Forget about ThunderBolt, USB Type C is here!

Forget about ThunderBolt, USB Type C is here!
by Eric Esteve on 11-09-2015 at 7:00 am

At the early days of Semiwiki (March 2011), I wrote about ThunderBolt, predicting low market adoption of the protocol, for various reasons. One of these reasons was the cost associated with ThunderBolt integration by the OEM. Even if the protocol (associating PCI Express and DisplayPort) was offering better data bandwidth than… Read More


Is the IP market expected to decline by 2020?

Is the IP market expected to decline by 2020?
by Eric Esteve on 10-16-2015 at 7:00 am

To answer this question, I will share the results about Interface IP, more precisely the Top 5. The Top 5 protocols, USB, PCIe, Ethernet, DDRn and MIPI, are part of the interface IP market and each of them has been characterized by very strong growth rate. If you compute actual numbers for 2010 to 2014, it results to a Cumulated Annual… Read More


Who Really Needs USB 3.1?

Who Really Needs USB 3.1?
by Eric Esteve on 10-29-2014 at 4:58 am

USB is certainly the most ubiquitous of the Interface protocols. I would bet that everybody is using USB everyday (I mean activate a USB connection, as we also use PCIe or SATA even if we don’t realize that we do it), but which application will get benefit of the 10 Gbps delivered by USB 3.1? Before precisely answering the question, … Read More


Interface IP Protocols: Status

Interface IP Protocols: Status
by Eric Esteve on 09-16-2014 at 3:52 am

If your company develops Design IP to support well-known protocols like USB, PCIe, HDMI, DDRn memory controller, MIPI specification (and more), it’s crucial to know your competition, the market size by segment, and even more important the market potential by segment. The latest can be obtained by the Compound Annual Growth Rate… Read More


USB 3.0 IP on FinFET may stop port pinching

USB 3.0 IP on FinFET may stop port pinching
by Don Dingee on 08-19-2014 at 5:00 pm

Sometimes a standard is a victim of its own success, at least for a while as the economics catch up to the technology. When a standard like USB 3.0 is announced, with a substantial performance increase over USB 2.0, some of the use cases come on board right away. Others, where vendors enjoy a decent ROI with good-enough performance,… Read More


Cadence Go (war-game) strategy

Cadence Go (war-game) strategy
by Eric Esteve on 05-26-2014 at 8:19 am

I was attending to CDN-Live in Munich last week, so I was expecting Cadence to announce new IP related acquisition like Lip-Bu Tan did last year (Cosmic Circuit, Evatronix and Tensilica). In fact, Lip-Bu was not in Munich and Charlie Huang, SVP Worldwide Field Operations and System & Verification Group, was holding the morning… Read More


What’s new in the “Interface IP Survey” ?

What’s new in the “Interface IP Survey” ?
by Eric Esteve on 11-26-2013 at 9:27 am

The reader will find many updates in the “Interface IP Survey” from IPNEST, released in October 2013. Good question, as the IP market is a very fast moving one and the protocol based Interface IP, is moving even faster… exhibiting 20% growth rate in 2012, expected to grow with 10% CAGR between 2012 and 2017 to reach $700M. … Read More


Should an IP vendor become a PHY IP Dealer?

Should an IP vendor become a PHY IP Dealer?
by Eric Esteve on 07-07-2013 at 3:20 am

This is not a theoretical question. Imagine that you are developing and selling digital IP, like Interface Controller, PCI Express or USB 2.0 or 3.0, or MIPI Camera Serial Interface (CSI) or Display Serial Interface (DSI). If you look at companies like Synopsys, they have built their success on the “Integrated Interface IP” concept.… Read More


IP vendors enable SuperSpeed USB IP take off in 2012

IP vendors enable SuperSpeed USB IP take off in 2012
by Eric Esteve on 01-15-2013 at 5:09 am

SuperSpeed USB has been clearly ranked in the Interface protocols winner list, see this previous post. It could be interesting to dig into this IP market segment, determine in which applications USB 3.0 has been successfully deployed and who are the IP vendors serving this market, enabling SuperSpeed USB to take off.

SuperSpeed… Read More


SoC emulation syncs up with SuperSpeed USB

SoC emulation syncs up with SuperSpeed USB
by Don Dingee on 10-25-2012 at 9:00 pm

They say what adds value is to take something difficult and make it look simple. USB looks so simple when it is done right, but designers know it can be one of the more tempermental features in an SoC, especially in the latest SuperSpeed incarnation.… Read More