TSMC will host their annual technology symposium at several locations in the U.S. on April 9th in San Jose, April 16th in Austin, and April 23rd in Boston. TSMC will discuss the market outlook, design enablement, and technology for high-speed computing, mobile communications, connectivity and storage, CIS, embedded flash, … Read More
Cliff Hou of TSMC gave the keynote today at SNUG on Collaborate to Innovate: a Foundry’s Perspective. Starting around 45nm the way that a foundry has to work with its ecosystem fundamentally changed. Up until then, each process generation was similar enough to the previous one, apart obviously from size, that it could be … Read More
If I had a nickel for every time I heard the term “FinFET” at the 2013 SNUG (Synopsys User Group) Conference I could buy a dozen Venti Carmel Frappuccinos at Starbucks (my daughter’s favorite treat). In the keynote, Aart de Geus said FinFET 14 times and posed the question: Will FinFETs Yield at 14nm? So that was my mission, ask everybody… Read More
I was at SNUG earlier today at both Aart’s keynote that opened the conference and at his “meet the press” Q&A just before lunch. The keynote was entitled Bridges to the Gigascale Decade. And the presentation certainly contained lots of photos of bridges! Anyway, I’m going to focus on just one thing,… Read More
Amidst frequently changing requirements, time pressure and demand for high accuracy, it is imperative that EDA and design companies look at time consuming processes in the overall design flow and find alternatives without losing accuracy. High Frequency Analysis of IC designs is one such process which is traditionally based… Read More
Pure digital routers for IC designs have an easier task than mixed-signal routers, because mixed-signal routers have more constraints like:
Samsung’s aggressive marketing is starting to hit the fabless semiconductor ecosystem so we had all better be prepared. Samsung’s 2012 marketing budget exceeded $400M which probably beats the marketing budget of the entire fabless ecosystem! The question is, will the fabless semiconductor industry be easily swayed by Samsung’s… Read More
These days when we talk of SoC verification, what comes to our mind immediately is VirtualPlatform. Of course with the increasing size, complexity and different styles of designs, it is very much a need.
However, that is supported by actual verification engines and methodologies which are varying considerable with digital, … Read More
When Semiwiki readers see the name Forte Design Systems, they may think of the live bagpipers’ performance that closes the yearly Design Automation Conference. Forte has been the sponsor of this moving end to DAC since 2001. Step with me behind the plaid kilts for a good look at this remarkable company headquartered in San Jose, … Read More
Back when I was a programmer at VLSI Technology in the mid-1980s, I was responsible for all the data management in the VLSI Design Tools. By responsible for, I mean that I designed the whole system and wrote all the code. Prior to the 5th release of our product, there was no data management, designers simply used filenames and it was … Read More
