SoCs in New Context Look beyond PPA – Part2

SoCs in New Context Look beyond PPA – Part2
by Pawan Fangaria on 05-10-2015 at 10:00 am

In the first part of this article, I talked about some of the key business aspects along with some technical aspects like system performance, functionality, and IP integration that drive the architecture of an SoC for its best optimization and realization in an economic sense. In this part, let’s dive into some more aspects that… Read More


Shift-West of Semicon Power Centers

Shift-West of Semicon Power Centers
by Pawan Fangaria on 04-23-2015 at 5:00 pm

It’s true that Japan was once the center of semiconductor business and we were carrying on with that perception until recently. In 1990, six out of top10 semiconductor companies (excluding pure-play foundries) were in Japan; and 59% of worldwide semiconductor market was concentrated with the top10 companies. The semiconductor… Read More


US is the Ultimate Leader in Semiconductor Business

US is the Ultimate Leader in Semiconductor Business
by Pawan Fangaria on 04-07-2015 at 6:00 pm

Last year in November when I looked at the world’s top20 semiconductor companies with Samsungand TSMCbeing at the second and third rank respectively, first being Intel, I computed the sales numbers of the companies based on their countries and found that Taiwan and South Korea accounted for 34.5% of the total sales of the top20 … Read More


All things being unequal for NXP and Freescale

All things being unequal for NXP and Freescale
by Don Dingee on 03-02-2015 at 4:00 pm

When I read the news that NXP was buying Freescale, it felt like a part of me – and a big part of the history of high tech industry in Arizona – died. There was a time not that long ago where Motorola was the biggest employer in this state, way before Freescale and ON Semi separated from the mothership. Somehow, even with moving headquarters… Read More


Freescale and Samsung

Freescale and Samsung
by Paul McLellan on 02-17-2015 at 6:58 pm

It is impossible to keep a secret in this business. Everyone knows that Freescale is being shopped around and there is interest.

From Yahoo Finance:
The parties that Freescale is speaking to could not be learned. The New York Post first reported that Freescale was working with investment banks to explore a sale. Freescale sharesRead More


Mentor Moves to Enter IoT Fray

Mentor Moves to Enter IoT Fray
by Tom Simon on 01-09-2015 at 7:00 am

In December I signed up for an IoT “lunch and learn” hosted by Mentor Graphics. There were a number of surprising things about the session. The first and most obvious is that it was really a “breakfast-to-lunch and learn”. Starting at 9AM and going through the end of lunch, it was packed full of ‘learning.’ It was also packed full of … Read More


Maker Movement Embraced by Major Semiconductor Companies

Maker Movement Embraced by Major Semiconductor Companies
by Tom Simon on 10-09-2014 at 10:00 pm

How the Arduino Changed Embedded System Development Forever

In 2005 with the development of the Arduino, everything changed for people building things that required a microcontroller. The Arduino brought with it a low price standard, and open, hardware platform and an easy to use open source development environment. It was … Read More


Thread is why Nest has extra 802.15.4 goodies

Thread is why Nest has extra 802.15.4 goodies
by Don Dingee on 07-15-2014 at 4:00 pm

From last week: “Chipmakers can’t afford to wait on the sidelines, hoping their standard fare gets picked up and fits in with one of these [#IoT]teams.” This week, it’s ARM, Freescale, and Silicon Labs joining with Google and others on Thread. Yet another consortium? A lot more to this story.… Read More


Do You Really Know RapidIO?

Do You Really Know RapidIO?
by Eric Esteve on 05-06-2014 at 4:53 am

About 10 years ago, I was in charge of the product definition of our next IP to be released, the PCI Express gen-1 Controller. I was also involved in the decision process to select the new functions to develop, in respect with the market size, all of this being the definition of “marketing”. The reason why our company decided not to develop… Read More


ARM Lab in a Box

ARM Lab in a Box
by Paul McLellan on 03-02-2014 at 5:57 pm

St. Francis Xavier said “Give me the child until he is seven and I’ll give you the man.” ARM is not going for them quite that young but this week they announced their “lab in a box” for participating universities worldwide. It is actually a joint launch between the ARM University Program (which is not new)… Read More