If you really want to know why I write about TSMC it is all about ego, my massive ego, absolutely. Blogs about TSMC and the foundries have always driven the most traffic and they most likely always will. Semiconductor IP is second, Semiconductor Design is third, and I don’t think that is going to change anytime soon:
SemiWiki BI: Daniel… Read More
IoT or wearable: it’s fascinating to see how many articles, blogs, and comments have been posted about them during the last two years! IoT business potential is huge as are the number of possible applications. If we summarize the functions within a wearable system we can count:
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Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. I fear the Greeks especially when bearing gifts. In Virgil’s Aeneid these words are spoken by the Trojan priest Laocoön warning about the wooden horse that the Greeks have offered Troy. But to no avail, Laocoön is slain by serpents and the Trojans bring the horse inside the walls of Troy. Since… Read More
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
Huge designs, spectacular design costs, astronomical capital expenditure. Welcome to the present day semiconductor industry. As discussed in my prior post, the days of democratized silicon access have been replaced by an elite market. Custom chips are once again a rich person’s game. Does it have to stay this way? I personally… Read More
One of the first companies we worked with when SemiWiki went live in 2011 was ClioSoft. They had a problem with a competitor spreading misinformation which is certainly not unheard of in EDA. When a company cannot compete technically sometimes they resort to dirty tricks or legal distractions. The first ClioSoft article we published… Read More
My typical DACtrip is a blur of non-stop interviews with EDA, IP and Semiconductor vendors followed by a few dozen blogs to share what I’ve learned. I just became aware of something a bit different at DAC this year by talking with Jill Jacobs, an organizer for an event dubbed Heart of Technology (HoT) where they raise money for… Read More
What an exciting year for DAC with record submissions in nearly every category. Most impressive is the increase in Designer and IP Track submissions, content that is helping to continue to evolve and improve the show. If you haven’t already registered, why not do so now?
A brief bit of background about the conference: DAC’s roots… Read More
Yesterday was the Mentor users’ group U2U. As usual, Wally Rhines gave the keynote, this year entitled Secure Silicon, Enabler for the Internet of Things. Wally started off saying it was a challenge to find a new angle. The number of news articles on cloud computing has exploded from nothing to 72,000 last year. On IoT from … Read More
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
