Chip designers are familiar with the additional physical design checking requirements that were incorporated into flows at advanced process nodes. With the introduction of optical correction and inverse lithography technology applied during mask data generation, and with the extension of a 193nm exposure source to finer… Read More
It really is an exciting time in semiconductors. The benchmarks on the new Apple A11 SoC and the Nvidia GPU are simply amazing. Even though Moore’s Law is slowing, the resulting chips are improving well above and beyond expectations, absolutely.
As I have mentioned before, non-traditional chip companies such as Apple, Amazon,… Read More
This is a story I have been tracking for some time now. Oracle is one of the companies I was enamored with early in my career, Sun microsystems as well. They are both legacies here in Silicon Valley, absolutely. I can now confirm that Oracle is getting out of the chip business. Oracle got into the chip business with the $7.4B acquisition… Read More
Traditionally, EDA has been a brute force methodology where we buy more software licenses and more CPUs and keep running endless jobs to keep up with the increasing design and process complexities. SPICE simulation for example; when I meet chip designers (which I do quite frequently) I ask them how many simulations they do for a … Read More
Founded in 1984, Silvaco is now the largest privately held EDA company with a rich history including a recent transformation that is worth a blog if not a book. Coincidently, I started my career in Silicon Valley in 1984 and have had many dealings with Silvaco over the years including a personal relationship with Silvaco founder … Read More
This was my 34[SUP]th[/SUP] DAC, yes 34. It is a shame blogging did not exist back then because I would have liked to have read thoughts from my eager young mind, or maybe not. The first thing that struck me this year is the great content. Before DAC I review the sessions I want to see and this year there were many more than I had time for. … Read More
DAC is upon us again! The Design Automation Conference holds special meaning to me as it was the first technical conference I attended as a semiconductor professional, or professional anything for that matter. That was 33 years ago and I have not missed one since. This year my wife and I both will be walking the DAC floor and it would… Read More
The semiconductor IP market continues growing at a healthy rate, and IP reuse is a staple of all modern SoC designs. Along with the acceptance of IP reuse comes a host of growing challenges, like:
Pop quiz – name an event at which an EDA vendor would be unlikely to exhibit. How about The Trading Show in Chicago, later this month? That’s trading as in markets, high-frequency trading, blockchain and all that other trading-centric financial technology. This is another market, like cloud, where performance is everything and… Read More
We are happy to publish book reviews, like this one from Dr. Georges Gielen of the KU Leuven in Belgium, for the greater good of the semiconductor ecosystem. So, if you have a semiconductor book you would like to review for fame not fortune let me know.… Read More
