Virtually all SoCs require one-time programmable (OTP) memory. Each SoC is different, of course, but two main uses are large memories for holding boot and programming code and small memories for holding encryption keys and trimming parameters, such as radio tuning information and so on.
There are alternatives to putting an OTP… Read More
The existence of TSMC’s Open Innovation Platform (OIP) program further sped up disaggregation of the semiconductor supply chain. Partly, this was enabled by the existence of a healthy EDA industry and an increasingly healthy IP industry. As chip designs had grown more complex and entered the system-on-chip (SoC) era, the amount… Read More
Today TSMC announced three reference flows that they have been working on along with various EDA vendors (and ARM and perhaps other IP suppliers). The three new flows are:
Handsets moved away from fixed architecture DSP some time ago, driven by two main factors. Fixed architecture DSP consumed too much power to get good battery life in the smart-phone era, but the consumer air interface was changing fast: W-CDMA, HSPA, WiMax, 3G, LTE (which is actually a whole ‘spectrum’ of different… Read More
The history of TSMC and its Open Innovation Platform (OIP) is, like almost everything in semiconductors, driven by the economics of semiconductor manufacturing. Of course ICs started 50 years ago at Fairchild (very close to where Google is headquartered today, these things go in circles). The planarization approach, whereby… Read More
Your cell-phone contains a camera. In fact, it probably contains two: one forward facing for video-calls and one rear-facing for taking photographs and videos. The rear-facing one typically has much higher pixel count than the front-facing. The capabilities of cell-phone cameras are getting “good enough” that… Read More
You have probably heard of the Internet of Things or IoT. This is the future world in which not only are our computers and smartphones connected to the internet, but all sort of other things like thermostats, medical monitors, smart car-keys and soil analyzers. What these “things” have in common is that, unlike computers… Read More
A couple of weekends ago I moderated a panel session for the Chinese American Semiconductor Professional Association. No, I had no idea such an organization existed either (at least partially because I’m not Chinese). Dan Nenni was meant to be doing it but he went off to Las Vegas, so I ended up getting the job. On a Saturday … Read More
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
The future growth in smartphones is largely going to be at the low end of the market as Eric wrote about here a couple of weeks ago. A lot of that growth is targeted at China. Sitting in the US it is easy to underestimate the size of the Chinese market. China Mobile (the market leader) is just one company but has more than twice the number … Read More
