EDAC CEOs: consolidation, clouds, and whether Intel will buy Synopsys

EDAC CEOs: consolidation, clouds, and whether Intel will buy Synopsys
by Paul McLellan on 03-15-2013 at 5:12 pm

Yesterday evening was the annual EDAC CEO forecast meeting. Actually it is not really a forecast meeting any more, more a sort of CEO response to some survey questions asked of EDAC members. Rich Valera of Needham moderated with Lip-Bu, Aart and Wally, along with Simon Segars representing the IP arm(!) of the business and Raul Camposano… Read More


Cavium Adopts JasperGold Architectural Modeling

Cavium Adopts JasperGold Architectural Modeling
by Paul McLellan on 03-05-2013 at 7:00 am

Cavium designs some very complex SoCs containing multiple ARM or MIPS cores at 32 and 64 bit. This complexity leads to major challenges in validating the overall chip architecture to ensure that their designs will meet the requirements of their customers once they are completed, with performance as high as 100Gbps.

Cavium have… Read More


Developing ARM v8 Code…Today

Developing ARM v8 Code…Today
by Paul McLellan on 02-13-2013 at 12:50 pm

You are going to be developing software for an SoC that contains an ARM Cortex-A57 64-bit CPU. Or perhaps it is an SoC containing ARM’s hybrid big.LITTLE multi-core architecture that combines one or more low power cores with some high power, high performance cores to get the best of both worlds: high throughput when it is needed… Read More


Video? Tensilica Has You Covered

Video? Tensilica Has You Covered
by Paul McLellan on 02-12-2013 at 2:01 am

Video is a huge growing area and advanced imaging applications are becoming ubiquitous. By “advanced” I mean more than just things like cameras in your smartphone. There is lots more coming, from high-dynamic range (HDR) photography, gesture recognition, more and more intelligent video in cars to keep us safe, … Read More


Apple and Samsung Do It Again

Apple and Samsung Do It Again
by Paul McLellan on 02-07-2013 at 11:54 pm

The numbers are starting to come in for how everyone did in Q4. According to Cannacord Genuity, Apple made 69% of the profit and Samsung made 34%. What do you notice about those numbers? They add up to more than 100%. HTC supposedly made 1% of the profit and everyone else either broke even or lost money. Basically Apple and Samsung have… Read More


ARMs in the Clouds

ARMs in the Clouds
by Paul McLellan on 02-07-2013 at 7:10 pm

The most interesting session at the Linley Tech Data Center Conference last week was the last one, on Designing Power Efficient Servers. What this was really about was whether ARM would have any success in the server market and what Intel’s response might be.

Datacenters are now very focused on power efficiency and many track… Read More


Software Driven Power Analysis

Software Driven Power Analysis
by Paul McLellan on 02-03-2013 at 8:15 pm

Power is a fundamentally hard problem. When you have finished the design, you have accurate power numbers but can’t do anything about them. At the RTL level you have some power information but it is often too late to make major architectural changes (add an offload audio-processor, for example). Early in the design, making… Read More


Common Platform Technology Forum February 5th 2013 Live or Online!

Common Platform Technology Forum February 5th 2013 Live or Online!
by Daniel Nenni on 02-03-2013 at 8:00 am

Can’t make it to Santa Clara? Join us online!

The detailed 2013 CPTF agenda is now up in preparation for the February 5th event at the Santa Clara Convention Center. This is one of the rare times that you can get a free lunch! Watch this quick video to see what is in store for us this year. Dr. Paul McLellan and I will be there so please… Read More


High Performance or Cycle Accuracy? You can have both

High Performance or Cycle Accuracy? You can have both
by Daniel Payne on 01-26-2013 at 10:55 pm

SoC designers have always wanted to simulate hardware and software together during new product development, so one practical question has been how to trade off performance versus accuracy when creating an early model of the hardware. The creative minds at Carbon Design Systems and ARM have combined to offer us some hope and relief… Read More


Apple Makes More on iPhone Than Samsung on Everything

Apple Makes More on iPhone Than Samsung on Everything
by Paul McLellan on 01-25-2013 at 1:39 pm

Apple’s stock is down 10% after they announced “disappointing” results. They are only disappointing in the sense that some analysts expected even bigger profits. At $13.08 billion it is the largest quarterly profit for any corporation that is not in the oil business ever. According to wikipedia, even the … Read More