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The first Chiplet specific conference is coming up which is a milestone in itself. As we know the only thing new about chiplets is the name but when there is a dedicated conference to such a specific thing you know it has officially “arrived”. There is even a cool new tagline: Chiplets make huge chips happen!
“The First Annual Chiplet Summit is the show chip designers can’t miss if they want to stay competitive. They’ll get the scoop on ways to make their chiplets run faster, scale better, use less power, and be more flexible. This unique event gives attendees a place to network with peers, ask questions of the experts, and talk to vendors offering a wide variety of products and services.”
The Chiplet Summit (January 24-26th) is brought to us by the folks who do the very successful Flash Memory Summit. There are three full days of conference with a pre conference day on Tuesday and regular conference days on Wednesday and Thursday. Given live conferences of late are back to pre-pandemic levels I would expect a full house. Quite a few companies that work with SemiWiki will be presenting so I of course will be there too. If you are there look me up, it would be a pleasure to meet you.
There is a great keynote line up with some very familiar faces. One of the more notable ones is the Daniel Armburst co-founder of Silicon Catalyst who is speaking on “How Chiplets Can Help You Profit from Chips for America”.
Abstract:
The semiconductor industry has evolved over six decades from its origin in startups, venture capital, and vertically integrated companies to a robustly growing, horizontally integrated and concentrated supply chain. Chiplets are one of the major trends that will shape the future winners and losers and resulting industry structure. Chiplets will also be essential for accelerating startup innovation and addressing designer productivity.
While die aggregation has become a reality for many important companies, replicating that success has yet to be achieved for packaging aggregation of commonly available chiplets. Several critical business model challenges and ecosystem developments are required to get to a vibrant standards-based chiplets world.
With the passage of the $52B CHIPS Act in the U.S. and similar initiatives elsewhere in the world, there should be ample opportunities to accelerate the timelines and benefits for industry, government and academic stakeholders.
So, back to the chiplet war, to me chiplets are all about design enablement: getting designs to wafer faster, cheaper, and with less risk of failure (yield). And who does that really benefit the most? TSMC of course. In fact, design/wafer enablement is what the TSMC OIP is all about.
In order for chiplets to work there must be an ecosystem that documents the provenance of the chiplet and that is what TSMC already does for EDA tools, commercial IP, and other critical parts of design enablement. Nobody is better at ecosystem building than TSMC and it really is like a snowball rolling down Mount Everest.
The semiconductor IP industry will also win big. Chiplets brings royalty IP licensing back into focus. Getting paid per chip really is the IP holy grail and something Wall Street greatly respects. I have personal experience in collecting IP royalty revenue from foundries which was quite a challenge. Arm perfected this model as did the former Artisan Components back in the 1990s. Arm then purchased Artisan for an amazing $900M and the IP royalty model was a key component in the acquisition.
But as I said, getting a royalty agreement is hard enough but collecting those royalties was even harder. With chiplets you will be selling die so it is more of a chip sale than a royalty play. This should simplify the chiplet IP monetization process dramatically and greatly appeal to Wall Street, VCs, and other financial backers of the semiconductor ecosystem, absolutely.
Dan is joined by Lu Dai who is currently a Senior Director of Technical Standards at Qualcomm. Previously he was Senior Director of Engineering, leading Qualcomm’s SoC design verification team and front-end methodologies and initiatives. Lu is Chair of Accellera Systems Initiative and serves on the Board of Directors at RISC-V International.
Lu discusses the various standards efforts he is involved with through Accellera and its collaboration with other worldwide organizations such as the IEEE. He reviews some of the organization’s accomplishments over the past year, including new work on IP security, updates to IP-XACT and a new focus on AMS standards. Looking ahead, there will be more live DVCon events around the world, and new focus on functional safety and clock domain crossings, among others.
The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in these podcasts belong solely to the speaker, and not to the speaker’s employer, organization, committee or any other group or individual.
Matt Genovese is the founder and CEO of Planorama Design, bringing over 25 years of career experience in high-tech, spanning semiconductors, hardware, IoT, IT, and software product development. He has a strong track record of planning, launching, and shipping products that work. Matt’s company, Planorama Design, is a software user experience design professional services company, designing complex, technical software that is simple and intuitive to use. Staffed with seasoned engineers and user experience (UX) designers, the company is headquartered in Austin, Texas, USA.
Matt earned a B.S. in Computer Engineering from the Rochester Institute of Technology and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin. He began his career at Motorola-Freescale Semiconductor in product & test engineering and moved into design verification of RISC processors and SoCs. Matt has also held product leadership roles for complex and technical software development. As a result of his deep professional experience, Matt strives to “get it right the first time” starting with the software application’s user experience design, down to the hardware at the bottom of the stack. Planorama helps drive product development processes that create products that work out of the gate.
What is the backstory of Planorama Design?
A quote from Susan Dray are words to live by in the world of product design. She said: “If the user can’t use it, it doesn’t work.”
I’ve spent my entire career making sure products work, both in the semiconductor industry and in pure software productization. During the first half of my career, as a product & test engineer, then as a functional verification engineer, I had to ensure products worked out of the gate. After all, when mask sets cost millions, verifying functionality pre-silicon is a business imperative.
That “get it right the first time” mentality carried into the second half of my career in pure software companies – always focused on complex, technical software and SaaS products. Even though software is cheaper to deploy than hardware, executing any kind of redo, especially “down to the chassis”, is still very costly. My experience showed that upfront planning and deep thinking through key requirements and features with an eye for future saved money that would otherwise be spent later on costly redos.
I also noticed how modern software is developed very differently from hardware. Software Agile development processes, user experience (UX) design, and detailed requirements documentation enable rapid, iterative, and efficient software development. These software development concepts have been traditionally absent in the semiconductor industry, which is accustomed to longer, non-iterative hardware design cycles.
Semiconductor companies are increasingly creating and delivering both chips and software as part of their overall solution. To remain competitive, customer-facing software should meet the same high standards as state-of-the-art semiconductors. Disciplined UX design gives us world-class software that is easy to use for semiconductor customers. Again, ultimately, “if the user can’t use it, it doesn’t work.”
Today I see some in the semiconductor industry are catching on. Intel’s own CTO Greg Lavender recently echoed this same sentiment: “You’re great engineers. You put together this great piece of whatever. Now show me how it’s going to be used from the end-user perspective. Because if we can’t do that, no one’s going to buy the stuff anyway.” His words resonate! They speak to Planorama’s backstory and the overarching mission of my career – it’s what we do here at Planorama Design.
What problems are you solving?
We tackle the three critical challenges encountered when deploying software products: quality of the user experience, time-to-market, and budget. These problems are just as relevant to semiconductor and hardware companies as they are in pure software businesses.
What does a “user experience quality” problem look like? Like functional bugs in your silicon, a confusing user interface prevents your customers from achieving their objectives, impacting the perceived quality of your products. UX designers may call it a “usability” problem, but at the end of the day, it’s another quality problem that can degrade the value of your entire solution at best or kill your ability to capture design-ins at worst. Your chips and edge hardware may be superior, but if customers cannot easily build their solution, their time-to-ramp to production delays and the overall success of you and your customer is diminished. You built great hardware; now, design the software that will unlock the value of your technical excellence.
Secondly, we tackle the “time-to-market” problem by ensuring your software developers have all they need to code quickly and accurately. Software development teams are handed the baton last, before the product goes out the door. Stakes (and attention) are high and as I’ve witnessed, often they have not received the requirements needed to execute efficiently. We’re talking about high-fidelity visual specifications and the business rules, written in well-organized, thorough, “dev-ready” internal product documentation. When developers can develop and not have to design screens or wait for requirements, products simply get out the door faster.
Third, but not least, deploying software is not an inexpensive proposition. Development teams are large and costly, so the longer a project takes and the more cycles it has to go through, the more likely a budget will be blown. Excellent user experience design avoids the inefficiencies that will balloon your dev costs by minimizing the duration of the software project. Finally, since usable software is intrinsically intuitive, there’s less need for customer support and training, which again reduces long-term costs. UX design is more of a way to reduce costs than spend money!
What makes Planorama’s services unique?
For one thing, it’s the sheer span and the depth of our capabilities. Our team has worked across many verticals to solve all types of problems for our clients. It turns out the solutions to a vast number of problems have already been solved in other spaces, and we have designed them. Now combine that with our deep in-house engineering expertise, and we’re able to talk shop with anyone to get the design problem addressed the right way. Planorama not only has senior user experience designers, but also engineers with computer, electrical, and chemical academic backgrounds. You won’t need to explain transistors, logic synthesis, edge networking, or AI to us, so we develop domain knowledge very quickly.
Finally, I would paint ourselves as “no-nonsense.” It’s not our first rodeo, and we’re not trying to win art contests. We have a mentality of rolling up our sleeves and delivering what our clients need to ship. Users need interfaces that make sense, developers need solid and complete designs with requirements documentation to code efficiently, and QA needs to validate functionality against a well-organized spec. That’s what we do so our clients can accelerate to market with a product that delights their customers.
What do you see on the horizon in the semiconductor and hardware space in terms of user experience design?
I’ll summarize what I have observed in the pure software space which I believe is relevant to semiconductor companies today:
Vertical Integration: Hardware companies are building both the components and the integrated solution, which now includes customer-facing software. For their customers to be successful, the complete solution must be best-in-class quality, including the software that ties it all together. Just look at what NVIDIA is doing with their enterprise software suite that supports cloud customers who create AI applications, leveraging off the shelf pre-trained AI libraries to support quick build, then deployment, and finally end-to-end management. Their software ties together the entire solution into an extremely compelling cloud and edge offering. I’d want to use it!
Digital Transformation: Existing legacy software needs to meet the expectations of changing customer requirements. For instance, migration from on-premises solutions to the cloud can launch a company ahead of its competition, but the effort also requires new expectations, know-how, and skill sets in both software design and development.
Customer-enablement: Businesses that purchase and integrate hardware to build solutions require upfront time to do so. It’s to the advantage of any hardware vendor to enable their customers’ acceleration to market. Enabling your customers with easy-to-use software to build their own solutions more easily and quickly means they ramp to production and generate revenue sooner.
Purpose-built Products: We’re seeing specialized solutions that meet business requirements for specific types of customers. In contrast to general-purpose products, these require a solid understanding of the target customers, their users, and use cases. The entire solution – including the critical software that ties it all together, must be a complete match for their needs.
“New EDA”: A new wave of EDA tooling is emerging. These new EDA solutions largely aim to address the traditional barriers that made custom ASIC design infeasible for many enterprises. Companies who cannot afford large IC design departments and budgets can now have another option beyond expensive FPGA implementations. With intuitive user interfaces crafted to reduce the need for training and support, they are much simpler than traditional EDA solutions while effective for the companies who aren’t pushing the bleeding edge of performance.
I expect to see more semiconductor and hardware companies taking a serious look at integrating user experience design into their software processes. UX design is already a critical part of pure software productization, not only to create usable products, but getting them to market faster while spending less. As customers increasingly expect the same world-class user experience from their integrated hardware solutions as they do from their software solutions, companies must recognize the importance of strategically investing in user experience design. Companies that do will be the winners in the long run, chosen by customers who prefer complete solutions that “work”.
It’s anybody’s guess when it comes to future demand for EVs. KPMG is the latest to put a perspective out on the subject – drastically slashing timelines for EV adoption based on a survey of senior industry executives. KPMG says the surveyed executives reported a median expectation for EV adoption by 2030 to 35% of sales from 65% of sales reported a year earlier.
Of course, KPMG knows you can’t forecast demand from surveys. If anyone has been proven wrong regarding consumer interest in and demand for EVs it is the average auto industry executive manufacturing primarily internal combustion vehicles.
These same executives have been begging for some kind of certainty – given their multibillion dollar commitments and the required capital investments to pull off a pivot to EV development and manufacturing. Politicians have done their best to comply with this demand with end-of-combustion-vehicle mandates set to hit by 2035 in various countries and states around the world.
Perhaps not the kind of certainty auto makers actually wanted. In the words of Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares: “What is clear is that electrification is a technology chosen by politicians, not by industry.”
But the push for certainty and the instinctive reach for incentives has introduced uncertainty and confusion. One set of tax credits ended in the fall in the U.S. only to be replaced by a more confusing and limited offering of incentives that set the stage for a wider range of eligible vehicles when limits are removed in the new year. (This will no doubt be a boon for Tesla, General Motors, Ford, and Volkswagen, among a few others.)
The incentive gear shift in the U.S. vastly narrowed the range of eligible EVs for the second half of 2022 and raised questions regarding the efficacy of tax-based incentives. (Cars that are eligible almost immediately receive price markups from dealers.) It was hardly a shock – except for Swedes – when the Swedish government suddenly and without notice terminated EV incentives in November.
Maybe in response to the lifting of incentives, Volvo Cars CEO Jim Rowan said he expected electric vehicles to reach price parity with fossil fuel burning vehicles within 2-3 years. J.D. Power’s EV Index points to cost parity for building EVs coming soon, but notes charging infrastructure and vehicle supply limitations cooling consumer demand. J.D. Power nevertheless sees one in five vehicles on the road in the U.S. being an EV by mid-decade – vs. one in 20 today.
The EV doomsday survey from KPMG would suggest a more jaded outlook that will require the support of incentives indefinitely.
In the midst of all this, one can only imagine Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda scratching his head at the EV mania when Toyota continues to offer one of the most reliable, inexpensive, climate friendly, and durable vehicles – the proud Prius hybrid – for a fraction of the prices demanded by competing EVs.
Toyota isn’t wrong to suggest that the rest of the industry has it all wrong regarding electrification. The mere fact that so many taxi fleets and ride hailing drivers worldwide continue to rely on the Prius is a powerful endorsement that is hard to ignore. (For the price of a typical EV one could buy two brand new Priuses.)
What all of these perspectives, forecasts, and insights are forgetting, though, is the elephant in the room: the rapidly ramping onset of Chinese EVs. What was once a nation with dozens of car makers unable to export more than a handful of vehicles globally has rapidly evolved into an EV juggernaut and what will soon be the second largest car exporter globally.
The confusing and off-putting EV incentives in the U.S. – intended to forestall rising Chinese dominance in the sector – has failed to staunch the flow of Chinese EV startups and their steady encroachment on South American, Western European, Southeast Asian and other markets around the world including the U.S. – Volvo, Polestar, anyone?
With solid local supply chains, ample raw material resources, and even technical leadership in next generation battery chemistries, the true wild card in the global EV market is China. China’s ability to compete directly on price may even render domestic production-targeted incentives irrelevant.
The bottom line is that no one really knows how the EV proposition will play out. Incentives are helpful but confusing and undermined by dealer markups. China has the chops to upend the best laid plans of legislators around the world.
In the end, Sweden probably got it right. Remove confusing incentives and let the market find its own level in the context of a long-term objective of phasing out fossil fuel burning vehicles. Trying to time the interest level of consumers in EVs is a fool’s errand matched only by the effort to push consumers into buying EVs. Consumers can do math. When the numbers make sense, they will electrify.
Dan is joined by Malcolm Penn, CEO of Future Horizons. Malcolm is a contributor to SemiWiki and a frequent podcast guest.
Dan and Malcolm discuss what happened in the semi industry last year and what 2023 and 2024 will look like and why. The discussion is a preview to Malcolm’s upcoming Industry Update Webinar on January 17 at 3pm London time, which is 7am PST with a replay available shortly thereafter.
The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in these podcasts belong solely to the speaker, and not to the speaker’s employer, organization, committee or any other group or individual.
CES 2023, the annual consumer technology show, was held last week in Las Vegas, Nevada. Over 115,000 people attended and over 3200 companies exhibited. As shown below, attendance and exhibitors were up about 2 ½ times the pandemic limited CES 2022. However, attendance was down one-third and exhibitors were down 27% from CES 2020. Exhibit space was 2.1 million square feet, up 50% from 2022 and down 28% from 2020. Square feet per exhibitor was 656, down 39% from 2022 and about even with 2020.
What were the technologies at CES 2023 which will drive growth in the electronics and semiconductor industries? Steve Koenig of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA – sponsors of CES) listed six key technology themes:
Health Technology (digital therapeutics, telehealth, fitness tech)
Sustainability (smart grid, alternative energy, recycling)
Gaming and Services (virtual reality gaming, streaming, e-commerce)
Each of these themes will drive growth in the electronics industry, but there are no obvious major drivers (such as PCs and smartphones).
The CTA released its forecast for the 2023 U.S. consumer technology market in conjunction with CES 2023. In general, the forecast is downbeat with a 2% decline in the market from 2022. LCD TVs, smartphones, laptop PCs and tablets are all projected to decline. A few growth areas are automotive technology (up 4%), health and fitness services (up 9%), over-the-counter hearing aids ($0.89 billion in first full year of sales), and portable gaming consoles (up 41%).
The CTA tried to be optimistic despite a likely 2023 recession. Koenig said innovation during the slow period could drive new innovations in 5G to IoT, connected intelligence, autonomous systems and quantum computing.
Major electronics companies tended to push themes more than products in their press conferences
Panasonic presented its theme of Green Impact, with a goal of reducing its CO2 emissions to about 1% of current levels by 2050. The company plans to achieve this through use of solar and hydrogen power in its factories, recycling most of its manufacturing waste, and using more recycled materials in its battery production. Panasonic introduced some new products including automotive audio systems with Amazon Alexa, the nanoeX portable air purifier, the Multishape modular personal care system, flagship MZ2000 OLED TVs, and its Lumix S5 II digital camera.
Samsung had a theme of “bringing calm to our connected world”. They also pushed the green theme and pledged to be net zero by 2050. Samsung highlighted its SmartThings technology for connecting home and other consumer devices including the SmartThings Station smart home hub and wireless charging pad. Samsungs’ Harman subsidiary has introduced its Ready Care system to monitor and correct driver distraction and drowsiness.
Sony had a motto of “fill the world with emotion, through the power of creativity and technology”. Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. The company emphasized the technologies used in its movie, video game and audio divisions. Sony will introduce its PlayStation VR2 virtual reality gaming system in February. Sony has partnered with Honda to design an EV (electric vehicle) with over 45 cameras and sensors. The Afeela will be available in 2026.
Many interesting new products were introduced at CES 2023. Some were innovative and useful. Others had interesting technology but questionable utility. Still others seem destined to failure. Our Semiconductor Intelligence take on a variety of new products is available on our website.
Semiconductor Intelligence is a consulting firm providing market analysis, market insights and company analysis for anyone involved in the semiconductor industry – manufacturers, designers, foundries, suppliers, users or investors. Please contact me if you would like further information.
It’s January so time for me to review what I’ve found at CES this year that relates to cycling. Unlike last year when there were many last-minute cancellations from exhibitors, in 2023 it’s in-person and bigger than ever. The electrification of bikes continues, and many of these electronic devices are cloud enabled, so another useful IoT application.
Airless Bike Tire
In 2021 I had 19 flat tires that required a tube replacement, while in 2022 I was down to just 7 flats with tubeless tires that needed a tube to get home, so this topic attracts my attention. The SMART Tire company showed their METL bike tire with the acronym SMART – Shape Memory Alloy Radial Technology. Let’s see if they can deliver a product that is competitive with tubeless and tube tires for road, mountain and commuter segments.
METL bike tire
Indoor Trainers
I’ve used an indoor trainer since 2018, trying out products from: Wahoo KICKR, Tacx Neo, Tacx Neo 2 and Tacx Neo 2T trainers. For serious cyclists a trainer is quite attractive for indoor fitness during the days that are rainy, too hot, too cold, or just out of sunlight. Using one of the popular cycling apps keeps you entertained and fit at the same time: Zwift, RGT, SYSTM, BKOOL.
TrueKinetix is offering the TrueTrainer, a direct-drive model that promises a power meter accuracy of 0.5%.
Acer, the notebook company, sported a way to keep your notebook charged with a bike desk where you pedal to generate electricity. Priced at $1,000.00 it appears to be a luxury item only, like a limited Peloton.
Acer Bike Desk, eKinekt BD 3
LG has the excicle, something similar to a Peloton for indoor spin exercise.
LG Excicle
Safety and Security
I ride with a front and rear light to be more visible to motorists, while many of my buddies add the rear-facing radar from Garmin. There’s a new safety product that combines multiple features: Rear light, motion detection, siren alarm, location technology, plus an app. It’s the DOTS.bike from ConnectLab.
DOTS.bike
Trackting has a security device that fits under your water bottle holder, against the frame, and allows you to track your bike with an app.
Trackting
Cars have used ABS systems on disc brake systems for many years now, however this is the first time that I’ve heard of a company adding ABS for bikes, from Bosch. I’ve started riding a disc road bike in 2022, and enjoy how reliable the stopping power of discs really is.
Bosch ABS
Ningbo Ruicland displayed their cycling lights, front and rear.
Ningbo Ruicland
Qualcomm had a Trek bike equipped with a radio for C-V2X using Spoke technology, alerting cars to avoid the cyclist.
C-V2XDashboard Alert
Autotalks has a V2X device called ZooZ that installs on the handlebar of your bike, alerting V2X equipped cars of your presence on the road, raising awareness.
ZooZ
Sensors
I use sensors for Heart Rate Monitor, speed, RPM, power, gear selection, altitude and temperature, yeah, a lot of information for a cyclist. ITRI has two new technologies that hopefully make their way into actual products this year:
Digital Twin for Sport Guidance with Vital Sign Sensing – a virtual coach for indoor training
I’ve used a chest strap heart rate monitor for many years now, so I’m not sold on the concept of wireless contact for iSportWeaR. Maybe Olympic and pro cyclists are concerned about breathe rate, but none of my racer buddies track or train with that sensor, so it’s a bit futuristic. The links above go to YouTube videos, where you can glean how the technology helps a cyclist.
evolvo Mobility Solutions is an Italian company that has the evo box, for a smart lock, GPS, sensors & alerts, while connected to the cloud. They also provide a charging cable and connector for anti-theft, plus they design charging stations for e-bikes.
evolvo
Listen to music mounted on your handlebars while cycling with the JBL portable speaker system.
JBL Bluetooth Speaker
Measuring glucose is something that elite athletes have been doing for a few years now, so Supersapiens displayed their glucose management device based on the Abbott Libre Sense Glucose Sport Biosensor.
e-bikes
This bike category continued to grow in 2022, attracting mostly casual riders and commuters that want to show up in the office without being sweaty. CES has setup an eMobility experience and test track, so that you can test ride some of these e-bikes in person.
heybikes showed several models that included commuter, off-road and fat-tires.
Aventon caters to adventure e-bikes, with several models to choose from for children and even bike packing trips.
Aventon
Brightway showed off their first commuter style ride, the NAVEE E-Bike, reaching a top speed of 20 mph, and powered by LG batteries.
NAVEE e-bike
For off-road e-cycling, check out LMX Bikes, where they can reach speeds of 45 km/h (28 mph), basically a lightweight motorcycle.
Valeo makes an electric motor with gearbox, battery pack and a control monitor for e-bike companies to get to market quickly.
The Swedish company CAKE rolled out the Åik, a utility e-bike.
CAKE
A traditional bike company, Bianchi, had their E-Omnia e-bike displayed inside the ANSYS booth, as Bianchi used ANSYS software to analyze their frame designs.
Bianchi E-Omnia, C Type
Niu started in 2014 and is already listed on the NASDAQ exchange, and at CES they showed of their BQi-C3 e-bike:
Converting a regular bike into an e-bike is what Swytch Bike was promoting, and it involves replacing your front wheel and adding a battery.
Swytch Bike
Another e-bike conversion system, this time replacing the disc rotor on your rear wheel, from Skarper Technology.
Skarper Technology
Consumer electronics company RCA surprised everyone by showing off three e-bikes to serve divergent market segments.
GoGoExplorerDirt-E
Daniel’s 2022 Cycling
My mileage went up this year as I enjoyed some longer rides on Sunday.
I upgraded to a Cervelo R5 road bike, which features 12 speed, wireless electronic shifting from SRAM. My only complaint is that the CR2032 batteries used for the wireless shifting in the hoods have become open circuits during two rides, as the copper fingers weren’t making electrical connectivity. It was easy to fix at home by just prying up a little on the copper fingers, then placing the battery back. Follow me on Strava, or let’s go for a ride if you visit Portland, Oregon.
Summary
e-bikes are still quite popular, and the retailers love to sell them with the much higher ASP, and steady maintenance business after the sale. The only downside to e-bikes is the greater number of accidents, likely caused by higher speeds and higher costs. Most e-bikes come from non-traditional cycling brands, but the traditional bike brands don’t even attend CES (Fuji, Specialized, Cannondale, Trek, Santa Cruz, Scott, Giant).
Some of the e-bike companies are beginning to offer automatic gear shifting, while the majority remain with manual shifting to keep costs down. Computers for e-bikes are quite specific to each brand, as they need to display how much charge time is left. Bike computer companies like Wahoo and Garmin have been quite slow to add battery life features to their products, so other vendors have filled in that gap.
Many of the bike computer companies and now smart phone companies are using MEMS sensors to detect a high g-force event, like a crash, then automatically text your loved ones with an exact GPS location so that help can be called, if needed.
One of the first events on the 2023 EDA calendar is the Phil Kaufman Award ceremony and banquet honoring the 2022 recipient Dr. Giovanni De Micheli. The event, hosted by the Electronic System Design Alliance (ESD Alliance) and the IEEE Council on Electronic Design Automation (CEDA), will be held Thursday, February 23, starting at 6:30pm at The GlassHouse in San Jose, Calif. It’s an absolute must attend, absolutely!
Nanni, as he’s known, is professor and director of the Institute of Electrical Engineering (IEL) and of the Integrated Systems Centre at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland. He was also a professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford for many years and DAC chair in 2000. Nanni is recognized for his many contributions to EDA, including research on EDA tools and methodologies, helping drive advances in the academic field of design automation and incorporating many of them into commercial EDA solutions. His work expanded the fields of high-level synthesis, logic synthesis and network-on-chip.
In addition to celebrating Nanni’s accomplishments, it will be a good opportunity to network and catch up on what’s new. Absolutely. Act fast to take advantage of early bird ticket pricing available through Friday, January 13, at $175 per individual from member companies and $225 each for non-members. After that, member tickets are $225 each and $275 per non-member. Member pricing is offered for individuals or companies that are active SEMI or IEEE members.
Corporate sponsorship opportunities are available as well. Contact Bob Smith, executive director of the ESD Alliance, at bsmith@semi.org for more information.
Anyone who knew Phil Kaufman will tell you that he was a great visionary and a popular figure in our industry. At the time of his death in 1992 at age 50, he was president and CEO of Quickturn Systems (now Cadence). Before Quickturn, he was president of Silicon Compilers, acquired by Mentor Graphics that’s now Siemens EDA.
The yearly Phil Kaufman Award named in his honor was established in 1994 and is co-sponsored by the ESD Alliance and CEDA. In the spirit of Phil Kaufman’s innovation and entrepreneurism, the award honors individuals who have had a demonstrable impact on the field of electronic system design, turning innovative technologies into commercial businesses. The recipients are noted for their technology innovations, education/mentoring and business and industry leadership. Visit the Phil Kaufman Award webpage for more details and an impressive list of previous recipients.
The Electronic System Design Alliance (ESD Alliance), a SEMI Technology Community, an international association of companies providing goods and services throughout the semiconductor design ecosystem, is a forum to address technical, marketing, economic and legislative issues affecting the entire industry. It acts as the central voice to communicate and promote the value of the semiconductor design industry as a vital component of the global electronics industry.
The semiconductor ecosystem consolidation continues with an interesting acquisition of an EDA company by an IP company. Having worked with both Arteris and Semifore over the past few years I can tell you by personal experience that this is one of those 1+1=3 types of acquisitions, absolutely.
Semifore was founded in 2006 by a team of system architecture experts focused on the hardware/software interface. Like many EDA companies back then, Semifore grew organically from blood sweat and beers amassing one of the most impressive customer lists I have seen for a company of its size. Semifore cofounders Rich Weber and Jamsheed Agahi are true EDA heros.
Arteris came to SemiWiki in 2011 so we experienced this incredible piece of IP history in real time. To date, we have published more than 100 blogs with Arteris garnering more than 1 million views. Semiconductor IP has always been a SemiWiki audience favorite and Arteris is a big part of that. As I have said before, never ever bet against Charlie Janac!
Arteris was founded in 2003 and not only originated but also dominated the commercially available NoC market. In an interesting plot twist, in 2013 Qualcomm acquired the Arteris FlexNoC product portfolio but Arteris retained the customers and licensing rights. Shortly there after Arteris launched new FlexNoC products and has continued to do so, again dominating the commercial NoC market.
In another interesting twist Arteris acquired EDA company Magillem adding IP-XACT based software development products. We worked with Magillem from 2012 up until their acquisition in 2020.
Which brings us back to Semifore. The product synergy between Magillem and Semifore was obvious and discussed in detail prior to the Arteris acquisition. Now that Arteris has both Magillem and Semifore, another IP disruption is taking place right before our eyes.
Another exciting start to another amazing year inside the semiconductor ecosystem!
Arteris Acquires Semifore to Accelerate System-on-Chip Development
Augmenting leading network-on-chip IP and IP deployment automation with the leading hardware/software interface automation solution
CAMPBELL, Calif. – January 10, 2023 – Arteris, Inc. (Nasdaq: AIP), a leading provider of system IP which accelerates system-on-chip (SoC) creation, today announced that it has completed the acquisition of Semifore, Inc., a leading provider of hardware/software interface (HSI) technology. Semifore is used to effectively design, verify, document and help in the validation of the hardware-software integration that is essential to every SoC. Semifore’s technology is used by leading semiconductor and system companies across automotive, consumer electronics, communications, enterprise computing and other applications.
“The SoC is not done until the software drivers run,” said Richard Weber, founder and CEO of Semifore, Inc. “The combination of Arteris and Semifore will provide the scale needed to further deploy our register management technology for hardware-software interface to benefit new and existing customers looking to accelerate SoC designs.”
The addition of Semifore technologies and team expertise augments Arteris system IP and IP deployment automation with best-in-class register management products for effective software control of the IP and SoC hardware. This provides a single-source specification that auto-generates the SoC views needed across hardware designs and hardware-dependent software development including device drivers, firmware, verification and documentation. The unified view and automation of this critical SoC integration layer allow customers to accelerate hardware-software development and reduce the risks of costly SoC redesigns.
“Hardware-software integration is a key part of SoC development which our customers are trying to execute quickly and effectively, leveraging best-in-class system IP and SoC integration automation,” said K. Charles Janac, president and CEO of Arteris. “The addition of Semifore will complement our network-on-chip interconnect IP and expand our SoC solutions, addressing complex challenges that every project team faces today.”
The terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The acquisition is not expected to be material to 2023 revenue or earnings.
About Arteris
Arteris is a leading provider of system IP for the acceleration of system-on-chip (SoC) development across today’s electronic systems. Arteris network-on-chip (NoC) interconnect IP and IP deployment technology enable higher product performance with lower power consumption and faster time to market, delivering better SoC economics so its customers can focus on dreaming up what comes next. Learn more at arteris.com.
About Semifore
Semifore, Inc. provides the CSRSpec™ CSR authoring language and CSRCompiler™, a complete register design solution for hardware-software interface verification and documentation. Semifore’s tools enable CSR design management from a single source specification. CSR specifications expressed in CSRSpec, SystemRDL, IP-XACT or spreadsheets are inputs to CSRCompiler. CSRCompiler then automatically generates Verilog and VHDL RTL; Verilog or C headers; Perl, IEEE IP-XACT, UVM, HTML web pages and Word or FrameMaker documentation. Learn more at semifore.com.
Forward-Looking Statements
This news release contains forward-looking statements regarding the transaction(s) described in this release, including regarding anticipated benefits. Forward-looking statements allow potential investors an opportunity to understand Company management’s beliefs and opinions regarding potential future outcomes, which may be used as a factor by potential investors in evaluating an investment. Although forward-looking statements are based upon what Company management believes may be reasonable future outcomes, there can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in a forward-looking statement. Therefore, such statements are not guarantees. Arteris assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement in this release.
Stochastic defects in EUV lithography have been studied over the last few years. For years, the Poisson noise from the low photon density of EUV had been suspected [1,2]. EUV distinguishes itself from DUV lithography with secondary electrons functioning as intermediary agents in generating reactions in the resist. Therefore, noise or randomness associated with the secondary electrons should also be expected [3,4]. There should not be only randomness in the number of secondary electrons generated, but also in the distances they travel. The latter is effectively a randomness in the blur.
Poisson noise combined with a randomized local blur was studied to see if stochastic defects would arise naturally. Poisson statistics was applied twice on a 1 nm pixel grid, once for the absorbed photon dose of 30 mJ/cm2, and a second time for the secondary electron quantum yield (QY) of 8 per photon. The 50 nm pitch image (from a binary 1:1 line/space grating as the object) on a 0.33 NA EUV system is then convolved with a local blur Gaussian function, where the sigma is a random number in the range [0, sigma_max], where sigma_max, essentially the upper limit of local blur, is itself randomly selected from an exponential distribution. To prevent excessive roughness, the random local blur values are subject to a 3 nm x 3 nm rolling average, and extrapolated at the grid edges.
The stochastic defect occurrence is found to hinge on the upper limit of the local secondary electron blur. For a ‘typical’ value of 3.1 nm (46th percentile on the exponential distribution), the image was practically unaltered, whereas for a ‘rare’ value of 30 nm (99.75th percentile on the exponential distribution), the image of the feature was essentially disrupted, indicating a microbridge-type (unexposed) defect.
Poisson statistics may be an aggravating factor but are not the true triggers for stochastic defects. The 5 nm scale exponential distribution containing upper limits of blur as high as 30 nm is the key aspect. This would be a natural consequence of the cascade of secondary electrons scattering in the resist, due to the range of energies starting from ~80 eV down to ~0 eV, as well as mean free paths rising sharply at low energies [5,6]. This is different from, e.g., acid diffusion in chemically amplified resists, which is suppressed as acids move further out due to the reduced concentration gradient. A recent disclosure of the EUV-induced hydrogen plasma [7] reveals mean free paths on the order of cm, which, in principle, could significantly worsen the stochastic defects issue. However, how much this new factor is suppressed is still not clear.
References
[1] R. L. Brainard et al., SPIE 5374, 74 (2004).
[2] M. Neisser et al., J. Photopolym. Sci and Tech. 26, 617 (2013). https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/photopolymer/26/5/26_617/_pdf
[3] H. Fukuda, J. Micro/Nanolith. MEMS MOEMS 18, 013503 (2019).
[4] F. Chen, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/adding-random-secondary-electron-generation-photon-shot-chen
[5] O. Yu et al., J. Elec. Spec. and Rel. Phen., 241, 146824 (2020). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0368204818302007
[6] Seah, M.P. and W.A. Dench, Surface and Interface Analysis 1, 2 (1979).
[7] M. van de Kerkhof et al., https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2105/2105.10029.pdf
