Mentor’s annual user group meeting at the Doubletree Hotel in San Jose, CA is coming up on Tuesday, April 21[SUP]st[/SUP]. This complementary event provides a unique opportunity to share design techniques and exchange ideas with other users and experts in the design community. As you may have read I am the star of the show; moderating… Read More
Power consumption is always a major concern in the field of electronics, especially as the circuits controlling these electronics shrink in size while also growing in complexity. Utilizing a fairly new, ultra-low power technique known as a sub-threshold voltage mode for transistors operating in the circuit, the company named… Read More
This will be a year of change for the fabless semiconductor ecosystem, absolutely. Last year we were wondering how Samsung Mobile was going to compete with the China clones and other low end smart phones. We now know the answer to that question thanks to the Chipworks tear down of the Galaxy S6. SemiWiki IP expert Dr. Eric Esteve blogged… Read More
Apple has redefined three industries within a decade: media player with the iPod, mobile handset with the iPhone and portable computers with the iPad. If there is anything common in these three game-changing product development stories other than Apple, it’s the ARM footprint. Even now the technology media is abuzz with speculation… Read More
IP vendors always try to create differentiation, especially when designing protocol based IP. You can differentiate by building the most performing controller but you will probably miss the expectation of these customers who don’t search for performance but just compliance to a specific standard. Or the vendor may want to design… Read More
In my last blog here, I talked about last 30+ years of semiconductor IC market. While we have seen this market growing at CAGR of ~9% over last 30+ years, the CAGR of current decade is expected to be at just ~4%. Although the base size of the overall semiconductor IC market is quite healthy, expected to be at ~$378B by 2019, we cannot hope… Read More
In the traditional sense “Shift Left” is the process of making things simpler in an effort to make things faster. Shift Left was the theme of theDVCon keynote last week delivered by Synopsys co-founder and co-CEO Aart de Geus which is right on topic when it comes to modern semiconductor design and manufacturing, absolutely.
KEYNOTE:… Read More
You have to love when a professional journalist leaks a story and cites a “source close to the acquisition.” News flash: Anyone “close” to the acquisition is under NDA which is a legally binding agreement, not very professional if you ask me. Bloggers however can write whatever they want but since I was actually “close” to … Read More
As big of a fan as I am of Social Media there is still nothing like getting up close and personal when collaborating with the fabless semiconductor ecosystem. After 30+ years in Silicon Valley if there is one thing I have learned it’s that “showing up” is the #1 key to success, absolutely.
Speaking of showing up, each year there are three… Read More
In a world where Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) and Application Specific Standard Products (ASSPs) are dominating every conceivable application, greater attention is being applied to their long term reliability. These chips are being built on smaller lithographies, running at higher speeds, dissipating… Read More
