Ecosystem is everything when it comes to modern semiconductor design, especially if it is mobile. The fabless semiconductor industry has been all about ecosystem since the beginning and that is why we hold supercomputers in our hands today, believe it. After the invention of the transistor in 1947, and the invention of the integrated… Read More
Imagination seems to be well known for a couple of things. Firstly, everyone knows that it is the graphics processor used in the iPhone and the iPad and lots of other phones. And they know that Imagination acquired MIPS at the start of this year.
But what people don’t seem to really appreciate is just what a huge portfolio of IP… Read More
I think by now all of us know, or have heard about 20nm process node, its PPA (Power, Performance, Area) advantages and challenges (complexity of high design size and density, heterogeneity, variability, stress, lithography complexities, LDEs and so on). I’m not going to get into the details of these challenges, but will ponder… Read More
Just as important as block RAMs, IO and DSP48’s is what interconnect or fabric is going to be used when considering SoC FPGA designs. I think Xilinx has found the winning combination. What is paramount to the new SoC FPGA methodologies is not only the challenge of moving huge amounts of data around; we are now to consider data… Read More
If you have purchased a high-end cell-phone or tablet in the last couple of years it probably has LTE, although some carriers try and blur things by showing a symbol like 4G when you are in an area that has LTE despite the fact that your phone does not support it. Don’t you love cell-phone marketing? Talking of which, if a camel … Read More
Yesterday was Intel’s Q2 conference call. I think that there are some interesting little pieces of information. The financials were what analysts expected although they did take down their guidance for the rest of the year. But that is never the interesting point of Intel conference calls (they almost always hit guidance).… Read More
On my first job out of college as an IC design engineer I was surprised to discover that a major cost of chips was in the amount of time spent on the tester before being shipped. That is still true today, so how would you keep your tester time down, test coverage high and with a minimum number of pins when using multiple processors on a single… Read More
To be fair, cheating on CPU benchmarks is not new, so if you haven’t followed the computer industry for the past 30 years you might be surprised by Intel cheating, but I’m certainly not. Back in the day I worked for Data General and we “creatively” benchmarked against the Digital Equipment VAX all day long. There are different types… Read More
It sure has been an interesting experience watching Intel enter the semiconductor foundry business! While I credit Intel for increasing the exposure of the fabless semiconductor ecosystem to the financial markets, the attention from the Intel biased press is a bit overwhelming. The TSMC and ARM bashing is reaching new levels… Read More
John Heinleinfrom ARM briefed me at DAC exactly one week ago. I love to use my mobile devices (MacBook Pro, iPad and Samsung Galaxy Note II) every day, and many mobile devices are ARM-powered because of the low power consumption, and pervasive eco-system around the architecture. Apple with the MacBook Pro is still Intel-powered,… Read More
