Reshoring Semiconductor Manufacturing

Reshoring Semiconductor Manufacturing
by Paul McLellan on 06-06-2013 at 5:29 pm

So where in the world do you think semiconductor manufacturing is increasing the fastest? OK, Taiwan, that was pretty easy. But in second place, with over 20% of the world’s semiconductor equipment capital investment is the US. Growing faster than Europe, China, Japan and equal with Korea.

This was not the case half a dozen… Read More


ARM: AMBA 5, Cortex-A12, Mali, video, POP…

ARM: AMBA 5, Cortex-A12, Mali, video, POP…
by Paul McLellan on 06-06-2013 at 4:39 pm

ARM announced several new products at DAC in a number of different spaces. In addition I got invited to a briefing with Simon Segars, 30 days from when he takes over as CEO of ARM. I asked Simon if he expected to make any major changes and he basically said ‘no’. ARM’s basic strategy in both mobile and now enterprise… Read More


DAC: Tempus Lunch

DAC: Tempus Lunch
by Paul McLellan on 06-06-2013 at 4:03 pm

I had time for lunch on Monday. That is to say, there was a Cadence panel session about Has Timing Signoff Innovation has become and Oxymoron? What Happened and How Do We Fix It?

The moderator was Brian Fuller, lately of EE Times but now Editor-in-Chief at Cadence (I’m not sure quite what it means either). On the panel were Dipesh… Read More


DAC: Wally’s Vision

DAC: Wally’s Vision
by Paul McLellan on 06-06-2013 at 3:07 pm

One new feature at DAC this year is that several of the keynotes are preceded by a ten minute vision of the future from one of the EDA CEOs. Today it was Wally Rhines’s turn. Wally is CEO of Mentor Graphics. He titled his talk Changing the World Through EDA. Since EDA as we know it started in the late 1970s, the number of transistors… Read More


DAC: Gary Smith: Don’t Give Away Your Models

DAC: Gary Smith: Don’t Give Away Your Models
by Paul McLellan on 06-06-2013 at 4:10 am

As is now traditional, Gary Smith kicked off DAC proper (there were workshops earlier and some co-located conferences started days before). He started by dismissing the idea that it costs $170M to do an SoC design.

In fact he looked at 3 different cases. Firstly, the completely unconstrained design. Well, no design is completely… Read More


Kaufman Award: Chenming Hu

Kaufman Award: Chenming Hu
by Paul McLellan on 06-06-2013 at 3:44 am

This year’s Kaufman award winner is Chenming Hu. In contrast to previous years, this was presented on the Sunday evening of DAC instead of at a separate event in San Jose. Chenming’s career was reviewed by Klaus Schuegraf, Group Vice President of EUV Product Development at Cymer, Inc (now part of ASML) and also one of… Read More


ARM @ #50DAC

ARM @ #50DAC
by Daniel Nenni on 05-31-2013 at 10:00 pm

The 2013 Design Automation Conference celebrates its 50th anniversary Sunday, June 2 through Thursday, June 6 at the Austin Convention Center. DAC is the world’s leading technical conference and trade show on electronic design and design automation. DAC is where the IC Design and EDA ecosystem learns, networks, and does… Read More


Cooley’s Cheesy Must See List for DAC is Out

Cooley’s Cheesy Must See List for DAC is Out
by Paul McLellan on 05-31-2013 at 6:23 pm

One of the other increasingly successful channels (besides Semiwiki of course) for EDA, IP and semiconductor companies to reach potential customers is John Cooley’s DeepChip. Every year he puts a lot of effort into trying to find out who is exhibiting what at DAC and which stuff seems like it is new and maybe important, and… Read More


ARM Partners with Carbon on Cortex-A57

ARM Partners with Carbon on Cortex-A57
by Paul McLellan on 05-31-2013 at 3:37 pm

Just in time for DAC, Carbon have announced that they have expanded their partnership with ARM to create and deliver models for the ARM Cortex-A57 processor and related IP. One piece of related IP is the Cortex-A53 which can be configured in big.LITTLE multi-core setups to achieve the sweet spot of higher performance and lower power.… Read More


SEMulator3D – A Virtual Fab Platform

SEMulator3D – A Virtual Fab Platform
by Pawan Fangaria on 05-30-2013 at 8:30 pm

Yes, it’s a pleasant surprise; it is Virtual Fabrication Platform, one of the new innovations in 2013. I was looking around for what kind of breakthrough technologies will be announced in DAC this year. And here I came across this new kind of innovative tool which can produce final virtual fabricated 3D structures after following… Read More