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Changing The IP Supplier Paradigm: Part 2


Semiconductor Engineering sat down with Rich Wawrzyniak, senior market analyst for ASIC and SoC at Semico Research; John Koeter, vice president of marketing for the Solutions Group at [getentity id="22035" e_name="Synopsys"]; Mike Gianfagna, vice president of marketing for [getentity id="22242" e_name="eSilicon"]; Peter McGuinness, director of technology marketing at [getentity id="22709" e_nam... » read more

Fixing Functional Coverage


Constrained random test pattern generation entered the scene a couple of decades ago as a better way to spend time and resources for the creation of stimulus. Stimulus definition had become an arduous task—defining the patterns necessary to exercise designs of increasing size. It was successfully argued that spending time writing models instead of creating stimulus and having a computer p... » read more

Looking For The Next Big Thing


With [getkc id="74" comment="Moore's Law"] slowing down or coming to an end, finding the next big thing may be very different than it was in the past. We cannot assume that more of the same will be a winner. The semiconductor industry has been blessed with two new product categories that have catapulted it through what should have been a very difficult period with barely a scratch. Those techno... » read more

EDA Suffering Funding Crisis


The EDA industry has been built on venture funding ever since its inception in the early eighties and it is no secret that the big three have relied on a steady stream of startup companies to provide some of the new ideas, to test out new technologies and expand the industry. While there is a lot of research and development that goes on inside the large companies, most of this is related to ... » read more

When Will 2.5D Cut Costs?


There is a constant drive to reduce costs within the semiconductor industry and, up until now, [getkc id="74" comment="Moore's Law"] provided an easy path to enable this. By adopting each smaller node, transistors were cheaper, but that is no longer the case, as explained in a recent article. The industry will need to find new technologies to make this happen and some people are looking towards... » read more

Changing The IP Supplier Paradigm


Just a few years ago, the [getkc id="43" comment="Intellectual Property"] (IP) business consisted of small blocks being sold by small companies and an almost over the wall delivery mechanism. The industry quickly realized the problems with this supply chain and the IP business went through very rapid change. At the same time, the average size of the IP blocks has increased and today, what we th... » read more

New Winners And Losers


During DAC 2013, Robert Colwell of DARPA said he was attempting to prepare the U.S. Dept. of Defense for what he believes is the cataclysm caused by the end of [getkc id="74" comment="Moore's Law"]. He asked the question, “What happens when we don’t have a new technology that doubles the number of transistors every couple of years?” Colwell believes that power is the primary reason why... » read more

Reversing Course, With A Twist


Semiconductor Engineering is running an extended series of articles that examine the assertion that the end of Moore’s Law will have profound implications for the entire semiconductor, EDA and IP industries. Part one of this article, which focuses on the EDA industry, addressed the question about who was going to pay for future development of EDA tools for the latest production nodes. The ind... » read more

Solving A Problem In Reverse


It has been a while since I selected a [getkc id="16" comment="patent"] just because of the humorous side it presents. Today, I will remedy that and talk about a patent that would appear to solve exactly the opposite problem that most people have. It is related to the use of chopsticks. While I am fairly dexterous at using them these days, there was a time when the food would be cold before I h... » read more

After Moore’s Law: More With Less


In the decades when Moore’s Law went unquestioned, the industry was able to migrate to the next smaller node and receive access to more devices that could be used for increased functionality and additional integration. While less significant transistor-level power savings have been seen from the more recent nodes, as leakage currents have increased, the additional levels of integration have b... » read more

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