP territory…

Yalta in EDA: but Synopsys ultra dominant in Interface IP territory…
by Eric Esteve on 08-10-2011 at 10:32 am

If Cadence is making money with large VIP port-folio, Synopsys has successfully deployed an acquisition strategy to build a large Design IP port-folio. Looking at these acquisitions will help understanding Synopsys positioning in the IP market. When they have started this acquisition campaign, back in 2002, their market shareRead More


Speeding Verification of FPGA Prototype Boards

Speeding Verification of FPGA Prototype Boards
by Paul McLellan on 08-09-2011 at 5:42 pm

It is no secret that SoC designs continue to increase in complexity and time-to-market windows are shrinking. While there is room for debate on just how big a fraction of SoC design effort goes on verification, there is no debating that it is a large part of the total. Simulation is increasingly too slow, especially when software … Read More


Smartphones shipments, Sky is the limit…

Smartphones shipments, Sky is the limit…
by Eric Esteve on 08-08-2011 at 8:50 am

…or a global recession, but that’s not the purpose of this blog. As everybody knows, Apple is designing and selling smartphones, only. Does it mean that only smartphones are generating profit in the mobile industry? As we have seen recently in Semiwiki, Apple makes 2/3 of profit of entire mobile industry.

Let’s have a look (below)… Read More


Samsung to Acquire AMD?

Samsung to Acquire AMD?
by Daniel Nenni on 08-07-2011 at 4:00 pm


Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of AMD, I buy AMD based products whenever possible to prevent an innovation stifling Intel monopoly. Unfortunately Silicon Valley coffee house conversations continue to paint a bleak picture for AMD, even with a recent stock surge on better than expected revenue guidance for the rest of 2011. I’m… Read More