As you all know I’m a big fan of the ASIC business dating back to the start of the fabless semiconductor transformation where anybody could send a design spec to an ASIC company and get a chip back. The ASIC business model also started the smart phone revolution when Samsung built the first Apple SoCs for the iPhones and iPads.
Today … Read More
When you think about working with an ASIC service provider like Open-Silicon, you probably think about handling all the architecture, design and verification/validation in your shop, handing over a netlist and some other collateral, then the ASIC services provider takes responsibility for implementation and manufacturing.… Read More
Since the beginning of time, people on Earth have peered into the night sky, pondering if they were alone in the universe. Today, we have a large group of scientists that are working to answer that question. The precision required for their search often depends on the performance of a key piece of technology – the analog-to-digital… Read More
As you all know I am a big fan of the ASIC business model. It was critical in the transformation of the fabless semiconductor industry and still plays a critical part in our success. In fact, the ASIC business model is leading the way for systems companies to make their own chips. Remember, Apple started with the ASIC business model … Read More
Back in my IP days we spent a lot of time with the ASIC companies chasing multi-million dollar licensing deals. IBM was a fierce ASIC competitor back then with leading edge processes and a silicon proven IP catalog that was unmatched.
Unfortunately that ended at 65nm as the pure-play foundries (TSMC and UMC) and fabless ASIC companies… Read More
Taher Madraswala started his career at Intel designing microprocessors and later overseeing ASIC development before joining Open-Silicon at its inception. During his 25 year semiconductor career Taher has experienced more than 300 tapeouts across a wide variety of applications.
Today Open-Silicon applies an open business… Read More
If you are building an advanced SoC, you know that you’re going to need a lot of embedded memory. Unless this is your first rodeo, you also know that which memories you choose can have a huge impact on Power, Performance and Area (PPA) and, for some applications, Energy (power integrated over time), Temperature and Reliability. Which… Read More
For those of you who don’t know, GitHub is the crowdsourcing version of the defacto industry standard GIT source code management software. Currently, more than 14 million people have deposited more than 35 million software projects (mostly open-source) on GitHub making it the largest host of source code in the world.
Now think… Read More
If you look back at the beginning of the ASIC business you will see that it was really a critical time in the semiconductor industry. It all began in the 1980s which coincidentally is when I started my career in Silicon Valley. General purpose integrated circuits ruled the market, forcing system designers to cobble together off-the-shelf… Read More
The challenge of tracking design progress is a shared problem for individual designers, team leaders, and project managers. At each level the ability to step back from just reviewing error log files and seeing the arc of the whole design as it moves forward is valuable. The difficulty of seeing the whole picture is exacerbated when… Read More
