In the semiconductor industry, it feels great to hear about the process technology shrinking to lower nodes along with innovative transistor structures that offer major gains in PPA (Power, Performance and Area). However, it requires huge investment of capital, time and effort from foundries to conceptualize, prototype and… Read More
About a decade ago, semiconductor designs had just a few asynchronous clocks which were easily managed by designers through the process of manual design reviews. The situation today is completely different. An SoC can have hundreds of asynchronous clocks, driving different complex functions, spread across various IPs, supplied… Read More
Although semiconductor manufacturing has taken off with FinFET based process technology which provides lucrative payoffs on performance improvement, power reduction and area saving in devices for high density and high performance SoC demand of modern era, apprehensions remain about its reliability due to reduced noise … Read More
In recent days I’ve seen several long discussions about Texas Instrumentslosing its grip in semiconductor industry when it came out of a business it was strong in, i.e. wireless business. It seems the semiconductor community has not digested the fact that TI, very rightly, came out of the OMAP business at the right time. The smartphone… Read More
While focus of the semiconductor industry has shifted to DACin this week and unfortunately I couldn’t attend due to some of my management exams, in my spare time I was browsing through some of the webpages of Cadenceto check their new offerings (although they have a great list of items to showcase at DAC) and to my pleasure I came across… Read More
I just back from Samsung’s big announcement held at the SFJazz center (very conveniently 15 minutes walk from my place). They put a stake in the ground about their program at the intersection of medicine and health and technology. They had said in advance that they would not announce any new hardware but in fact they did…although… Read More
I had lunch today with a guy who has to remain nameless. But he is on the edge of the semiconductor lithography thing. He told me EUV will never happen. Of course lots of people have said that. Me for one. But he said everyone knows it. The investment community, the foundries, everyone. Intel put money into ASML in the hopes that it would… Read More
Migration to cloud computing for scientific and engineering applications is inevitable. More specifically for IC design, the benefits are significant:
Moore’s is still the law, and device scaling remains the key focus of front-end process research, however next-generation technologies–and the Big Data, cloud computing world that supports mobile, IoT, and other next-gen applications–are the new drivers, bringing new demands and challenges running … Read More
Ever since I started talking about Virtual Fabrication I have mostly looked at it from the manufacturers’ perspective, where it has obvious benefits to develop and model new process technology. But what about the fabless design concept and indeed even the semiconductor IP world that has spawned from it as well? It seems that Virtual… Read More
