CEO Interview: Vincent Markus of Menta

CEO Interview: Vincent Markus of Menta
by Daniel Nenni on 05-15-2017 at 7:00 am

What is Menta all about?
Menta was founded to add hardware-programmability within SoCs. We deliver FPGAs in hard IP form that can be readily embedded within an SoC to make certain hardware functions reconfigurable at-will, post-production. This enables customers to dynamically adapt to evolving standards, perform security… Read More


CEO Interview: Sanjay Keswani of Consensia

CEO Interview: Sanjay Keswani of Consensia
by Daniel Nenni on 04-03-2017 at 7:00 am

Sanjay Keswani founded Consensia in 2013. He has deep experience in the high-tech industry, guiding some of the world’s high profile technology brands through complex innovation and business transformation projects including companies such as Atmel, KLA-Tencor, Hughes Aircraft, and Motorola Mobility. Consensia customers… Read More


Seven Reasons to Use FPGA Prototyping for ASIC Designs

Seven Reasons to Use FPGA Prototyping for ASIC Designs
by Daniel Payne on 03-28-2017 at 12:00 pm

Using an FPGA to prototype your next hardware design is a familiar concept, extending all the way back to the time that the first FPGAs were being produced by Xilinx and Altera. There are multiple competitors in the marketplace for FPGA prototyping, so I wanted to discern more about what the German-based company PRO DESIGN had to … Read More


What’s better than silicon-proven IP? Lab bench-proven!

What’s better than silicon-proven IP? Lab bench-proven!
by Tom Dillinger on 03-17-2017 at 12:00 pm

The SoC industry depends upon the availability of validated IP. SoC designs require a huge investment, and assume the external IP that is licensed from outside parties satisfies all functional and electrical specifications. To support that requirement, IP providers typically pursue a strategy to demonstrate their designs… Read More


Webinar: FPGA Prototyping and ASIC Design

Webinar: FPGA Prototyping and ASIC Design
by Bernard Murphy on 02-26-2017 at 4:00 pm

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


Power and Performance Optimization for Embedded FPGA’s

Power and Performance Optimization for Embedded FPGA’s
by Tom Dillinger on 02-22-2017 at 12:00 pm

Last month, I made a “no-brainer” forecast that 2017 would be the year in which embedded FPGA (eFPGA) IP would emerge as a key differentiator for new SoC designs (link to the earlier article here).

The fusion of several technical and market factors are motivating design teams to incorporate programmable logic functionality… Read More


Xilinx vs Altera Update 2017

Xilinx vs Altera Update 2017
by Daniel Nenni on 02-15-2017 at 7:00 am

I truly miss the Xilinx versus Altera war of words (competition at its finest) and competition is what makes the fabless semiconductor ecosystem truly great, absolutely. So with great disappointment I read the Intel Analyst Day transcript published by Bloomberg last week. It is attached at the bottom in case you are interested… Read More


FPGA Design Gets Real

FPGA Design Gets Real
by Tom Simon on 02-08-2017 at 12:00 pm

FPGA’s have become an important part of system design. It’s a far cry from how FPGA’s started out – as glue logic between discrete logic devices in the early days of electronic design. Modern day FPGA’s are practically SOC’s in their own right. Frequently they come with embedded processor cores, sophisticated IO cells, DSP,… Read More


Four Steps for Logic Synthesis in FPGA Designs

Four Steps for Logic Synthesis in FPGA Designs
by Daniel Payne on 01-30-2017 at 12:00 pm

I remember meeting Ken McElvain at Silicon Compilers for the first time back in the 1980’s, he was a gifted EDA tool developer that did a lot of coding including logic synthesis, a cycle-based simulator and ATPG. Mentor Graphics acquired Silicon Compilers with Ken included, and he continued to create another logic synthesis… Read More


CEO Interview: Toshio Nakama of S2C

CEO Interview: Toshio Nakama of S2C
by Daniel Nenni on 01-16-2017 at 7:00 am

I haven’t sat down to speak with S2C since we collaborated on the book, PROTOTYPICAL, published just before DAC 2016 and even then, I hadn’t spoken to Toshio Nakama, their CEO. Toshio splits his time between the San Jose headquarters and the Shanghai headquarters so getting time to meet face-to-face has been challenging. I was finally… Read More