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A Brief History of SPICE

A Brief History of SPICE
by Daniel Payne on 08-10-2012 at 4:06 pm
Categories: EDA

SPICE is an acronym for Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis and represents a class of EDA software used by circuit designers at the transistor-level to predict the timing, frequency, voltage, current or power of an IC or interconnect before fabrication.

In 1971 there was a tool called CANCER (Computer Analysis of Nonlinear Circuits, Excluding Radiation) from Laurence Nagel while studying under Professor Ronald Rohrer. SPICE was then developed at UC Berkeley by Nagel in 1972 and first announced on April 12, 1973 by Professor Donald Pederson at the 16th Midwest Symposium on Circuity Theory. Continue reading “A Brief History of SPICE”

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Qualcomm Acquires Intel’s Playbook

Qualcomm Acquires Intel’s Playbook
by Ed McKernan on 08-10-2012 at 12:00 pm
Categories: Arm, Foundries, Intel Foundry

The Mobile Tsunami wave has yet to crest and the surfers strong enough to mount it are dwindling fast to the dismay of market watchers and experienced analysts. The distraction of these past few days is the courtroom drama being played out between the sumo wrestlers, Apple and Samsung, which in the end will not result in a cessation of the Mobile World War. In the background though is a much more interesting battle that is taking place between Intel and Qualcomm. Intel’s game plan is set while Qualcomm rushes to take advantage of open field opportunities. The latest announcement that Qualcomm has hired Intel’s ex-mobile chief Anand Chandrasekher signals an important shift for the communications leader.

The Mobile Tsunami market, which I claim includes Smartphones, tablets andmobile PCs is such a large and growing pie that on first thoughts one could say that there is room for many players to enjoy the spoils. When I was at Transmeta, the CEO would say all we need is 10% of Intel’s x86 market and we will be worth $15B. We didn’t execute at Intel’s cadence and we were rolled. Intel could have been generous and spotted us 10% but it would have disappeared at the next process node. It is important to point out that the larger the market, the more fronts you have to play in and do so competitively to win. Intel is already geared to play in every segment and Qualcomm is not due to their lack of an x86 solution. Going forward though I contend that Intel, Qualcomm, Apple and Samsung are the only players that have the wherewithal on the semiconductor side to build in all segments.

Nvidia just reported their quarterly earnings. Sales were $1.04B up $80M from last quarter. Next quarter sales are to increase by another $100M – $200M. That’s all very nice, now pick up your bat and glove and jump on the next bus to the minor leagues. Neither AMD nor nVidia are scaling their businesses at the rate of Mobile Tsunami and so the undertow will take them out to sea. Perhaps if Broadcom bought nVidia, then the combined company could be a player, given Broadcom’s communications strength and nVidia’s graphics capability. But time is a wasting!

By hiring Anand Chandrasekher, Qualcomm has taken a step that seems to signify that they are about to broaden their focus to include mobile PCs with x86 processors running Windows (yes it will be around for eternity). Intel acquired Infineon’s communications group last year for the purpose of selling the entire platform in PCs, smartphones and tablets. Baseband is the key value added function as we will see with the rollout of 4G LTE this fall. It is a technology that will be available in ultrabooks some time soon. If played right it can exceed the value of Intel’s x86 processors in mobiles.

Anand has in his head the x86 mobile roadmaps, as they existed when he left Intel in May 2011 as well as the understanding of how to fight and win in the mobile PC market. Intel lawyers, no doubt, have sent a nice letter to Anand and Qualcomm stating that Anand must not share any proprietary data in his new work. Don’t worry, the Qualcomm folks will figure out ways to ask questions that hint at the right road to take. Anand, would it be best if we took the road to the left or right today? Mobile Tsunami is about winning in all fronts and Qualcomm knows they have the upper hand with 4G LTE. The demand is so great that they are scrambling to get supply in place to meet demand. The tapeouts to four different Fabs is a sign that they need a massive step ramp on today’s and future products. In addition, they need to be able to negotiate lower wafer pricing with TSMC. It is the alternative to writing a $5B check ahead of time.

However, they can’t rest with just the ARM based Snapdragon. They need to put in place an x86 + 4G LTE product family in order to take Intel’s high mobile ASP advantage away from them and to increase their presence and revenue in a segment that will represent roughly 250MU in three years. It is not, as most have guessed a battle of x86 vs. ARM that determines the winner rather it is an entire mobile platform battle and both processors will coexist. That’s why as an investment strategy investors may decide to own both going forward.

Full Disclosure: I am Long AAPL, INTC, ALTR, QCOM. This article is not a recommendation to buy any stocks mentioned above or in any other one of my postings. Investors must do their own research.

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While you’re reading the SoC manual

While you’re reading the SoC manual
by Don Dingee on 08-09-2012 at 8:30 pm
Categories: EDA, IP, Siemens EDA

There was a day, not too long ago, when a software developer could be intimate with a processor through understanding its register set. Before coding, developers would reach for a manual, digging through pages and pages of 1s and 0s with defined functions to find how to gain control over the processor and its capability. One bit set or cleared in the right place could be the key to making an application work.

Leaps in processor performance and increases in memory size made hand-crafted code less important, and high level languages took hold as a way to increase coding productivity. Developers graduated from bit-twiddling I/O to more sophisticated functions like disk storage and networking stacks and GUIs, and the real-time operating system emerged with code to set up and manage peripherals.

Peripherals started to coalesce on functional standards like USB and SATA, reducing the variety of interfaces programmers had to deal with. Standardized interfaces like PCI and PCI Express and RapidIO further abstracted the peripheral, seamlessly extending the processor beyond the boundaries of its local bus while allowing complex functions to be added.

Then, a funny thing happened: the system-on-chip (SoC) movement took all the exposed functions developers were used to, glued them together and buried them deep inside a complex beast of a chip. While this drove an incredible revolution in size and performance, it has made a nightmare for developers to really optimize their execution environment, accounting for all the capability an SoC presents. In many cases, the IP blocks inside an SoC are black-boxes to developers who hope beyond hope to get a driver that works for an operating system.

While it’s still possible to figure out programming an SoC, excavating into what in some cases is over 2000 pages of documentation for the part not to mention docs for the operating system, it all takes precious time. Developers have to be experts on their application, and smaller departments have little hope of time left over to develop a deep understanding of the SoC inside. This used to be a gap the board vendors would fill, in taking an operating system and creating a board support package with the drivers packaged together. As the value-add of a board vendor working with an SoC diminishes, fewer board vendors are interested, and this task is swinging back to the semiconductor and operating system firms.

In practice today, that’s the only hope for applications running on SoCs: a tight relationship between the semiconductor company and the operating system company that produces abstracted and optimized support for the myriad of functions inside. Otherwise, developers have to be experts on processor cores, caching and MMU operation, graphics, networking, storage, USB, DSP, audio, compression, encryption, and more functions. That’s a 7 or 8 dollar figure effort for a large project, and it’s impossible for projects with typically embedded volumes of a couple thousand.

This new model is taking shape in quite a few places, but perhaps nowhere as broadly as Mentor Graphics. This week, Mentor announced up-to-date support for 42 embedded SoC boards on their RTOS and Linux environments (proving the answer to the universe and everything embedded is actually 42). The philosophy is Mentor’s embedded software teams live with the SoC vendors at the front end, so you don’t have to in order to get a solid starting point for software. Again, they’re not unique in this type of effort, but the range of relationships and architecture support Mentor is putting together is impressive.

You can still read the SoC manual, if you have time. Seriously, what are your views? Is this type of support for SoCs valuable, or can a development team with enough caffeine still do without it? Does open source (read: free) provide enough, or is value-added support worth a reasonable expenditure? Do you know of an example where this type of integrated, value-added support boosted productivity and got a project done faster than thought possible? Or saved a project that got in trouble?

(Disclaimer: Been away a while, long story, happy to be writing again)


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The GLOBALFOUNDRIES Value Proposition!

The GLOBALFOUNDRIES Value Proposition!
by Daniel Nenni on 08-09-2012 at 5:00 pm
Categories: Foundries, GlobalFoundries

From the very start I continually asked the GF guys what their value proposition is other than, “We are not TSMC”, which seems to be the easy way to foundry riches but clearly is not. In the early days of GF there was a lot of pride, pomp, and circumstance but that does not necessarily sell wafers. Today we are seeing a very different GF focused on implementation and increased transparency which leads to the most important business asset today, trust!

The Foundry Files Blog is a new feature on the GF website which I’m happy to promote. Blogging is an opportunity for companies to be transparent and represent themselves as real people and build trust within their business environment.

To start, Michael Noonan and Mojy Chian will be blogging. Mike is Executive Vice President, Worldwide Marketing and Sales, for GLOBALFOUNDRIES. In this role, he is responsible for global customer relationships as well as all marketing, sales, customer engineering and quality functions. Read more about Mike here. Mojy is Senior Vice President, Design Enablement at GLOBALFOUNDRIES. He is responsible for global design enablement, services, and solutions and is the primary technical customer interface for the company. Read more about Mojy here.

I first met Mike when he was with NXP and before that he was with National Semiconductor. I first met Mojy at Conexant and worked with him again at Altera. Please recognize that these gentlemen are industry leaders and this is a VERY important communication channel for the greater good of the semiconductor ecosystem so please take advantage of this very unique opportunity.

I blogged about Mojy’s first entry Re-defining Collaboration on SemiWiki HERE. This blog is about Mike’s entry Execution, Innovation, Location: 3 Reasons to Choose GLOBALFOUNDRIES at 28nm.

Execution is obvious, you need to ship wafers and they are doing that today shipping more than 250,000 32nm and 28nm HKMG wafers:

“In just one quarter, we were able to see more than a doubling of yields on 32nm, allowing us to exit 2011 having exceeded our 32nm product shipment requirements. Based on this successful ramp of 32nm HKMG, we are committed to moving ahead on 28nm with GLOBALFOUNDRIES.” AMD CEO Rory Read.

Innovation is key and here is what Mike has to say about innovation and their 28nm:

  • ~100 percent density increase.
  • Up to 50 percent increased speed and 50 percent reduction in energy/switch.
  • Sustains 40nm layout style advantages: Bi-directional Poly, Poly Jogs, Large Caps.
  • ~20% smaller die relative to 28nm “Gate Last.”

Location is an interesting part of the value proposition and one worth more discussion. Now that GLOBALFOUNDRIES is the second largest pure-play foundry in the world with manufacturing plants located in Europe, Asia, and North America, is location important? You tell me. Why does Intel, the number one semiconductor company, have fabs all over the world? Why is Samsung, the number two semiconductor company, building fabs in North America and China? Location, location, location……

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Smartphones: Is It Game Over?

Smartphones: Is It Game Over?
by Paul McLellan on 08-08-2012 at 4:18 pm
Categories: General

The Q2 numbers for smartphones are now all in and the basic story is that Google is now registering an incredible million Android phones per day, half of them made by Samsung. That’s 85% of all the smartphones shipped last quarter. Android has (per IDC) 68% market share of all smartphones out there.

Apple grew by double digit numbers but was slightly off the numbers that analysts expected. But with a new iPhone expected later this quarter this is pretty typical. Apple is currently #2 with 17% of smartphones (but also with an outsized share of the revenues and profits). Remember, iPhone is bigger than all of Microsoft, amazingly, and twice as big as Google.

So Samsung and Apple make all the profits in the wireless market.

What about everyone else? HTC, missed its numbers very badly. RIM (Blackberry), still struggling with shrinking market share and its new operating system not out until January of next year which seems like an eternity from now. Nokia/Microsoft still not selling much although the new WP8 phones are expected late this quarter or early next. Huawei (who managed to be the cover story on this week’s Economist) seemed to do ok in China but nowhere else. LG is being crushed by Samsung pretty much, it seems.

I’m still unclear just how clever Google’s strategy is. Yes, they are doing everything they can to make sure nobody gets between them and the end user, experimentally putting fiber networks in Kansas city, bidding on wireless spectrum, giving away a wireless operating system for free, buying their own handset company. Then hoping to get everything back and more from AdWords, which is really the only Google business that makes real money. Also, apart from Samsung, all their other Android customers are struggling to make any money.

Apple also seems to have mindshare of App developers too. Security on Android seems to be much more of a problem. Apple is certainly open to criticism for some aspects of its AppStore acceptance process but it does seem to keep a lot of dubious stuff out. And App developers apparently make more money on iPhone than Android where people expect the Apps to have the same price as the operating system and be free. Even Rovio has to give Angry Birds away on Android but sells all except a few introductory levels on iPhone.

If Apple does release iPhone5 this quarter as expected then this quarter will see a big leap in iPhone sales since it is clear that at least some people are postponing iPhone sales for now. Unlike Apple’s strategy of just releasing one phone per year (Apple’s entire product line would fit on a large table), Samsung has an enormous line of phones. In addition to Android, they have Tizen which is their own Linux-based operating system jointly developed with Intel. Nokia were heavily involved in the project with their Meego operating system until Elop switched Nokia to all Microsoft Windows Phone. They even still have some Microsoft WP phones although it will be interesting to see if they continue to do so.

Samsung and Apple are clearly taking all the money and it is questionable how long anyone else will be able to survive. A good rule of thumb is that if you double your volume your costs go down by 20-30%. My guess: Samsung and Apple will pull away from everyone else. Huawei will do OK in China where it is partially protected. There will be a big bloodbath of everyone else. It reminds me of the endgame in the PC market. Remember Gateway, PackardBell, Compaq, IBM Thinkpad. The weak were eaten by the strong: HP, Acer and Lenovo.

And those Samsung Apple lawsuits? I don’t think they will change much other than making a bunch of lawyers rich. UPDATE: although you can watch Samsung spokesperson Stephan Jobes defend themselves here!

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"Death of Equities" = A Silicon Valley Revival

"Death of Equities" = A Silicon Valley Revival
by Ed McKernan on 08-08-2012 at 12:00 pm
Categories: General

Bill Gross, founder and co-chief investment officer of PIMCO, the world’s largest Bond Fund, recently declared, “We’re Witnessing the Death of Equities.” Contrarians should take note as Gross made a similar calling 10 days before the previous major stock market bottom on March 9[SUP]th[/SUP] 2009. For Entrepreneurs and Venture Folks who are essentially “equity innovators”, I would like to suggest that these declarations of end times probably mark the start of a new up cycle similar to what occurred in the 1980s and 1990s. Prior to that there was a generational stock market bottoming that coincided with the Business Week magazine cover of August 13, 1979 Titled: “The Death of Equities.”
Continue reading “"Death of Equities" = A Silicon Valley Revival”

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Traditional Model of Funding Semiconductor Equipment is Broken?

Traditional Model of Funding Semiconductor Equipment is Broken?
by Paul McLellan on 08-07-2012 at 7:30 pm
Categories: Uncategorized
4 Comments

At Semicon a few weeks ago the big news was that Intel was making a big investment in ASML as a way of funding two development programs: extreme ultra-violet (EUV) and 450mm wafers. This week TSMC announced that they would join the program too, committing 275M Euros over a five year period. They are also taking a 5% stake in ASML. ASML have said that they are also talking to some other smaller vendors.

Both these investments are a sign that the traditional model of funding semiconductor equipment is broken. Historically, the equipment companies would fund the investment out of their revenues and recover it by selling equipment. Two things have changed though. The first is that the cost of the development has grown huge, too risky for the equipment companies to undertake on their own without a level of risk sharing with the semiconductor manufacturers. The other problem is that nobody knows how many more process generations there will be that use this new generation of equipment.

In effect, the equipment industry is no longer generating enough profits to fund the investment needed for the future and it is unclear whether there are enough process generations still ahead to recover the cost of that investment.

I’ve said before that there are a lot of risks in EUV. The one that gets all the attention is that the light sources are one to two orders of magnitude dimmer than they need to be. However, two problems with masks also seem severe: mask blanks are not defect free and any particle that gets on the mask is in the focal plane of the mask and so will print, unlike refractive masks that have a pellicle to keep particles away from the plane of the mask itself.

450mm is also a big risk. SEMATECH estimates that the 300mm transition cost between $25-30B and it is not clear if that is actually being recovered. The transition to 450mm is even more challenging. Every piece of equipment must be changed, a huge number of test wafers will need to be manufactured. If EUV works as advertised then we will have a single patterning technology so that each layer on the wafer only needs to be processed once. However, if EUV does not deliver then we will continue to need to use double, triple, quadruple patterning. There are some economies of scale with 450mm since the wafers only need to be changed in the stepper half as often, but a die exposure takes the same length of time whatever the size of the wafer and so each layer of the wafer benefits little from the increased wafer size during lithography.

But the biggest challenge with 450mm is just how many more process generations there will be before we need to go to something different that uses, presumably, different equipment. The earliest that EUV and 450mm wafers might arrive is to be retrofitted to 14nm. It is already too late for the first scheduled 14nm production. At Semicon an Intel fellow said that they are basically almost freezing the design rules for 9nm with the assumption that EUV will not be available and assuming multiple patterning will be required.


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Conductive Bridging RAM ( CBRAM )

Conductive Bridging RAM ( CBRAM )
by Daniel Nenni on 08-07-2012 at 7:11 pm
Categories: IP

One area of the Semiconductor Market that has continued to see start-up venture investment is emerging memories. There is always a perception and need to discover a memory that can either displace the current technologies or create a new niche between DRAM and Flash. Adesto Technologies was founded in 2007 to explore and commercialize CBRAM (Conductive Bridging RAM) as a product and as an embedded IP. CBRAM is of a class of Resistive RAMs that are low voltage, non-volatile and built in standard CMOS processes. CBRAM can scale with CMOS technology and is fundamentally lower in power than Flash. I can see a number of applications here including embedded SOCs such as microcontrollers.

With its CBRAM™ technology, Adesto has now become a leading contender in providing a low cost, low power alternative to Flash memory for a wide range of embedded applications. In addition, given that CBRAM memory can scale with Moore’s Law in standard CMOS for many generations to come, Adesto has the potential of being a significant long term provider of high density, non-volatile memory solutions. Alan J. Niebel Web-Feet Research

Adesto is shipping its first product, an EEPROM replacement device that was built in a standard .13u process technology at a die size that is smaller than traditional solutions. In addition, it has licensed its technology to multiple semiconductor firms who plan to embed it with future devices. It’s an exciting market. Feel free to explore more at www.adestotech.com.

Because there is a lot of research and interest in the field of resistive RAMs, Adesto has initiated and sponsored the creation of a forum that focuses on these new developments. The site is run by an independent moderator, Mr. Christie Marrian. He would be glad to hear from readers and folks interested in contributing articles. The site can be found at www.ReRAM-Forum.com:

We are starting this Blog as a home for articles and discussion related to memory technology based primarily on resistive change (commonly known as RRAM or ReRAM) and conductive bridge (commonly referred to as CBRAM). We are open to anyone actively interested or working in the field. It is timely as RRAM/CBRAM are rapidly gaining traction both as viable technologies in their own right as well as solutions for the scaling limitations of conventional flash memory. We envisage that we will have both technology push and application pull entries and aim that the Blog will become the first ‘port of call’ for potential users as well as those following the latest developments in this exciting field.

Technology related:

  • RRAM/CBRAM Technology Overviews
  • New System Architectures
  • Technology Updates
  • News Items

Application related:

  • Market Analysis and Forecasts
  • Product Announcements and News
  • Application ‘Pull’ describing applications where RRAM/CBRAM technologies are well suited


The RRAM/CBRAM Blog is a moderated Blog in order to ensure that it maintains focus. We also encourage comments which will also be moderated.

Christie Marrian, WWW.ReRAM-Forum.com Moderator

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CEVA-MM3101 DSP IP core

CEVA-MM3101 DSP IP core
by Eric Esteve on 08-07-2012 at 6:00 pm
Categories: Ceva, IP

If the CEVA-XC4000 DSP IP core offers support for the most demanding communication standards, the CEVA-MM3101 provides full control over embedded vision and image enhancement applications, in SW, allowing Application Processor chip makers and OEM a way to differentiate their product. CEVA has decided to launch the MM3101 to help Application processor chip makers to overcome several barriers. If the ARM + NEON solution is selected, it quickly appears to be a low performance option. Choosing a GPU is an option which implies high power consumption. Selecting a solution based on HW accelerators, or fixed functions, is suffering from a strong lack of flexibility for SW upgrades.

OEM, the first customers for the Application processor IC, looks to differentiate, on such a competitive market segment, smartphone and media tablet. Integrating MM3101 will allow designing in-house SoC and would enable applications not available on other devices. Thus, unique and innovative algorithms can be easily programmed on the device. The result, in term of power consumption, is impressive: running such apps on the MM3101 can save 10X or more, as opposed of running on the CPU or GPU.

CEVA-MM3101 solution can be illustrated by the various layer descriptions, as in the picture: at the bottom, the hardware platform (HW layer), then the Library Layer, the Interface Layer and finally the Application layer. CEVA can propose solution for Image Enhancement, Embedded Vision and Scene Analysis, either with products developed internally, either with products developed by partners like Khronos Group, completed by commercially available tools like Optimizing C compiler, Multi-core debugger and so on.

To take an example, illustrating the computing power of the MM3101, just have a look at Super Resolution. This is an amazing algorithm: by fusing several low resolution images to generate a (single) high resolution image that offers more details. As a good picture is always better than a long explanation, just take a look at the following images:

Using the MM3101 Super Resolution algorithm allows generating the High Resolution Image. Amazing!

This is just one example of one of the multiple solutions offered by the MM3101 DSP IP core from CEVA, targeting imaging enhancement for application processor, one of the hottest area in the smartphone and media tablet segment. Using such a core can help OEM and Application processor chip makers to differentiate, and differentiating will help them to consolidate or increase market share, in this very competitive market segment, where the projection call for more than 600 million devices to be shipped in 2012, and the 1 billion level to be passed by 2015!

BY Eric Esteve