Pigs Fly. Altera Goes with ARM on Intel 14nm

Pigs Fly. Altera Goes with ARM on Intel 14nm
by Paul McLellan on 10-29-2013 at 7:00 am

Altera announced in February that they would be using Intel as a foundry at 14nm. Historically they have used TSMC. Then in June they announced the Stratix 10 family of FPGAs that they would build on the Intel process. At the Globalpress summit in May I asked Vince Hu about their processor strategy. Here is what I wrote about itat the… Read More


Smartphones Are More Amazing That You Can Believe

Smartphones Are More Amazing That You Can Believe
by Paul McLellan on 10-27-2013 at 10:09 pm

I’ve written before about just how widespread mobile phones are: more people use mobile phones that a a toothbrush and more know how to use one than to use a pencil to write. This all happened very recently. I bet if you are asked when you got your first mobile phone you will guess too early. I had a car-phone in 1993 and a real mobile… Read More


Open Letter from Sonics to Arteris

Open Letter from Sonics to Arteris
by Paul McLellan on 10-27-2013 at 2:00 pm

I don’t remember seeing an open letter from one EDA or IP company to another until today. Sonics have published an open letter to Charlie Janac, the CEO of Arteris. What seems to have happened is that Arteris have sold their assets to Qualcomm and the development team (which is based in France) and several AEs are already Qualcomm… Read More


An Affair to Remember: EDA’s 50th Anniversary

An Affair to Remember: EDA’s 50th Anniversary
by Daniel Nenni on 10-26-2013 at 11:00 am

What an amazing night! I celebrated the 50[SUP]th[/SUP] anniversary of the industry I grew up in! With my beautiful wife at my side and a table full of friends we all went down memory lane, ate, drank, and then enjoyed the auction.

The tour of the new computer museum was amazing. I was learning so much up until the 1970’s, then … Read More


Tablets, smartphones & China still driving growth

Tablets, smartphones & China still driving growth
by Bill Jewell on 10-23-2013 at 10:36 pm

Media tablets and smartphones have been the two most significant drivers of electronics and semiconductor growth for the last few years. Forecasts from two major market research firms indicate these devices will continue to be major drivers for the next few years. For 2013, Gartner and IDC (International Data Corporation) both… Read More


3DIC, the World Goes to…Burlingame

3DIC, the World Goes to…Burlingame
by Paul McLellan on 10-23-2013 at 2:09 pm

For the tenth year, the big 3DIC conference takes place in the Hyatt Regency at Burlingame (just south of San Francisco Airport). Officially it is 3D Architectures for Semiconductor Integration and Packaging or ASIP. This year there have already been some significant 3D announcements: TSMC’s 3D program, and Micron’s… Read More


Hierarchical Clock Domain Crossing

Hierarchical Clock Domain Crossing
by Paul McLellan on 10-23-2013 at 1:31 pm

One of the first blogs I wrote on SemiWiki was on clock domain crossing (CDC). I thought it was rather a specialized subject, a sort of minority interest. It turned out to be one of the most-read blogs I’ve written. Modern SoCs have lots of unrelated clocks, maybe hundreds, and so ensuring that signals going from one clock domain… Read More


ARM Signs 48 New Licenses in Q3

ARM Signs 48 New Licenses in Q3
by Paul McLellan on 10-22-2013 at 3:15 pm

ARM announced their quarterly results early this morning. ARM’s results are a funny mixture of backward looking information such as royalties which are reported a quarter late since they have to wait for their licensees to work out how many they shipped, and some very forward looking such as new licenses, which bring some… Read More


The Biggest Private EDA Company

The Biggest Private EDA Company
by admin on 10-21-2013 at 5:02 pm

I talked this morning with fellow Brit David Halliday. More importantly, he is CEO of Silvaco, which he thinks must be the biggest private EDA company in the world. He didn’t reveal their revenue numbers but they have around 250-300 people and are profitable so you can make your own estimate.

David became CEO when Ivan Pesic,… Read More


GSA Memory+ Conference in Taiwan

GSA Memory+ Conference in Taiwan
by Paul McLellan on 10-18-2013 at 3:02 pm

The GSA Memory+ conference Taiwan will take place on (Halloween!) October 31, 2013 at the Regent Taipei, Taiwan. The main theme of this year is highlighting Memory—the Critical Enabler for Prominent and Emerging Applications in System Logic Solutions.

GSA Memory+ Conference is the global industry event dedicated to all memory… Read More