How to Build an IoT Endpoint in Three Months

How to Build an IoT Endpoint in Three Months
by Tom Simon on 09-27-2015 at 7:00 am

It is often said that things go in big cycles. One example of this is the design and manufacturing products. People long ago used to build their own things. Think of villagers or settlers hundreds of years ago, if they needed something they would craft it themselves. Then came the industrial revolution and two things happened. One… Read More


eSilicon Truly Puts the ‘e’ in Silicon

eSilicon Truly Puts the ‘e’ in Silicon
by Paul McLellan on 09-12-2015 at 7:00 am

eSilicon have a new website. Companies update their websites regularly, so why is this news? Well, eSilicon increasingly does their business on the web. They are not like Facebook, say, where their business is entirely web-based, there is a physical business behind them. So they are more like Lyft for chips. Obviously Lyft requires… Read More


Improve SoC Front-end Design Productivity

Improve SoC Front-end Design Productivity
by Khan Kibria on 09-06-2015 at 4:00 pm

I have been involved in SoC developments for a long time. During this period I tried to learn what impacts the productivity and subsequently the market opportunity. Over the last year or so at SoCScape I have been involved designing solutions that can improve them. I have decided to post some of my thoughts here in a series of blogs … Read More


eSilicon@Samsung: ASIC Design, IP Enablement, and Cloud Platform

eSilicon@Samsung: ASIC Design, IP Enablement, and Cloud Platform
by Paul McLellan on 06-12-2015 at 7:00 am

Earlier this week at DAC, Javier DeLaCruz of eSilicon presented at the Samsung booth. They presented an introduction to what eSilicon does. However, since what they do has changed over the years it is useful to recap. If you know about eSilicon then you probably think of them as a fabless ASIC company. The old ASIC model back in the … Read More


Why is Intel going inside Altera for Servers?

Why is Intel going inside Altera for Servers?
by Eric Esteve on 06-02-2015 at 12:30 pm

You should be happy to listen that Intel will buy Altera FPGA challenger, if you expect always more power to be consumed in datacenter! In 2013 the power consumption linked with the Servers and Storage IC activity, plus the electricity consumed in the systems cooling these high performance chips has reached 91 BILLION KWh (or the… Read More


Will Dark Silicon Dictate Server Blade Architecture?

Will Dark Silicon Dictate Server Blade Architecture?
by Tom Simon on 05-27-2015 at 7:00 pm

Does the evil sounding phenomenon known as Dark Silicon create a big opportunity for FPGA vendors as was predicted recently by Pacific Crest Securities? John Vinh posits that using multiple cores as a method of scaling throughput is flattening out, and the use of FPGA’s to perform computation can help off-load and thus overcome… Read More


Facts Support New Emergence in Semiconductor Landscape

Facts Support New Emergence in Semiconductor Landscape
by Pawan Fangaria on 01-03-2015 at 9:00 am

As we left an exciting year 2014 which is poised to record 7+ % increase in semiconductor revenue (~ $338 B) compared to 2013 (~ $315 B) and entered into another promising year 2015 for semiconductors, I looked back over the year bygone and collected inferences from some of the major important events which clearly convey how 2015 can… Read More


ASIC Days Are Here Again

ASIC Days Are Here Again
by Paul McLellan on 12-18-2014 at 7:00 am

Technology often goes in cycles. Thirty years ago the dominant mode of computing was a shared computing resource with comparatively dumb terminals. Think of a Vax accessed by terminals. Then workstations and the PC came along and the dominant mode became a computer on everyone’s desk. Then the smartphone came along and … Read More


Getting a Quote Without Talking to a Salesman

Getting a Quote Without Talking to a Salesman
by Paul McLellan on 11-09-2014 at 4:00 pm

VLSI Technology, for those of you not of a certain age, was one of the companies that, along with LSI Logic, created the ASIC business. One challenge in ASIC is that the customer needs to decide which ASIC company to use (since the libraries and technologies are all different) meaning they needed to get quotes from several companies.… Read More


Winds of Change in the Custom Chip Market

Winds of Change in the Custom Chip Market
by Peter Gasperini on 07-18-2014 at 4:00 pm

The most interesting part of the semiconductor market for me has always been the Custom Chip sector – the FPGA, ASIC and SoC companies where I have spent my entire career. These three segments provide an excellent barometer of the overall state of financial health and technological innovation for the entire High Tech industry, Read More