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Xilinx Vivado: Faster and Better

Xilinx Vivado: Faster and Better
by Paul McLellan on 10-09-2014 at 7:01 am
Categories: FPGA, Xilinx

When you think of Xilinx the word FPGA is the first that comes to mind. But Xilinx has really moved beyond the sort of simple glue-logic arrays that their first success was built on. A modern array contains processors as well as programmable fabric, hence the Xilinx tag-line “all programmable”. But another area that doesn’t always get as much recognition as it should is Xilinx’s software toolchain. Today they announced a new version of their Vivado tool suite, 2014.3. The headline news is that it is significantly faster and so allows users to focus on the differentiated part of doing their design and less on the routine of getting the design into silicon. There is also an increased focus on high-level synthesis (HLS), basically programming your design in C rather than RTL.

Also Read: ARM TrustZone and Zynq

The IP Integrator has been improved in many ways. It used to be that to connect a stream interface to a memory mapped interface you had to create your own DMA device but now that is handled automatically. There is also support for 3rd party IP being evaluated/purchased directly from within the tool. A large part of many designs is simply picking the IP required and hooking it up.


One the HLS front there are now over 1000 users with huge increases in productivity from using C for versus using RTL. They reckon design productivity is up 10X since it is possible to explore multiple microarchtectures in a way that you simply cannot do with RTL. And verification productivity using C versus RTL is about 1000 times faster. For those designs that can make use of HLS this is now an industrial strength technology ready for real-world designs.

With the Ultrafast design methodology you don’t need to do a P&R of the design before closing power, timing etc. You just need to do synthesis (which is much faster than P&R) and then use the new design analysis and reporting capabilities. So of course it is possible to iterate quickly.

The overall performance and QoR of the basic algorithms have been improved across the board:

  • new built-in synthesis strategies: 10% better area utilization, 4% fast Fmax
  • multi-cpu support (only on Linux for now)
  • improved core algorithms with Ultrascale 2X faster runtime ,7 series 20% faster, physical optimization now multi-threaded
  • QoR 7% higher Fmax on monolithic devices, 11% on SSI devices

Xilinx has produced a video going over the new features of the release. It is here on the Xilinx website.



More articles by Paul McLellan…

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SEMICON Europa

SEMICON Europa
by Paul McLellan on 10-08-2014 at 1:26 pm
Categories: ESD Alliance, Semiconductor Services

This week it is SEMICON Europa in Grenoble in the heart of the French Alps.

SEMICON Europa 2014 opened yesterday at ALPEXPO in Grenoble with more than 400 exhibiting companies. Learn about the latest innovative technologies, products, applications and business opportunities both within the European community and globally. Companies like Applied Materials, Intel, Infineon, Microsoft, Philips, Samsung, Sony, STMicroelectronics, and Tokyo Electron will present their strategies and requirements in SEMICON Europa programs and on the exhibition floor. SEMICON Europa 2014 (7-9 October) also features the new “Allée des Clusters” and Innovation Village, which will showcase more than 35 start-up companies and their innovative products and capabilities.

SEMICON Europa offers semiconductor Front-End manufacturing programs, including the 18th annual Fab Managers Forum, as well as programs on the Internet of Things, Automation Level in Fabs, and Smart Connected Sensor Devices. Consumers continue to drive an ever increasing demand for mobile electronics and interconnectivity — for both work and play. New devices are being developed and sensor applications are soaring to meet future requirements for processing and transmitting data/information across a variety of applications (i.e. healthcare, industrial, security, entertainment, energy efficiency, etc.). SEMICON Europa highlights include Electronic Applications (Imaging Conference and Nanoelectronics for Healthcare Session) and Electronic Components (Low Power Conference and Power Electronics Conference).

Other conference programs at SEMICON Europa will explore 450mm wafer processing and other critical issues in Fab Management, Advanced Packaging, 3D IC, Test and MEMS. Now in its third decade, SEMICON Europa’s new location leverages the growing strengths of Grenoble’s technology businesses, academia and institutions to showcase a diverse array of products, solutions and opportunities spanning the most advanced innovations in the European nano-manufacturing industry.

Also, at SEMICON yesterday, Albert Theuwissen, CEO of Harvest Imaging and professor at Delft University of Technology, received the European SEMI Award 2014. The Award, which recognizes Theuwissen’s outstanding contribution to the continuing education of engineers, was presented during the SEMICON Europa Executive Summit in Grenoble.

Albert Theuwissen is a highly regarded specialist in solid-state image sensors and digital imaging. He worked for nearly 20 years at Philips Research and then at DALSA in lead engineering and management roles. In 2001, Theuwissen became a part-time professor at Delft University of Technology. In 1995, he wrote the textbook “Solid-State Imaging with Charge-Coupled Devices” which is now a standard reference work in the field of solid-state imaging.

After “retiring” in 2007, Theuwissen founded Harvest Imaging and has played a major role in the continuing education of engineers in the field of solid-state imaging and digital cameras. He has taught and trained over 3,000 engineers at image sensor companies (such as Kodak, Sony, Samsung, Aptina, ST Microelectronics, Micron, Intel, Philips, Canon, DALSA, and Panasonic) and consumer product companies (such as Nokia, Sony-Ericsson, Motorola, Siemens, Research InMotion, Thomson, and many others). In addition, he has conducted short courses at IEEE’s IEDM, ISSCC, ICIP and SPIE’s Electronic Imaging Conference.

Full details of SEMICON Europa are here.


More articles by Paul McLellan…

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iPhone or Wallet – Which one do you go back for?

iPhone or Wallet – Which one do you go back for?
by Daniel Nenni on 10-08-2014 at 7:00 am
Categories: CASPA, Mobile

As a professional conference attendee I see a direct correlation between the number of people attending and the quality of the keynotes. Let’s face it, it’s all about the keynotes so you had better get some big names if you want more than your friends and family to show up. In this regards the upcoming CASPA event will probably be one of the most attended of its kind, absolutely. My beautiful wife and I will be there and I hope to see you there too. It would be a pleasure to meet you and be sure and tell my wife how famous I am because sometimes she forgets.

Also Read: Bouncing Between iPhone and Android

Today CASPA hosted a lunch for the press and speakers which I greatly appreciated. A free lunch is always nice but networking with the speakers prior to the event is truly enlightening. Candid conversations are the best way to understand what people are saying but also why they are saying it. One of the more interesting questions asked was: “If you left home without your wallet or your phone which would you go back for?” This has happened to me more than once and I always go back for my phone but not my wallet. Other than a driver’s license, everything is in my phone which brings us to the topic of this weekend’s conference:

Intelligent and Secured Living in a Connected World


Keynote Speakers:

[LIST=1]

  • Michael Hurlston, Executive Vice President, Broadcom – ” Powering the Internet of Things: Wireless Connectivity”
  • Raja Koduri, Corporate Vice President, Visual Computing, AMD – ” Visual Computing and Applications for Surround Computing”
  • Jim Finch, Vice President Business Development, Imagination Technologies – “Virtualization Enhances Security in Sensor Nodes”
  • Gary Miliefsky, CEO, SnoopWall LLC – “Is Digital Privacy Possible?”

    Panel Speakers:

    [LIST=1]

  • Gary Miliefsky, CEO, SnoopWall LLC
  • Tareq Bustami, Vice President & General Manager, Product Management, Freescale – “Solving the Networking Puzzle From IoT to SDN and Everything in Between”
  • Rakesh Mehrotra, Advisory Principal, Semiconductors, PwC – “The Impact of IoT on Semiconductor Companies”
  • Dr. Omkaram (Om) Nalamasu, Senior Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, Applied Materials, Inc. & – “Energy Storage and Energy Harvesting Technologies for Sensors and IoT”

    Dinner Speaker:

    Executive Keynote: Simon Segars, CEO, ARM
    –“Choice, Collaboration, and Innovation”

    In a world with billions of connected devices, the proliferation of intelligent devices has created a market for entirely new solutions based on the Internet of Things (IoT). This rapid growth in the number of intelligent devices presents many challenges, including significant impact on the architecture of M2M (machine to machine) services. There are many opportunities to extract value from the data generated in the connected world, but with these come possible risks to personal and enterprise security. Valuable data must be protected, from the data center to the network’s edge, while still being instantly available to users.

    Our line up of distinguished industry experts will provide us greater insight into how their respective companies are addressing these challenges to enable all of us to enjoy “Intelligent and Secured Living in a Connected World”.

    Date/Time:     October 11, 2014 (Saturday), 12:00 pm – 5:15 pm
    Location: Santa Clara Convention Center, 5001 Great America Pkwy, Santa Clara, CA
    Conference Registration: Here, Open to all, cost = FREE

    Founded in 1991, CASPAhas developed into the largest Chinese American semiconductor professional organization worldwide. CASPA consists of individual members, corporate sponsors, board of directors, board of advisors, board of volunteers, and honorary advisors. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, California, CASPA has 9 local chapters worldwide: Austin & Dallas Texas; Phoenix Arizona; Portland Oregon; HsinChu Taiwan, Pearl River Delta (Hong Kong, ShenZhen), Shanghai, Beijing and Singapore. CASPA also forms alliance with other associations to promote welfare of its members.

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    Bouncing Between iPhone and Android

    Bouncing Between iPhone and Android
    by mbriggs on 10-07-2014 at 6:00 pm
    Categories: Mobile

    I’ve now been the proud owner of a Motorola Droid, HTC Incredible, iPhone 5, Samsung S4 and iPhone 6. I just can’t decide if I’m in the iPhone or Android camp!

    If you don’t feel like reading the entire article, the iPhone 6 is a superior phone experience (judgement made on my 3 weeks of ownership). If you are on the fence, buy one. You might even get sucked in by the Verizon Edge plan, so it becomes moderately cost effective to upgrade every 12-18 mo, vs 2 years.

    Verizon Edge is a way to purchase a device. The full retail price is broken down into 20 easy monthly payments, which appear on your bill. After 30 days, you are then able to upgrade to a new device once 60% of your current Edge device is paid off.

    Also Read: Samsung Profits Fall 60%

    The iPhone 6 hasn’t been perfect. The second time I used the Starbucks app it wouldn’t let me hit Pay. The people behind me in line were getting very annoyed as I fumbled with my phone. Maybe phones, circa 2020 will be glitch free, but I don’t think we are there, yet.

    Everything else works great. It’s fast, responsive and intuitive. The camera takes good low light pictures as advertised. I miss the Aviate launcher, but I’ll get over it.

    I switched from the HTC Incredible (which I liked far better than my Droid and Samsung S4) to the iPhone 5. This transition was difficult and motivated me to write the article 8 Reasons Why I Hate My iPhone 5 in October of 2012. I came to like the iPhone 5, but didn’t love it, which is why I bounced back to the S4. Let’s see if the 8 reasons are still valid:

    Why I Initially Hated My iPhone 5

    1. Voice recognition. Siri is much better now. When Dan and I have our “ask the phone a question” contest while dog walking, even his iPhone 5s is roughly equivalent to the Samsung S4.

    2. Camera. The camera is startlingly good in the iPhone 6, enough so that my Nikon D70 is gathering dust.

    3. Data Plan. I still hate Verizon, but what can I say? I threaten to move to T-Mobile on a monthly basis, but don’t want to hear the squawking from my wife if the transition doesn’t go smoothly.

    4. Photo Sharing. I’ve become an avid Dropbox user. Did you know that Dropbox will automatically upload your photos to the cloud, for free, from Android or iPhone?

    5. Maps. Google maps is available on the iPhone. It’s a constant companion of mine. I don’t know how I found my way, anywhere, before it was available. It’s a little bothersome that I can’t tell Siri to navigate somewhere via google maps, but c’est la vie.

    6. Cost. See #3. Verizon successfully squeezes the maximum dollars out of me per month.

    7. App Installation: Works fine, and I appreciate the vetting that Apple does with the App store. Most of the apps work well. The apps in the Google Play store are more of a crap shoot. I find I need to find the apps with a Google Search because search in the app store is lame.

    8. Password: I’ve gotten used to typing my “secure” password. Does everyone agree that the Ukranians probably have ALL our information, including bank accounts, passwords, and SSNs? Just make sure your bank won’t do a transfer to a new location without your approval.

    In the large, I’d say the 8 reasons are no longer valid. Phew!

    Is it Android or Samsung that breaks?
    I don’t know if my usage patterns tend to confuse Android, or I’ve been unlucky and ran into strange hardware errors. You’d think that podcasts, music via iTunes, google maps, and lots of email would be a fairly common use case. On the Samsung S4 my GPS hiking app, as well as some Wifi hotspots would really mess things up, and more often than not, require a restart. Google maps seemed to work well 2 out of 3 times. It seemed to get worse the longer I had the phone. One time I did a factory reset and reloaded all the apps, but it didn’t seem to help much.

    My 20 year old son had a similar experience with his Samsung S3. For the first couple of months it was a joy. After that, lots of restarts.

    The Earpods Make a Difference
    I listen to podcasts while walking and I like the Apple earpods, vs in ear, buds. The Samsung phones only support the in ear buds, which I really dislike. The earpods kinda/sorta work on the Samsung phone, but only enough to keep you using them, albeit with annoyance. Having podcasts pause and start again properly is a relief. Having a decent microphone as part of the earpods is welcome.

    Summary
    So far, so good with the iPhone 6. The only Android features I miss are Google Now and the ability to have a custom home screen. I hope I don’t decide I want an iPhone 6+ as I don’t think it will fit easily in my pocket.

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    WTL Leverage FDSOI to Achieve Both Low Power AND High Speed

    WTL Leverage FDSOI to Achieve Both Low Power AND High Speed
    by Eric Esteve on 10-07-2014 at 11:46 am
    Categories: Foundries, STMicroelectronics

    In fact, this is the title of a presentation given by Pete Foley during FD-SOI Forum 2014 held in Shanghai, a couple of weeks ago. What is nice with clever people like Pete Foley is that they get the point, and get it quickly. Getting the point is to insert AND in capital in the title, as using FD-SOI technology allows to benefit from low-power (thanks to the SOI technology) and performance, thanks to Forward Body Bias (FBB). I didn’t know who is Pete Foley and a quick look at Linkedin give me a hint: Pete’s DNA is innovation. In 1983 Pete was the “Third member of the original Apple VLSI team”, in 1987 he “Led the Newton hardware architecture development before it was redefined from a slate into a “PDA” form factor”… and so on. He is since 2009 the CEO of Waves Semiconductor, a “fabless semiconductor startup that is commercializing a programmable solution addressing power, concurrency, design time, design cost, and deep submicron challenges facing the semiconductor market.” This article is inspired from his presentation that you can find it here FD-SOI Forum 2014 along with other presentation from ST-Microelectronic, Synopsys, IBS and more.

    Waves Semiconductor is developing real products based on Waves Threshold Logic (WTL). If we want to make it short, WTL is not based on standard Boolean logic, is asynchronous and “unifies Data and Control into a single “Logically Determined” paradigm. Simple words are not enough, that’s why the above picture should help! As you can see, there is no clock, no register, just DATA and NULL pipeline stages, and Acknowledge signals generated by the data. Alternating DATA/NULL provide data behavior, Pete Foley claim that WTL is “Data Driven Completion”. Asynchronous means that no clock is used, with several immediate consequences: no clock means no glitch (lower risk), no necessity to provision time for set-up and hold or for clock skew and budget for worst case PVT (better performance), and no need for register and CDM (40% real estate saving). Last but not least, much less dynamic power, as the pipeline only consumes power when the data change. So WTL is fast, fully standard CMOS compatible, but is also very low-power, especially when used on FD-SOI technology.

    If you remember this blog in Semiwiki, a device designed on FD-SOI will offer better performance than the same design on Bulk Silicon (assuming the same node) if you use Forward Body Bias (FBB), or will exhibit much lower power consumption… but not at the same time. According with Pete Foley, WTL can use both types of transistor simultaneously to achieve speed of LVT devices under FBB but leakage of RVT devices under Reverse BB (RBB): the best of both worlds! You could argue that WTL is a nice but theoretical concept… In fact Waves Semi is designing products based on WTL like Azure pictured below:


    If you are scared about WTL, and prefer to discuss about an existing SoC product initially designed on 32/28 LP Bulk and ported in FD-SOI 28nm, this example of an ARM Cortex A9 will be appropriate. You can find it in the presentation “The FD-SOI Technology for Energy Efficient SoCs” from Giorgio Cesana. The total power consumption, on the Y axis, is increasing with the CPU frequency (as expected), but the power clearly grow faster and get higher with the A9 on Bulk (in vertical blue) than the same design on FD-SOI (in vertical yellow). And you can see that using the FD-SOI Forward Body Bias effect helps further decreasing power consumption (in vertical green). If we try to quantify the gain in power, we have to look at the horizontal yellow and green horizontal curves. This gives a 50% lower power consumption for the A9 on FD-SOI FBB and 40% on FD-SOI, both compared with Bulk.


    As a conclusion, just watch this slide (also from ST): “FD-SOI, Ecosystem available in the whole chain” extracted from this presentation. SOI wafers can be found at multiple sources, design solutions are enabled by EDA and IP vendors (or from IP porting) and the designed SoC can be fabed in production at ST facility and starting in 2015 at Samsung…

    From Eric Esteve from IPNEST

    More Articles by Eric Esteve…..

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    Samsung Profits Fall 60%

    Samsung Profits Fall 60%
    by Paul McLellan on 10-07-2014 at 11:32 am
    Categories: Mobile

    Samsung’s profits fell to $3.8B which is 60% down on where they were a year ago. They said this is primarily due to a shortfall in smartphone sales. Samsung’s problem is not that it competes with Apple, their phones seem close enough that the Galaxy line has been doing very well in places like the US. It’s problem is that a lot of its market share in in China where it has to compete with Xiaomi (the market leader even though you’ve probably never even seen a Xiaomi phone), Lenovo, Huawei and others.

    The Android operating system is great in some ways for smartphone makers. Apple spends billions on developing iOS. Samsung and others just get Android for free. Google is spending the billions on development, recouping it (or not, who knows?) through search advertising, which despite its broad product portfolio is the only place it makes real money. But it is an Achilles’ heel too, since it means that a Samsung smartphone just isn’t well differentiated. Samsung has been working on their own operating system, Tizen, that I expected they would aggressively use to set them apart from all their Android rivals but every month it seems to slip and get less significant. The first Samsung Gear watch used Tizen but now it is Android, for example. I guessed wrongly that Samsung was big enough that they could use their muscle to establish a third ecosystem of applications around Tizen but now I don’t believe that is going to happen.

    Also read: Intel Invades China Mobile Market!

    But here is something that is even more amazing to think about. Maybe Samsung will be driven from the smartphone market completely. Look at what happened to Palm. Blackberry. Nokia. Motorola. As Ernest Hemingway said, when asked how he went bankrupt, “Gradually, and then suddenly.” Could it really happen to Samsung too? First their sales fall, their profits go away, their competition gets stronger. The carriers desert them for cheaper suppliers. I don’t know the latest numbers for Q3 yet, since the quarter is not over (well it is, but nothing much has been announced) but here was my lookback on Q2 earlier this summer. Samsung is still #1 but then at one point so were both Motorola and then Nokia.

    What about Apple? Its newest phone is underwhelming, adding features that its competition has had for years. But they are an aspirational brand and they are so wildly profitable that they can do well even on declining and not all that large market share. They are currently #2 (behind Samsung). Someone in a comment on one of my blogs said that eventually they would be forced out of the market, just look at PCs. So I looked up the numbers. Apparently the Mac product line makes 40% of all the profit in the PC market, despite relatively puny market share. But they certainly have the hipster demographic, just walk into any coffee shop. It is just in corporate where they are weak, outside the graphic design department. Most internet development is done on Mac, music, graphics and so on.

    Xiaomi is certainly one company to watch. They only sell in a handful of countries. They release their phones in batches and only sell them online but they sell out in a few minutes. They are the #1 brand in China already by unit volume. They sell their phones for pretty much cost, with the plan to make it up on services that they have not yet launched. So they could yet crash and burn since they are making a loss on each phone but making it up in volume, as the old joke goes.

    But back to Samsung. The explosive growth phase of high end smartphones is over. The growth is in the low end, where Samsung do have product. The challenge, though, is that it is hard to replace high-end smartphones. After a house and a car, a TV and a top-of-the-line smartphone are probably the most expensive possessions. Even if Samsung is successful in the internet of things (IoT) it is not clear it will generate anything like the same revenue or the same semiconductor demand. I have always said the same thing about Intel in mobile: they can’t afford to be successful in mobile, it would crater their margins. Samsung is in a similar place.


    More articles by Paul McLellan…

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    Intel Invades China Mobile Market!

    Intel Invades China Mobile Market!
    by Daniel Nenni on 10-07-2014 at 7:00 am
    Categories: Foundries, Intel Foundry, Mobile

    As you may have heard, Intel is making some interesting moves into the China mobile market. At first it had me a bit puzzled but I had some lengthy discussions about it during ARM TechCon last week so I’m ready to start writing. Spoiler alert: This will be pro Intel so please sit down and take some deep breaths before reading.

    The first interesting news was the Intel investment in Rockchip back in May of this year. We have written quite a bit about Rockchip on SemiWiki and I have heard even more during private conversations. Great company but they face stiff competition from a dozen different SoC companies big and small including Spreadtrum. If not for the Intel deal my understanding is that Rockchip would have faced an asset sale. With Intel’s backing however, I see differentiation and a huge upside, absolutely.

    “The strategic agreement with Rockchip is an example of Intel’s commitment to take pragmatic and different approaches to grow our presence in the global mobile market by more quickly delivering a broader portfolio of Intel architecture and communications technology solutions.” Intel’s CEO Brian Krzanich.

    The Spreadtrum deal is even more interesting. Intel took an equity position in the holding company (Tsinghua Unigroup) which holds Spreadtrum Communications and RDA Microelectronics.

    “China is now the largest consumption market for smartphones and has the largest number of Internet users in the world,” said Brian Krzanich, Intel CEO. “These agreements with Tsinghua Unigroup underscore Intel’s 29-year-long history of investing in and working in China. This partnership will also enhance our ability to support a wider range of mobile customers in China and the rest of the world by more quickly delivering a broader portfolio of Intel architecture and communications technology solutions.”

    Intel is reportedly investing $1.5 billion into Tsinghua Unigroup for a 20% stake. Interestingly enough Spreadtrum and RDA were taken private by Tsinghua just last year for $1.78 billion so the math doesn’t really work here. Dealing with the Chinese Government has always perplexed me so I’m interested to see how this plays out. And what about the Rockchip relationship? Rockchip and Spreadtrum are fierce competitors. Hopefully I can get more information during my next trip to Shanghai. Face-2-face communication is much more reliable than Googling around and making things up.

    Also read: The Apple Samsung TSMC Intel 14nm Mashup!

    A while back I gave Intel Custom Foundry some very good advice: Invest in the fabless semiconductor ecosystem because unless Intel is an integral (non-threatening) part of the ecosystem they will not succeed. One suggestion I made was to buy fabless companies to fill Intel fabs (I believe I mentioned Mediatek and Broadcom). In this regards the Spreadtrum investment is brilliant considering the China market has the biggest upside for Intel Custom Foundry.

    Granted, TSMC manufactures the majority of mobile chips today and the Chinese Government does have a significant stake in SMIC, but based on my experience with SMIC they have no chance at 28nm, 20nm, or 14nm. From what I was told, SMIC licensed the IBM gate-first HKMG 28nm process only to change it to gate-last to better accommodate TSMC designs for second sourcing. This failed miserably and now SMIC is working on 28nm FD-SOI which means they will have to change back to gate-first. So the gates of China are open to Intel Custom Foundry for mobile devices and I hope they succeed for the greater good of the fabless semiconductor industry.

    My next trip to Asia is at the end of this month so please let’s discuss this in the comment section so I can get clarification during my trip:

    [LIST=1]

  • Why did Intel really make these investments?
  • Is Intel an IP company now?
  • Will Intel manufacture these chips in the US?
  • Will Intel manufacture these chips in their 300mm China Fab?
  • Can Intel succeed in the China mobile market?

    More Articles by Daniel Nenni…..

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    Silicon Does NOT Lie!

    Silicon Does NOT Lie!
    by Daniel Nenni on 10-06-2014 at 7:00 am
    Categories: General

    In the 30+ years that I have worked in Silicon Valley I have seen many great products fail and even more mediocre products succeed, the difference being how the companies communicate to the outside world. In the semiconductor industry, presenting the value proposition of your company or product is under even more scrutiny now that independent benchmarking and product tear downs have become prevalent. So why is it some of our marketing brethren still communicate like it was 1999?

    Do you remember Osborne Computer and the “Osborne Effect”? Osborne computer pre-announced a new product only to have it delayed for more than a year leading the company to bankruptcy. People like myself did not buy the original Osbourne1 because we wanted the newer version that was pre-announced. Instead, I bought my first IBM PC and the rest is history. You should also be aware of the term “self-defeating prophecy”:

    A self-defeating prophecy can be the result of rebellion to the prediction. If the audience of a prediction has an interest in seeing it falsified, and its fulfillment depends on their actions or inaction, their actions upon hearing it will make the prediction less plausible.

    So yes, no matter how good your product or service is, how you communicate to the outside world is critical. And now with New Media (Twitter, Blogospehere, SemiWiki, etc…) and the resulting transparency the old guard semiconductor communications strategies just do not work like they used to. Invite me over for lunch sometime and I will share my SemiWiki New Media experience with your marketing communications people. It’s a 30 minute presentation with another 30 minutes for Q&A.

    One of the services we offer to companies that subscribe to SemiWiki is strategic marketing communication. Pre-brief us on your communication plan or your product announcement and we will give you some very blunt feedback based on SemiWiki big data and our collective professional experiences. Having a pair of outside eyes looking in is ALWAYS a good idea whether you act on the advice or not, absolutely. Remember, we are not reporters, journalists, editors, or parrots. We are semiconductor professionals who trade on our reputations.

    The infamous Altera slide is my new favorite example of bad marketing communication. Leveraging their intimate knowledge of the TSMC 20nm process, someone created this slide to not only defame Xilinx but to discredit TSMC and the fabless semiconductor ecosystem. Just my opinion of course but when the Xilinx and Altera FinFET based silicon becomes available there will be a tear down and the truth will be told. My bet is that a silicon correlated version of this slide will be an embarrassment to not only Altera but Intel as well. If I was pre-briefed on this slide no way would it have seen the light of day.

    On another note, it amuses me when IDMs compare themselves to a fabless company or a foundry or even an IP company using revenues, employees, CAPEX, or whatever number suits their purpose. When in fact you need to take a company like Qualcomm, add in ARM, TSMC, Synopsys, Cadence, Mentor, and a whole host of other collaborators. There are hundreds of thousands of us in the fabless semiconductor ecosystem and we spend many billions of dollars every year on R&D and CAPEX. If you think David and Goliath is an interesting story, try hundreds of thousands of Davids and one Goliath.

    More Articles by Daniel Nenni…..

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    10nm, the View from IBM

    10nm, the View from IBM
    by Paul McLellan on 10-05-2014 at 7:01 am
    Categories: Cadence, EDA

    On the Cadence booth at DAC, Lars Liebmann of IBM presented on the challenges of 10nm. As he put it, how the lithography folks are keeping things very interesting for the EDA tool development engineers. Although 14nm/16nm hasn’t yet ramped into HVM, the advanced work for tools and IP has all moved to 10nm. Although Lars gave the presentation, it is also credited to Vassilios Gerousis, Mike Zhang and Paul Gutwin of Cadence, Geng Han of IBM and Brian Cline of ARM. I talked to Lars this week and got a copy of the presentation but there is a video of the whole thing on the Cadence website. See below for a link.

    I’m going to take it as given that you know all about double patterning, and I’m going to take it as given that EUV is not going to be available at 10nm. We have to live with 193nm light.


    At 10nm, the first change is that even though we are still in the double patterning resolution window, we need to add a third color to resolve odd cycles, carefully optimized design rules are not enough to prevent cell to cell color interactions. When two cells are placed next to each other that conflict, there are three approaches to fixing it in the placer: flip the offending cell so it no longer offends, spread the offending cells further apart, or swap the offending color (since the power lines are one color that we can swap from cell to cell, even with 3 colors there is actually only a single choice of what colors to swap).


    Vias are another problem. Even at 14nm we can’t put two vias next to each other in the obvious way, they are too close. The nearest alternatives are diagonally adjacent. But at 10nm the area of interaction is so large that not just neighboring vias but the two vias over need to be colored appropriately. This cannot be done after the routing has been completed, since it would often turn out to be impossible. Instead explicit odd cycle via prevention is required in the router.


    The type of double patterning used at 14nm is known as LELE for litho-etch-litho-etch. But there are resolution limits to this limited by overlay and also dielectric breakdown. So for 10nm we will need what is called either SIT (sidewall image transfer) or SADP (self-aligned double patterning). In this a mandrel is created, sidewalls are created on the edge of the mandrel, and then a cut/block mask is used to trim the design and remove unwanted parts. But arbitrary layout can lead to errors (non-manufacturability) on the block mask. A whole new lot of line end stagger rules come into play. The block mask patterning becomes the resolution limiter.

    The solution is to go to a sea of wires with a highly constrained cut mask. This means lengthening many wires (which will affect performance), creating dummy floating wires and worrying about line-end stagger control.


    All of this has been implemented in Cadence’s Encounter and with a compliant ARM 9-track standard cell library.

    The video of Lars’s presentation is here. It is the presentation at 11am on Tuesday.


    More articles by Paul McLellan…

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    The Apple Samsung TSMC Intel 14nm Mashup!

    The Apple Samsung TSMC Intel 14nm Mashup!
    by Daniel Nenni on 10-04-2014 at 1:00 pm
    Categories: Foundries, Intel Foundry, Mobile, TSMC

    One of the strengths of the fabless semiconductor ecosystem is competition since it keeps innovation high and prices low. One of the challenges of fostering competition is that you have to make good on a threat of using a competing product during a pricing negotiation. Well, in my opinion, for the next version of the iPhone, Apple did just that. Apple put Samsung and TSMC against each other and as a result will use both Samsung 14nm and the better performing TSMC 16nm FF+ for the 2015 iProducts. Since Samsung is a quarter or two ahead of TSMC on FinFETs, Samsung will get the iPhone business in Q3 2015 and TSMC will get the iPad and maybe a MAC Book in Q4 2015. Qualcomm, NVIDIA, AMD, Broadcom, and the other fabless heavyweights will follow suit. It’s all about wafer price negotiations and that is what keeps us strong.

    Also Read:Where will Apple Manufacture the next iPhone Brain?

    Common wisdom suggests that Apple would not do business with Intel or Samsung as they both compete with Apple on some level. Samsung aggressively sells competing phones/tablets and Intel gives free SOCs to companies that compete with Apple. But when you are buying billions of dollars of wafers, price tends to trump all. Now let’s talk about the rumors overheard at ARM TechCon last week:

    Out of the total volume of A8 chips, Samsung is producing around 30 percent, while TSMC is making 70 percent, sources familiar with the matter said.

    The first rumor is that Samsung will get 30-40% of the Apple A8 business. Apple will use the same A8 SoC for the iPhone 6 and iPad products. I’m hoping the A8 will be clocked up for the iPad because I know it can go faster than 1.4GHz! Bottom line: Samsung is NOT supplying 20nm A8 parts to Apple. Show me an iPhone or iPad tear down that proves otherwise and a new iPad is yours. Also according to ZDNet Korea’s Cho Mu-hyun:

    Kim Ki-nam, president of the Korean electronic giant’s semiconductor business and head of System LSI business, told reporters at Samsung’s headquarters in Seoul that once the company begins to supply Apple with chips using its latest technology, profits “will improve positively”.

    Samsung is expected to start producing application processors (APs) for clients such as Apple, Qualcomm, and AMD, using its 14-nanometre process around the end of the year. Kim declined to comment on when Samsung will start mass producing said chips for clients.

    The second rumor is that Samsung won the Apple business for 14nm. As I mentioned above, Apple will use both Samsung and TSMC for the next generation of iProducts in 2015 so this is a half-truth. To me a half-truth is also a half-lie and I have a serious problem with that especially coming from a publicly traded company. Samsung should publicly clarify that it is NOT supplying 20nm wafers to Apple and they are NOT the only vendor supplying Apple FinFET wafers in 2015. Transparency inspires trust, right?

    In regards to Intel Custom Foundry, being stuck between Samsung and TSMC in a wafer price war is no way to start your day. Given that TSMC 10nm is on track with Intel Foundry 10nm (remember Intel Foundry has yet to ship production 14nm) and Samsung is a close third, 10nm will be another serious pricing challenge. And let’s not forget that GOLBALFOUNDRIES and IBM are also in the10nm hunt. Competition is for the greater good of the fabless semiconductor ecosystem, absolutely.

    More Articles by Daniel Nenni…..