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


Meeting Demand as Fab Capacity is Stretched Again

Meeting Demand as Fab Capacity is Stretched Again
by Tom Simon on 08-11-2015 at 8:00 pm

Global semiconductor production capacity and its utilization level are key elements of the technology economy. During a panel at DAC in June Mentor Graphics posited that we are entering into a period where leading edge processes will be in high demand and also older nodes are seeing increasing demand due to Internet of Things designs… Read More


Foolproof Your IP before it Stumbles in Higher-up Design

Foolproof Your IP before it Stumbles in Higher-up Design
by Pawan Fangaria on 08-06-2015 at 4:00 pm

SoC designs are increasingly becoming assemblies of a large number of IP blocks. A well integrated assembly can lead to a successful PPA (Power, Performance and Area) optimized design. However, it is equally important that each IP block is optimized, robust, and integrable in the design. The complexity of an IP and its integration… Read More


Good Morning Vietnam

Good Morning Vietnam
by Paul McLellan on 08-03-2015 at 7:00 am

This morning I went to a presentation in Palo Alto about outsourcing in Vietnam. You have probably heard that Vietnam is the new China for manufacturing, as wages have increased in the Shenzhen area then companies like Foxconn have opened plants in Vietnam. But this meeting was mostly about services, software and design. In this… Read More


Ultra-low Power IP for Wearables

Ultra-low Power IP for Wearables
by Paul McLellan on 07-28-2015 at 7:00 am

Wearables and the Internet of Things (IoT) in general are all about low power. Everyone must have read (or even experienced) the phenomenon of putting something like a Fitbit on and then after a short period leaving it in a drawer or putting it to recharge and forgetting about it for weeks. The longer devices can last the more likely… Read More


eSilicon ♥ ARM!

eSilicon ♥ ARM!
by Daniel Nenni on 07-01-2015 at 5:00 am

The things I enjoy the most at conferences are presentations by customers, the companies that solve the problems we face every day with modern semiconductor design. We all have access to the same tools and IP and use the same foundries so it’s the actual design and implementation that separates the wheat from the chaff, absolutely.… 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


Semiconductor Acquisitions will Fuel Innovation!

Semiconductor Acquisitions will Fuel Innovation!
by Daniel Nenni on 05-30-2015 at 7:00 am

Has the semiconductor world gone acquisition crazy? It certainly seems that way with the more than $60B in M&A activity which may now include Altera. We are probably getting close to the 80/20 rule where 80% of the semiconductor revenue is being generated by 20% of the companies. Not far off from where we were at 25 years ago when… Read More


eSilicon Lyfts Its Game

eSilicon Lyfts Its Game
by Paul McLellan on 05-24-2015 at 3:00 am

We have got used to services like Uber and Lyft (at least in cities that are not so anti-consumer as to ban them, I’m looking at you New York. Et vous Paris). But in most of the semiconductor world we are still stuck standing at the side of the road waving our hand helplessly in the hope that the light on that taxi is actually on. Leading… Read More


From Medical and Wearables to Big Data, in 日本語/한국어/中文

From Medical and Wearables to Big Data, in 日本語/한국어/中文
by Paul McLellan on 04-10-2015 at 7:00 am

Whether it’s a tiny always-on medical device or a secure cloud network processing Big Data, the Internet of Things (IoT) is bringing new challenges to IC design. Almost by definition an IoT device contains a microcontroller of some sort along with some way of communicating. Unlike our smartphones where we are reasonably happy … Read More