FPGAs in the 5G Era!

FPGAs in the 5G Era!
by Daniel Nenni on 01-27-2020 at 6:00 am

New Family of FPGAs Speedster7t

FPGAs, today and throughout the history of semiconductors, play a critical role in design enablement and electronic systems. Which is why we included the history of FPGAs in our book “Fabless: The Transformation of the Semiconductor Industry” and added a new chapter in the 2019 edition on the history of Achronix.

In a recent blog… Read More


Photonics Come into Focus: 2020 Predictions

Photonics Come into Focus: 2020 Predictions
by Rich Goldman on 01-02-2020 at 10:00 am

Photonics 2020 Predictions

In the past, I’ve focused my annual predictions on electronics – ICs and EDA – but recently I’ve turned my focus to photonics, so my 2020 predictions are primarily in this area.

Historically, photonics has been the Gallium Arsenide of technologies; it was, is and always will be the technology of the future. Analysts have forever … Read More


IEDM 2019 – Applied Materials panel EUV Recap

IEDM 2019 – Applied Materials panel EUV Recap
by Scotten Jones on 12-23-2019 at 10:00 am

On Tuesday night of IEDM, Applied Materials held a panel discussion “The Future of Logic: EUV is Here, Now What?”. The panelists were: Regina Freed, managing director at Applied Materials as the moderator, Geoffrey Yeap, senior director of advanced technology at TSMC, Bala Haran, director of silicon process research at IBM, … Read More


Another Smart EDA Merger Adds RF Tools

Another Smart EDA Merger Adds RF Tools
by Daniel Payne on 12-12-2019 at 10:00 am

Cadence acquires AWR

Mergers and acquisitions are just a fact of modern business life, so the semiconductor, IP and EDA industries all can benefit, but only when the two companies have complementary products with some actual synergy. Cadence acquired OrCAD back in 1999, adding a Windows-based PCB tool to their product lineup, and here in 2019 some … Read More


Achronix Announces New Accelerator Card at Linley Fall Processor Conference – VectorPath

Achronix Announces New Accelerator Card at Linley Fall Processor Conference – VectorPath
by Randy Smith on 11-04-2019 at 10:00 am

This blog is my second blog from this year’s Linley Fall Processor Conference. The first two blogs focused on edge inference solutions. Achronix’s discussion was much broader than just AI/ML; it was about where FPGA’s have been going and culminated with a product announcement preview. I’ll get to the announcement in a moment, … Read More


5G Deployments – The Analysis Requirements are Ginormous

5G Deployments – The Analysis Requirements are Ginormous
by Tom Dillinger on 10-07-2019 at 10:00 am

The introduction of 5G communications support offers tremendous potential across a broad spectrum of applications (no pun intended).  5G is indeed quite encompassing, across a wide range of frequencies – the figure below illustrates the common terminology used, from low-band, mid-band (“sub 6G”), and high-band (“mmWave”)… Read More


SpaceX: Starlink to Carlink

SpaceX: Starlink to Carlink
by Roger C. Lanctot on 06-13-2019 at 5:00 am

When SpaceX launched 60 satellites into orbit last month – the first of a planned fleet of 12,000 such satellites which will ultimately deliver terrestrial Internet access in concert with earth-bound stations – astronomers were alarmed at the apparent impact on earth-based observatories from light pollution.… Read More


Cadence on 5G Intelligent System Design #56thDAC

Cadence on 5G Intelligent System Design #56thDAC
by Daniel Nenni on 06-10-2019 at 10:00 am

As much as I love all EDA vendors I must say Cadence did the best DAC this year. Great booth, great location, excellent content, and of course a great party. The 5G presentation in the Cadence booth by Ian Dennison was of great interest to me as I am still trying to wrap my head around this whole 5G thing. I was able to meet with Ian privately… Read More