ARM vs Intel: The New War Frontiers

ARM vs Intel: The New War Frontiers
by Prakash Mohapatra on 06-28-2016 at 12:00 pm

With Intel’s exit from smartphone processor market, the competitive zones are redefined with its rivalry with ARM. Is ARM’s domination the only reason for Intel’s exit? With no competing architecture, is ARM a monopoly in smartphone processor IP market? What are the new areas of competition between ARM and Intel? I will attempt… Read More


Two New Announcements from Tanner EDA at #53DAC

Two New Announcements from Tanner EDA at #53DAC
by Daniel Payne on 06-27-2016 at 12:00 pm

Most mergers and acquisitions in the EDA world simply don’t work out financially a year or two after the deal is done, however I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Tanner EDA is doing quite well at #53DAC this year after the acquisition by Mentor Graphics back in March 2015. Everyone that I’ve been meeting with at … Read More


Is the Intel Cash Cow in Danger?

Is the Intel Cash Cow in Danger?
by Daniel Nenni on 06-14-2016 at 4:00 pm

There was an interesting panel at the Silicon Summit sponsored by the Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA) on “Designing for the Cloud.” It was led by Linley Gwennap (The Linley Group) with Ivo Bolsons (Xilinx), Ian Ferguson (ARM), and Steve Pawloski (Micron). Missing of course was Intel which derives close to 30% of its revenue… Read More


Highlights of the 22nm FD-SOI San Jose Presentations

Highlights of the 22nm FD-SOI San Jose Presentations
by Adele Hars on 06-08-2016 at 7:00 am

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This is part 2 (of 2) of my coverage of the recent FD-SOI Symposium in San Jose (April 2016), this time looking at the 22nm presentations by GlobalFoundries, ARM (finally!!), VLSI Research Inc and Sigma Designs. (Part 1 looked at the 28nm presentations.) Most are now available on the SOI Consortium website – click here to see the full… Read More


Arteris Unveils Solution for Heterogeneous Cache Coherent SOC’s

Arteris Unveils Solution for Heterogeneous Cache Coherent SOC’s
by Tom Simon on 05-30-2016 at 12:00 pm

Designing SOC’s for markets like automotive and mobile electronics requires taking advantage of every opportunity for optimization. One way to do this is through building a cache coherent system to boost speed and reduce power. Recently, NXP decided to go about this on their automotive MCU based SOC’s by using Arteris’ just-announced… Read More


ARM tests out TSMC 10FinFET – with two cores

ARM tests out TSMC 10FinFET – with two cores
by Don Dingee on 05-25-2016 at 4:00 pm

About 13 months ago, the leak blogs posted news of “Artemis” on an alleged ARM roadmap slide, supposedly a new 16FF ARM core positioned as the presumptive successor to the Cortex-A57. Now, we’re finding out what “Artemis” may actually be, inside a multi-core PPA test chip on TSMC 10FinFET.… Read More


Cache Coherent Systems Get a Boost from New Technology

Cache Coherent Systems Get a Boost from New Technology
by Tom Simon on 05-20-2016 at 12:00 pm

The speed and power penalties for accessing system RAM affect everything from artificial intelligence platforms to IoT sensor nodes. There is a huge power and performance overhead when the various IP blocks in an SOC need to go to DRAM. Memory caches have become essential to SOC design to reduce these adverse effects. However, … Read More


ARM Server Update (NFV)

ARM Server Update (NFV)
by Patrick Moorhead on 05-14-2016 at 7:00 am

There has been a lot of buzz in the industry over the last several years about ARM Holdings’ and its partners’ plans to go after the datacenter market with a particular focus on servers. Companies like Advanced Micro Devices, Applied Micro Circuits Corp. (AppliedMicro), Cavium, and Qualcomm, are now in various stages of product… Read More


Why NXP is Moving to FD-SOI (Part II)

Why NXP is Moving to FD-SOI (Part II)
by Ron Martino on 05-10-2016 at 2:00 pm

At NXP, we’re very excited about the prospects for our new i.MX 7 and 8 series of applications processors, which we’re manufacturing on 28nm FD-SOI. As noted in part I of this article series, the new i.MX 7 series, which leverages the 32-bit ARM v7-A core, is targeting the general embedded, e-reader, medical, wearable… Read More


Webinar: How to Implement an ARM Cortex-A17 Processor in 22FDX 22nm FD-SOI Technology

Webinar: How to Implement an ARM Cortex-A17 Processor in 22FDX 22nm FD-SOI Technology
by Daniel Nenni on 04-22-2016 at 7:00 am

Who’s doesn’t like a good webinar? I certainly do as it is one of the most time efficient ways to interact with the fabless semiconductor ecosystem, absolutely. Especially when it addresses two of the top trending topics on SemiWiki and they are ARM and FD-SOI. Here is a quick summary of what you will learn:

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