♫ IMG Sitting on the DOK of the Bay…Closin’ Timin’

♫ IMG Sitting on the DOK of the Bay…Closin’ Timin’
by Paul McLellan on 07-24-2013 at 7:00 am

Scott Fitzgerald is supposed to have said “the rich are not like other people” to Ernest Hemingway (he didn’t). In the same way, processors are not like other blocks, and not because they have more gates (they don’t). However, special approaches to optimizing processors are important because the clock… Read More


Static Low-Power Verification in Mixed-Signal SoC Designs

Static Low-Power Verification in Mixed-Signal SoC Designs
by Daniel Payne on 06-19-2013 at 2:02 pm

IC designer Shubhyant Chaturvediof AMD used EDA tools from Mentor Graphicsand Concept Engineeringto perform static, low-power verification of a mixed-signal SoC design with a combined CPU and GPU. Shubhyant presented a poster session at DAC two weeks ago in Austin, and I wanted to share it with my readers here at SemiWiki.… Read More


GPU-Based SPICE Simulator for Library Characterization

GPU-Based SPICE Simulator for Library Characterization
by Daniel Payne on 06-13-2013 at 11:55 am

Jeff Tuanis the CEO and President of an EDA startup called G-Analog, founded in May 2012. His background includes working at: Cadence, Epic, Synopsys, Nassda, Chartered Semi and GLOBALFOUNDRIES. Jason Lu is the R&D manager. We met at DAC last week to talk about his company’s new product called Gchar for IC library characterization… Read More


ARM Partners with Carbon on Cortex-A57

ARM Partners with Carbon on Cortex-A57
by Paul McLellan on 05-31-2013 at 3:37 pm

Just in time for DAC, Carbon have announced that they have expanded their partnership with ARM to create and deliver models for the ARM Cortex-A57 processor and related IP. One piece of related IP is the Cortex-A53 which can be configured in big.LITTLE multi-core setups to achieve the sweet spot of higher performance and lower power.… Read More


RealTime Register Retiming

RealTime Register Retiming
by Paul McLellan on 03-19-2013 at 7:00 am

I was at the EDAC CEO forecast meeting last week and one of the questions that was asked of EDAC members was “which is the hottest EDA startup?” The one with the most nominations was Oasys. So Oasys is hot.

But register retiming is hotter.

The latest announcement from Oasys this morning is that register retiming is now … Read More


Video? Tensilica Has You Covered

Video? Tensilica Has You Covered
by Paul McLellan on 02-12-2013 at 2:01 am

Video is a huge growing area and advanced imaging applications are becoming ubiquitous. By “advanced” I mean more than just things like cameras in your smartphone. There is lots more coming, from high-dynamic range (HDR) photography, gesture recognition, more and more intelligent video in cars to keep us safe, … Read More


Carbonize your Imagination

Carbonize your Imagination
by Paul McLellan on 06-13-2012 at 7:00 am

Just up the road from Cambridge-based ARM in Kings Langley is Imagination Technologies, their biggest competitor in the GPU market. Interestingly they also were a customer of VLSI Technology in the early days back when they were called Videologic. Tomorrow, jointly with Carbon, they are announcing that a wide range of their PowerVR,… Read More


Linley Tech Mobile Conference

Linley Tech Mobile Conference
by Paul McLellan on 04-18-2012 at 2:14 pm

I went to part of the Linley Tech Mobile Conference. This is the current incarnation of what started life as Michael Slater’s Microprocessor Report, and the twice-yearly Microprocessor Forum. These very technical analysis organizations seem to work well when they are a small group of analysts working together to cover… Read More