Always-on and the new wearable core

Always-on and the new wearable core
by Don Dingee on 06-01-2014 at 11:00 am

Recently, I mentioned smartphone SoCs consume one, maybe two orders of magnitude too much power for broader use in wearables. However, that is only when they are “on”. To save power and stretch battery life, smartphones spend a lot of time napping – display off, sitting still with MEMS sensors powered down, waiting for an incoming… Read More


Intel is Still Missing Mobile!

Intel is Still Missing Mobile!
by Daniel Nenni on 05-07-2014 at 9:00 am

Paul McLellan was on assignment in Hong Kong last week so I attended the Linley Mobile Conference and was not surprised Intel did not present. During the networking sessions I asked more than a dozen people why and the answers were pretty focused on “Intel still does not play well with others” and “Intel’s current mobile offerings… Read More


More things on the DSP frontier at MWC14

More things on the DSP frontier at MWC14
by Don Dingee on 02-23-2014 at 12:00 pm

With a well-chronicled share inside cellular baseband interfaces for mobile devices, one might think that is the entire CEVA story, especially going into Mobile World Congress 2014 this week. MWC is still a phone show, but is becoming more and more about the Internet of Things and wearables, and CEVA and its ecosystem are showing… Read More


What does a 52% increase in DSP IP core licensing means?

What does a 52% increase in DSP IP core licensing means?
by Eric Esteve on 02-07-2014 at 11:18 am

The future market performance for an IP vendor licensing an IP based on a model with upfront fee plus royalties can be easily and safely evaluated if you look at the first part of revenue: upfront fee. Even if the royalty part is declining, exhibiting a 52% increase (Q4 2013 to Q4 2012) in upfront licensing fee is a promise that the future… Read More


DSPs converging on software defined everything

DSPs converging on software defined everything
by Don Dingee on 01-21-2014 at 5:00 pm

In our fascination where architecture meets the ideas of Fourier, Nyquist, Reed, Shannon, and others, we almost missed the shift – most digital signal processing isn’t happening on a big piece of silicon called a DSP anymore.

It didn’t start out that way. General purpose CPUs, which can do almost anything given enough code, time,… Read More


OpenVX Bring Power-efficient Vision Acceleration to Mobile

OpenVX Bring Power-efficient Vision Acceleration to Mobile
by Eric Esteve on 01-06-2014 at 8:44 am

OpenVX is the next open source sample specification to be launched by Khronos group, a consortium building a family of interoperating APIs for portable and power efficient vision processing. If you take a look at the OpenVX participant list, you can check that the major chip makers: Broadcom, Qualcomm, TI, Intel, Nvidia, Renesas,… Read More


EDA and Semi IP Stocks in 2013: MENT, ARMH, CDN, SNPS, ANSS, CEVA, IMG.L

EDA and Semi IP Stocks in 2013: MENT, ARMH, CDN, SNPS, ANSS, CEVA, IMG.L
by Daniel Payne on 12-20-2013 at 12:39 am

2013 was an up year for the stock markets as both the DJIA and the tech-heavy NASDAQ showed significant growth, so how did EDA and Semi IP companies do in the past 12 months? A quick stock plot from Yahoo Finance shows us that only two of the seven companies beat the NASDAQ: ARMH, MENT.… Read More


Why CEVA Is My Favorite Semiconductor IP Stock For 2014

Why CEVA Is My Favorite Semiconductor IP Stock For 2014
by Ashraf Eassa on 12-10-2013 at 9:05 pm

As a full time financial writer/investor, I am always on the lookout for compelling risk/reward opportunities, particularly in small-cap tech. While the world of large-cap tech is generally well understood by the investment/analyst community, smaller cap names are usually under-followed and often misunderstood. One such… Read More


A Brief History of DSP…Not By Any of Us

A Brief History of DSP…Not By Any of Us
by Paul McLellan on 12-04-2013 at 11:35 am

I came across an interesting article by Will Strauss which is pretty much the history of DSP in communication chips. Having lived through the early part of the history while I was at VLSI Technology I found it especially interesting.

At VSLI, our first GSM (2G, i.e. digital not analog air interface) was a 5-chip chipset. The DSP functionality… Read More


Android Kit Kat Openly Preaching for DSP offloading

Android Kit Kat Openly Preaching for DSP offloading
by Eric Esteve on 11-15-2013 at 10:04 am

In fact KitKat advocates low-power always-on functionality, and this is essential for contextual-awareness. Always-on functionality is saving battery life, which seems to be weird at first: if your phone is always-on you would expect it to consume much power… But always-on goes together with screen-off (the screen is a high… Read More