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Ann Mutschler

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Ann Mutschler is senior executive editor at Semiconductor Engineering.

Author's Latest Posts

Balancing Quality, Cost And Locale
By Ann Mutschler - 27 May, 2010 - Comments: 0

By Ann Steffora Mutschler As more features are packed into a single SoC there are simply more time-critical decisions to make. Instead of holding up one chip of a six-chip chipset, a delay or error on one chip can stop the whole parade. That explains why one of the most vibrant parts of the business at big EDA companies these days is standard IP, and why most of the other commercial IP make... » read more

Optimizing Physical IP For Applications And Processors
By Ann Mutschler - 13 May, 2010 - Comments: 0

What will the next challenges be for chip designers as the industry moves toward 28nm high-k metal gate manufacturing technology? One thing is for sure, power management may get even more painful without new innovations to handle the characteristics of 28nm. Optimization is definitely the approach that keeps creeping up as I talk with folks in the industry with ARM specifically mentioning ap... » read more

IP’s Ecosystem Race
By Ann Mutschler - 22 Apr, 2010 - Comments: 0

By Ann Steffora Mutschler As the semiconductor industry moves from older manufacturing nodes to newer ones what users want from IP providers is changing. So is the way IP providers are answering those needs. Mirroring the broader semiconductor industry’s recognition that it’s simply too expensive, too difficult and too time consuming to do everything alone—the very basis of the IP sec... » read more

Who’s Calling The Shots Now?
By Ann Mutschler - 22 Apr, 2010 - Comments: 0

By Ann Steffora Mutschler Determining who makes the decisions in semiconductor industry is not as easy as it sounds. There is not a straight line of responsibility in today’s market due to changing industry dynamics such as the shift from the IDM business model to the foundry model. “If you go back far enough, everyone had to manufacture their own chips. There was a substantial influenc... » read more

The GaN Plan
By Ann Mutschler - 08 Apr, 2010 - Comments: 0

By Ann Steffora Mutschler Given the need to control power in high-end market segments such as servers, notebooks, mobile handsets and wired communications equipment, the market for gallium nitride (GaN)-based chips is poised for explosive growth. Case in point: Server farms are using more and more electricity, and the cost of that power is getting to be a significant fraction of the operati... » read more

It’s All About Power
By Ann Mutschler - 08 Apr, 2010 - Comments: 0

In my last entry regarding IBM’s claim for new x86 technology for the datacenter, I mentioned I was trying to get an answer from IBM regarding details on the “silicon innovation” it used. That quest is ongoing, and I hope to find some actual technology, and not just marketing mumbo-jumbo at the heart of it. Keep checking back, I will give my report here. Just a few weeks after Big Blue... » read more

Emulation 2010
By Ann Mutschler - 25 Mar, 2010 - Comments: 0

By Ann Steffora Mutschler In an industry that was once fraught with patent infringement lawsuits, hostile takeovers and other exciting corporate warfare, the hardware-assisted emulation market has quieted down considerably. That doesn’t mean it has lost its luster, though. It still plays an integral, if not ever-increasing and expanding, role in the verification efforts of most semiconductor... » read more

New x86 Technology For The Datacenter?
By Ann Mutschler - 11 Mar, 2010 - Comments: 0

I wasn’t too surprised when IBM announced new servers early this month that they claim “break constraints of 30-year technology design,” since Big Blue is constantly releasing new products that they say are groundbreaking in one way or another. Reading deeper into the news, IBM is using new semiconductor technology at the heart of its new eX5 servers that it said took its engineering t... » read more

Make vs. Buy
By Ann Mutschler - 25 Feb, 2010 - Comments: 0

By Ann Steffora Mutschler The age-old question of whether to make or buy is time immemorial, and is particularly true for the cyclical semiconductor industry. At the end of the day, the answer comes down to how the decision maker feels about having or losing control. Fifteen years ago, whether to make or buy something—be it the design, libraries, memory, implementation, verification, te... » read more

Rethinking Test
By Ann Mutschler - 11 Feb, 2010 - Comments: 0

By Ann Steffora Mutschler The responsibility of semiconductor test has long sat solely with the test engineer as the chip designer focused on the functionality of the device. However, particularly in low-power designs, when the device is being tested, much higher power levels are applied than normal functional operation – sometimes causing the device to fail. This ‘false failure’ c... » read more

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