Retro-uC: on a road to low-cost, (ridiculously) low-volume ASICs ?

Retro-uC: on a road to low-cost, (ridiculously) low-volume ASICs ?
by Staf_Verhaegen on 09-25-2018 at 7:00 am

I’m a long time reader of SemiWiki; almost from the start. I’ve sometimes been a passionate commenter but as some of you may have noticed my activity lately on the forum was lower. One of the reasons is a project I am working on and I feel honoured I was invited to present the background here on SemiWiki.

I am currently working… Read More


What the world should not learn from Silicon Valley

What the world should not learn from Silicon Valley
by Vivek Wadhwa on 09-11-2018 at 12:00 pm

Learn all you can from the entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley but don’t become like them. This was my advice to a group of 91 Indian students who are visiting here on a program sponsored by Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje. In a talk I gave this weekend, I encouraged them to take home the Valley’s optimism and culture of openness… Read More


Turnkey 2.5D HBM2 Custom SoC SiP Solution for Deep Learning and Networking Applications

Turnkey 2.5D HBM2 Custom SoC SiP Solution for Deep Learning and Networking Applications
by Daniel Nenni on 09-07-2018 at 7:00 am

Before we jump into the specifics, let us understand what’s driving custom solutions in the high performance computing and networking space. It’s the growing demand for core capacity and greater performance, which is due to the increase in the level of parallelism and multitasking required to handle the enormous amount of data… Read More


Accelerating Design and Manufacturing at the 25th Annual IEEE Electronic Design Process Symposium

Accelerating Design and Manufacturing at the 25th Annual IEEE Electronic Design Process Symposium
by Camille Kokozaki on 09-05-2018 at 12:00 pm

25th annual IEEE Electronic Design Process Symposium
Accelerating Design and Manufacturing
September 13 & 14, 2018, SEMI, 673 S. Milpitas Blvd, Milpitas, CA 95035

This year marks a milestone in EDPS’s history as it turns 25. The event will be held at SEMI’s new headquarter facility and will provide a forum for EDA, foundry … Read More


Unhackable Product Claims are a Fiasco Waiting to Happen

Unhackable Product Claims are a Fiasco Waiting to Happen
by Matthew Rosenquist on 09-05-2018 at 7:00 am

Those who think that that technology can be made ‘unhackable’, don’t comprehend the overall challenges and likely don’t understand what ‘hacked’ means.

Trust is the currency of security. We all want our technology to be dependable, easy to use, and secure. It is important to understand both the benefits
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The Ever-Changing ASIC Business

The Ever-Changing ASIC Business
by Daniel Nenni on 09-04-2018 at 7:00 am

The cell-based ASIC business that we know today was born in the early 1980s and was pioneered by companies like LSI Logic and VLSI Technology. Some of this history is covered in Chapter 2 of our book, “Fabless: The Transformation of the Semiconductor Industry”. The ASIC business truly changed the world. Prior to this revolution,… Read More


Improving Yield and Reliability with In-Chip Monitoring, there’s an IP for that

Improving Yield and Reliability with In-Chip Monitoring, there’s an IP for that
by Daniel Payne on 08-24-2018 at 12:00 pm

There’s an old maxim that you can only improve what you measure, so quality experts have been talking about this concept for decades and our semiconductor industry has been the recipient of such practices to such an extent that we can now buy consumer products that include chips with over 5 billion transistors in them. You’ve… Read More


Low Cost Power NB-IoT Solution? Fusion F1 DSP based Modem!

Low Cost Power NB-IoT Solution? Fusion F1 DSP based Modem!
by Eric Esteve on 07-26-2018 at 12:00 pm

Supporting NB-IoT requires low cost (optimized silicon footprint) and ultra-low power solution to cope with IoT device requirement. Cadence Fusion F1 DSP IP has been integrated in modem IC by two new customers, Xinyi and Rafael, gaining traction in NB-IoT market. These design-win builds on previous momentum: software GPS solution… Read More


A New Kind of Analog EDA Company

A New Kind of Analog EDA Company
by Daniel Payne on 07-10-2018 at 12:00 pm

My IC design career started out with circuit design of DRAMS, so I got to quickly learn all about transistor-level design at the number one IDM in the world, Intel at the time. In the early days, circa 1978 we circuit designers actually had few EDA tools, mostly a SPICE circuit simulator followed by manual extraction, manual netlisting,… Read More


55DAC Trip Report IP Quality

55DAC Trip Report IP Quality
by Daniel Nenni on 07-09-2018 at 7:00 am

This year I signed books in the Fractal booth (compliments of Fractal) and let me tell you it was quite an experience. IP quality is a very touchy subject and the source of many more tape-out delays than I had imagined. As it turns out, commercial IP is the biggest offender which makes no sense to me whatsoever. Even more shocking, one… Read More