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nVidia: "30 Days From Going Out of Business"

nVidia: "30 Days From Going Out of Business"
by Ed McKernan on 08-11-2011 at 9:36 pm
Categories: Uncategorized
3 Comments

Jen Hsun Huang, the CEO of nVidia, has a phrase he often repeats to his employees: “We are 30 days from going out of business.” With product cycles as short as 6 months, the troops are on a constant march to revenue. The earnings conference call on August 11th highlighted two critical pieces of information. First, is the success that they are having in growing their PC graphics revenue despite the Sandy Bridge onslaught. Second, and more important, there is an internal and now a publicly articulated goal that they will reach a $1B revenue run rate for Tegra in 2012.

As outlined in an earlier Semiwiki blog titled “Intel’s Barbed Wire Fence Strategy”
http://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/651-intel-s-barbed-wire-strategy.html Intel is in the business of expanding its fence lines. Their current target is nVidia’s graphics business. It represents not only additional revenue but also the ability to deny nVidia the funds to develop Tegra chips that will be used competitively in Smartphones and Tablets using Android as well as some Windows 8 mobiles.

All this may sound like Intel is the one to be most at risk to market share loss in 2012, especially with the launch of Windows 8 but, as a matter of fact, it is the other way around. First recognize that nVidia has finally returned to its peak run rate of $1B a quarter that they reached in 2007. Meanwhile, Intel is on track to do $55B in revenue this year or nearly 50% higher than 2007. Intel has the additional profits to crank out more designs targeting more segments. But there are clouds of uncertainty.

Windows 8, as understood by most people, unlocks the whole PC market to ARM based processors. Untrue! To get Win 8 to be light on its feet – meaning small memory footprint and fast boot/resume – Microsoft had to make compromises. First and foremost, Microsoft had to limit the hardware ecosystem. A closed system with support for fewer I/O devices makes life easier. No more Swiss Army Knife. How well will the Win 8 mobile run? We won’t know until it ships. The reduced hardware ecosystem should be fine for tablet – but a “clamshell” design is open to interpretation. Are they reduced netbooks?

Intel’s challenge is much different than nVidia’s but still attainable. Back in May, at their Analyst Meeting, Paul Otellini announced they were dropping their Thermal Design Point (TDP) for processors from 35W to 17W. We now know what drove them to this decision, or better yet, who drove them to this decision.

A story broke yesterday in the Wall St. Journal where it was noted that Apple informed Intel that it better drastically slash its power consumption or risk losing Apple’s business. As an Intel exec said, “It was a real wake up call to us.” For more on the story – follow the link:

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/08/10/intel-sets-300-million-fund-to-spur-ultrabooks/

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, the MAC Air is driving the mobile market. It uses Intel ULV processors that have a TDP of 17W (50% lower than regular Intel mobile Sandy Bridge CPUs) and sells for a minimum of $220. The price of the CPU is based on the yield they get per wafer. In this case <50%. Intel needs to get to 7W ideally to make Apple happy in the near term. And they need to offer an entry-level price closer to $75 – so Apple can take MAC Air to $799 thereby sucking the oxygen out of the notebook PC market. This is where I believe Intel will be one year from now with the 22nm Ivy Bridge ULV (A straight die shrink of Sandy Bridge at a similar MHz to today’s ULV). If this still seems high relative to ARM, it is, and Apple has probably informed Intel that they need a 3-5W TDP with Haswell as they go even more aggressive on a future MAC Air. Sound confusing? Consider this like two great armies rushing to the same spot at the front. Each has their own unique strengths and weaknesses. In the end – it is the market that lies just a tad above Apple’s entry level $499 iPAD. Call it $499+1. Note: You must be logged in to read/write comments

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Altera and Xilinx Eyeing 28nm FPGA Dominance

Altera and Xilinx Eyeing 28nm FPGA Dominance
by Ed McKernan on 08-11-2011 at 7:00 am
Categories: FPGA, Xilinx

28nm FPGAs are finally hitting the market and the next round in the battle between Altera and Xilinx is heating up. At 40nm, Altera beat Xilinx out the door by a year and as a consequence won a lot of new sockets in the high end Communications market. In the past year, Altera has closed the revenue and market share gap with Xilinx. This new round at 28nm looks to be much closer. However, the winner of the contest may come down to whom has the better eye – as in eye diagram.

Previously, I was a co-founder of Cswitch, a packet based FPGA startup that built the fastest FPGA in 90nm. It featured a new interconnect that could route 400Gb around the chip to be manipulated in special packet processing engines. It was an awesome chip that was suitable for 40G and 100G routers that would normally require 2 or 3 high end FPGAs. We were going after the 45% of the FPGA market tied to high $$$ wired and wireless communications. Alas we ran out of money after samples were delivered but before production started.

In the old days it was all about the tools – whoever has the best tools wins. More recently IP is playing a huge factor in who wins sockets as the engineers are looking to get their design done quickly and accurately. However, as you go up in performance and capability, it is the speed, number and quality of the Serdes that determines if you are even in the game to begin with. We were running 40 Serdes at 6.3G+ at Cswitch – today Xilinx and Altera are running up to 28G to support 100G/400G designs – Amazingly Fast. Altera and Xilinx want to get out of the gates quickly because they are first with the fastest Serdes (beating Broadcom and the NPU vendors). The prototype revenue alone is large as chips sell for $6K, $8K or $10K each. But Cisco, Alcatel, Huawei, Juniper, and others are looking to get product out quick with the latest 100G and 400G routers and switches to show their customers and perhaps do field trials.

Lately Xilinx and Altera are out promoting their Serdes heavily to convince engineers that they are ready.

Here’s Altera’s 28G Serdes Demo:

http://www.altera.com/education/webcasts/videos/videos-industry-first-28gbps-fpga.html?contactID=177581473&gwkey=EGIRI8TNBL

Here’s the Xilinx Serdes 28G Demo:

http://www.xilinx.com/technology/roadmap/28g-serial-transceiver-technology.htm

I am not an expert on Serdes but I am sure a few of our readers are and would be willing to share their thoughts on whether Xilinx and Altera have nailed it at 28nm. Who has the better eye and the least jitter? Let us know.

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How Tektronix uses Hardware Configuration Management tools in an IC flow

How Tektronix uses Hardware Configuration Management tools in an IC flow
by Daniel Payne on 08-10-2011 at 5:49 pm
Categories: Cliosoft, EDA

Last Monday I sat down with Grego Sanguinetti in Beaverton, Oregon at the campus of Tektronix to hear about how they design their ICs using EDA tools from multiple vendors.


Continue reading “How Tektronix uses Hardware Configuration Management tools in an IC flow”

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Reducing SoC Power Consumption using Integrated Voltage Regulators

Reducing SoC Power Consumption using Integrated Voltage Regulators
by Daniel Nenni on 08-10-2011 at 5:00 pm
Categories: IP

Last month I had the pleasure of meeting Mr Wonyoung Kim, a PhD candidate from Harvard University. Like many candidates, Wonyoung is shopping his thesis for capital in hopes of starting a semiconductor IP company. Here is a brief summary of the technology, please provide appropriate feedback and let’s see if we can get him some seed money:
Continue reading “Reducing SoC Power Consumption using Integrated Voltage Regulators”

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Best EDA company for work life balance?

Best EDA company for work life balance?
by Daniel Payne on 08-10-2011 at 1:25 pm
Categories: EDA, Siemens EDA

What was the first EDA company name that came to your mind after reading that title?

At Forbes magazine they rated both Mentor Graphics and Synopsys in the top 25 best companies for work life balance.

That’s quite an honor for both Mentor and Synopsys so I can say that EDA dominated the list this year.

Here are some of the factors that give Mentor such an honor:

  • Corporate headquarters in Wilsonville, Oregon an affordable place to live (compared to Silicon Valley)
  • Five weeks of paid vacation per year (Flexible Time Off)
  • Medical benefits
  • Dental benefits
  • 401K plan with matching funds
  • Annual company picnic
  • Annual company party
  • Child care in Wilsonville from newborn thru Kindergarden
  • Gym with basketball court in Wilsonville
  • Perks for top employees (tickets to NBA, NHL, etc.)
  • Employee stock purchase plan with guaranteed 15% discount
  • Adoption program
  • Women can nurse their infants
  • Prepaid legal program

Here’s the list of the top 25 companies for work-life balance:
[LIST=1]

  • Nestle Purina PetCare
  • Mitre
  • SAS Institute
  • FactSet
  • United Space Alliance
  • Slalom Consulting
  • Facebook
  • Morningstar
  • Susquehanna International Group
  • Colgate-Palmolive
  • Mentor Graphics
  • Autodesk
  • Sheetz
  • Agilent Technologies
  • Turner Broadcasting
  • DuPont
  • Southwest Airlines
  • General Mills
  • Biogen Idec
  • Scottrade
  • Chevron
  • Synopsys
  • MTV Networks
  • Intuit
  • National Instruments
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    Yalta in EDA: but Synopsys ultra dominant in Interface IP territory…

    Yalta in EDA: but Synopsys ultra dominant in Interface IP territory…
    by Eric Esteve on 08-10-2011 at 10:32 am
    Categories: IP, Synopsys

    If Cadence is making money with large VIP port-folio, Synopsys has successfully deployed an acquisition strategy to build a large Design IP port-folio. Looking at these acquisitions will help understanding Synopsys positioning in the IP market. When they have started this acquisition campaign, back in 2002, their market share was a few % of a market weighting less than $1 Billion…

    The first acquisition was InSilicon in July 2002. Synopsys bought IP for interface standards such as USB, PCI, Ethernet, and 1394. This was their first step in the Interface, standard based, IP market and they keep playing in this segment, doing pretty well as they are now the undisputed leader as we will see further in this blog.

    Then they have acquired Cascade in October 2004. Cascade, was one of the very first companies involved in the new (at that time) PCI Express protocol. They plaid the game pretty well, their Controller IP being selected by the PCI-SIG as the reference system to be used for testing any new PCI Express system (IP, ASSP or board) during “plugfest”, in order to get the certification. Thus, CASCADE was were very well positioned to enjoy the first sales of PCIe IP, when you can charge for the license a price which is X3 or X4 that it will be a couple of years later! Even if Synopsys had already a design team developing a PCIe Controller (and PHY) IP, acquisition was a quick and efficient way to kill a dangerous competitor, and to jump start in this market with the positive image of an Innovator. At that time the PCI Express IP market, as reported by Gartner, was pretty small. Amazing to notice, three out the four companies ranked in the top 4, Rambus, ARM and Cadence have exited the market in the meantime (2007-2008). Rambus and ARM because it was not on line with their new business model. But Cadence came back in 2010 when they bought Denali, it’s too early to know what will be their success.

    In 2007, Synopsys was enjoying business growth –and good market share- in almost every segment of Interface IP: USB, PCIe, SATA, except Memory Controller (DDRn). This market segment was strongly dominated by Rambus and Denali, which make sense as both companies where involved for long time in development around DRAM. As the ASIC market was moving to a SoC market (ASIC + embedded core), the need to integrate a Memory Controller to interface with external DRAM, in a more and more complex manner, was pushing the DDRn Controller IP sales. Once again, Synopsys decided for the faster and easier (providing you have deep pocket) way: they bought Mosaid in July 2007 and get access to the DDRn Controller IP market, which was not so big at that time:

    In 2009 they were doing well in every segment of the Interface IP market, so the acquisition of the mixed-signal IP division of MIPS (in fact Chipidea bought in August 2007 for $147 million in cash!) in May 2009 for a mere $22 million was an opportunistic move. First, it brings a large port-folio of mixed signal IP (ADC, DAC and many more), allowing Synopsys to expand the penetration in the IP market, in a segment they have ignored so far. It was also a way to definitely kill any competition in the USB IP market, where they enjoyed already more than 60% market share and ChipIdea/MIPS 26%…

    Also to notice, the fact that Chipidea was involved in two recent if not emerging protocols: HDMI and MIPI, even if this was not the reason for buying. This acquisition was just the kind of opportunity you can’t miss, and the reason why MIPS accept such a discounted price had to do with the recession, but also with the fact they didn’t succeed in running a mixed signal IP product line, where every design-in is almost a redesign, completely at the opposite with processor core.

    So you could think that it was enough acquisitions. But the next important move on the chessboard came from cadence: they acquired Denali for $315M in May 2010! I am sure (even if I share no secret as I don’t really know it by fact) that Synopsys has to do with this pretty high price (a x7 multiple of Denali revenue), and that they have pushed up the bidding. Nevertheless, Denali was doing very well with DDRn Controller IP, and many analysts propose predictions above $100M for this IP segment. If you look for a way to expand your business by going in a place where you are not (Memory compilers and Libraries), and consolidate your share in DDRn Controller IP, then Virage Logic looks to be the right acquisition to do, and a smart way to answer to Cadence acquisition of Denali, is’n it? That was the last acquisition made by Synopsys, in June 2010. When you look at the DDRn Controller IP market figures for 2009, and when you know that the target was $10M for Virage Logic for 2010, you better understand it, even if adding a $40M to $50M yearly revenue coming from Memory Compilers and Libraries was also part of the equation, but the expected growth for these segments is almost null:

    So, acquisition after acquisition, Synopsys has built a wide port-folio including:

    and they have a dominant position in each product line. They have also acquired ARCprocessor core product line (through Virage Logic), and they clearly have a weak position here. Moreover, does Synopsys really want to compete with ARM core’s business? I am not sure, but we will see what will happen in the future…

    Eric Estevefrom IPnest(a lot more about Interface IP here)

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    Speeding Verification of FPGA Prototype Boards

    Speeding Verification of FPGA Prototype Boards
    by Paul McLellan on 08-09-2011 at 5:42 pm
    Categories: Uncategorized

    It is no secret that SoC designs continue to increase in complexity and time-to-market windows are shrinking. While there is room for debate on just how big a fraction of SoC design effort goes on verification, there is no debating that it is a large part of the total. Simulation is increasingly too slow, especially when software has to be verified against the hardware. In some areas, formal techniques can be attractive but they are not universally applicable. One attractive approach is to use FPGAs to build a prototype of all or part of the SoC use this for verification. However, one big challenge is that synthesis, place and route for an SoC-sized FPGA can take as long as a day. It is impossible to observe every signal in a large SoC and so the SoC must be re-synthesized each time that a change is required in which signals need to be kept track of. Full re-creation of all the layout each time a change is made in the choice of signals is too slow. ProtoLink Probe Visualizer is a new approach to the problem. By understanding the placement and routing within the FPGA it is possible to make changes incrementally and almost instantaneously. With the addition of an interface containing probe memory, the data that it is possible to collect goes from 10s of signals for limited cycles, with a one day turnaround on changes to the signal list, to thousands of signals for millions of cycles, with a few minutes to update the list. The whitepaper is here.

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    Smartphones shipments, Sky is the limit…

    Smartphones shipments, Sky is the limit…
    by Eric Esteve on 08-08-2011 at 8:50 am
    Categories: Arm, Imagination Technologies, IP

    …or a global recession, but that’s not the purpose of this blog. As everybody knows, Apple is designing and selling smartphones, only. Does it mean that only smartphones are generating profit in the mobile industry? As we have seen recently in Semiwiki, Apple makes 2/3 of profit of entire mobile industry.

    Let’s have a look (below) at the complete picture of Phone revenue (yellow), profit (red), smartphone market share (green) and phone share (blue) for:

    • RIM, Apple, HTC
    • LG, Samsung
    • Sony-Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola

    The first remark is that profit curve is almost duplicating the smartphone share curve. Moreover, when the company does not market smartphones (LG or Sony-Ericsson or Motorola) the profit curve is flat… equal to zero! Nokia is an exception, as they used to have the largest smartphone market share, now declining, and their profit are impacted by the company overall strategy in the mobile phone industry (where they still have the largest share).


    Click on the picture to see it larger, if you still can’t see enough, go here

    This simply means that the current profit, and the future success for the handset manufacturers is intimately linked to their implication in the smartphone, just like if the largest part (75% of the shipments), feature phones and entry phone, did not count at all… at least in term of profit.

    I have spent some time to survey MIPItechnology, and so far MIPI has been only used in the smartphone, so I had to look carefully at this handset segment. When I started the survey back in September 2010, the available figures for 2009 was 173 million smartphone. At the beginning of 2011, we had access to the 2010 figure: 304 million units! 75% year to year growth on such a market, where you count by hundred millions, it is something we never saw before in the electronic industry… That push me to build the forecast for the next five years, I share with you today:

    Interesting, but what is the impact on our industry, SC (and EDA, Foundry and IP)?
    Like the PC can be determined by the processor it integrates, smartphone can be characterized by the Application Processor it uses. If you have a look at OMAP5, you can see that it integrates two processor cores (Cortex M4 from ARM), plus a graphic processor core (SGX544 from Imagination technologies), an audio processor, a DSP core, tons of Interface IP (USB2, USB 3.0, MIPI CSI, DSI, DigRF and LLI, SATA, LPDDRn and many more) as well as IP functions for memories, internal interconnect and many more. Such a SoC is also a challenge for EDA tools (you have to deal with a lot of clock domains and be able to manage the power down states for all the functions), has to be processed on the latest technology nodes – from foundry or IDM – hopefully by dozen of million units when the SoC is successful. To summarize, Application processor is at the technology edge, both for EDA and manufacturing, requires building real partnership with IP vendors… and are sold at a small fraction of a CPU ASP: say $15 to $25. But more than 400 million will be sold this year, which is more than the overall number of CPU sold in PC segment.

    As this market is served by a dozen of companies (Qualcomm Inc., Texas Instruments Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Marvell Technology Group Inc., and Nvidia Corp., ranked as the top five, respectively, of sellers of smartphone applications processors in the first quarter, according to a new report by Strategy Analytics and others, including the yet to be known Chinese start-up), the direct sales impact for IP and EDA should be –mathematically- higher than for the single two AMD and Intel. Especially if you take into account the time to market impact, forcing the companies involved into Application Processor design to outsource as many IP as it make sense. I am far to minimize their strengths when saying their design know how is first based on “IP integration” and “design for low power”. If it was so easy to do, Intel would now dominates this market too… which is not the case!

    Another forecast is worth to look at, made by ABI research for the total Application processor market evolution up to 2016:

    If in Q2 2011 Apple has made 2/3 of the profit for the entire mobile industry, shipping 20 million smartphones out of a market of slightly more than 100 million in Q2, we can say that most of the profit in the handset industry are coming from smartphone, even if they only represent 28% of the handset. This is only the beginning of the story, as the smartphone shipments has grown last year (2010) by 70%, for a 20% share of the handset market, and will continue to grow during the next five years with a 26% CAGR. This means that in 2016, we can expect just less than 900 million smartphone to reach the market, or, in other words, almost half handset will be smartphone at that date. This will generate a market for Application processor growing at the same rate, in units, and a bit less in value, due to the price erosion. There will be a direct impact on EDA and IP sales, as these SoC are ever more challenging and complex to design and the mobile industry demand in Time to Market impose to outsource ever and ever more IP.

    Eric Esteve from IPnest

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    Samsung to Acquire AMD?

    Samsung to Acquire AMD?
    by Daniel Nenni on 08-07-2011 at 4:00 pm
    Categories: General


    Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of AMD, I buy AMD based products whenever possible to prevent an innovation stifling Intel monopoly. Unfortunately Silicon Valley coffee house conversations continue to paint a bleak picture for AMD, even with a recent stock surge on better than expected revenue guidance for the rest of 2011. I’m sure Wall Street coffee house conversations do not track with ours and here’s why:

    Intel has always been the semiconductor manufacturing technology leader but throughout the years AMD was very clever and kept pace. Unfortunately AMD went fabless last year and as a result will not be able to compete in the discrete microprocessor market (my opinion). AMD also has no mobile strategy so where will they be when tablets and phones replace laptops?

    Today AMD is in production at 32nm SOI with the Ex AMD fab in Dresden which is very competitive with the current Intel 32nm HKMG process. Future AMD microprocessor generations however will use commercially available foundry processes which track a process node or two BEHIND Intel. You should also know that microprocessor manufacturing is unique and may not 100% adapt to a more generic foundry process.

    Source: TechConnect

    Mid next year AMD will have CPU/GPUs on 28nm HKMG processes but will they be price/performance competitive with the Intel 22nm Tri-Gate technology? The answer is probably NO, not in the discrete microprocessor market. Intel will also be the first to 450mm manufacturing which will bring a dramatic costs savings versus mainstream 300mm semiconductor manufacturing.

    A glaring non-compete example is gross margins. How can AMD again achieve the 50%+ margin average required to compete profitably against Intel? AMD’s gross margins fell below 40% in 2008 and have yet to recover. As an example, take the most recent AMD Wafer Supply Agreement Amendment. A detailed analysis of this agreement is a blog in itself, especially with all of the redacted areas. Skip down to pages 8, 9, and 10 where the financial details are and tell me how AMD will even hit 40% gross margins in 2012. If you disagree let me know in the comment section and we can discuss in more detail.

    To make a long blog short, AMD needs an exit strategy to be competitive with the Intel CPU dynasty. My first choice would be ATIC taking AMD private and integrating it with GlobalFoundries. Second choice would be for Samsung to buy AMD. Either way there would be a viable competitor to Intel. Or not, but it would certainly be fun to watch!

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m not bashing ANYBODY here, I do this blog out of love. The SemiWiki mission statement is “For the greater good of the semiconductor design ecosystem”. I admire ATIC and what they have done for the semiconductor industry, I respect the accomplishments of AMD, and I’m the #1 fan of GlobalFoundries. But let’s be honest, Intel is a force to be reckoned with and we had all be better prepared for the coming war of microprocessors!

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