Frank Ferro

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Frank Ferro is group director for product management at Cadence.

Author's Latest Posts

The Network Is The SoC…
By Frank Ferro - 19 Dec, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Frank Ferro SoC design continues to challenge semiconductor and system companies in their pursuit to create a better user experience for a wide range of products. Given this, I was pleasantly surprised to see that two of the “Ten technologies that will change the world in 2013,” according to EETimes (December 2012 issue) were SoC-related. One is virtual SoC prototypes and the other i... » read more

Coherently Incoherent: Dealing With Complexity
By Frank Ferro - 25 Oct, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Frank Ferro I was a bit frustrated this weekend after installing a digital light timer—yes a light timer. As an engineer this should be no big deal, and for the most part, I installed it without shocking myself or other major problems. This timer had all the bells and whistles. It knows about time zones, adjusts daily for dawn and dusk. It even adjusts for daylight savings time. The probl... » read more

You Get What You Want
By Frank Ferro - 27 Sep, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Frank Ferro Now that the iPhone 5 hype is quieting down, the discussion has turned to the A6 chip that is powering this must-have device. There is much speculation on what is inside the A6 processor. Is it a dual-core A15 or a custom architecture? Is it a ‘big.LITTLE’ architecture? What speed are cores running at—1.2GHz? Others argue that the graphics processor is of equal importance ... » read more

Verify This
By Frank Ferro - 23 Aug, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Frank Ferro Verify this? No, New Jersey in me is not coming out. This is not a pejorative; it is simply a request and a question. It is a request by SoC designers to the verification team. It is also the verification’s team response when they realize the enormity of the task: “You want me to verify this?” As I continue the discussion on the use of System IP for SoC design, one of ... » read more

The Power Of Dark Silicon
By Frank Ferro - 26 Jul, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Frank Ferro Even though the cloud is permeating everything we do today, I was recently reminded that it's even omnipresent far outside the walls of tech. With all the TV ads, as well as our most prominent airports and U.S. highways peppered with cloud-based billboards, even our parents know how to properly use cloud in sentence today. But to hear about the cloud from the pulpit at church on... » read more

IP That Makes IP Work
By Frank Ferro - 28 Jun, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Frank Ferro Just how important are IP subsystems to complex SoC designs? It appears much more than you may have thought just a few months ago. With the emergence of SoCs that now support the cloud computing revolution and every major cloud-connected device, SoC complexity is increasing at a dizzying pace. We commonly now see increasing number of IP cores, cores from multiple sources, di... » read more

Clearing Up Cloud-Based SoCs
By Frank Ferro - 24 May, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Frank Ferro With each passing month, the cloud is taking the semiconductor market by storm—just like it did in the enterprise years ago. Take nVidia’s recent Kepler GPU announcement for cloud computing. This device provides low-latency access to the cloud for gaming, giving gamers performance and access to the latest content without being tied to a game console. Another example is Appli... » read more

A Cloud-Connected World
By Frank Ferro - 26 Apr, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Frank Ferro If you're paying attention and/or using a smart phone every day (and perhaps it's safer to assume the latter) the ‘cloud’ is no longer a buzzword. The cloud has become grounded in our daily reality. How’s that for a paradox and a visual? But at a minimum, it has become more like a punch line in every consumer's day—without even thinking about it. Projections show that... » read more

Speed Matters
By Frank Ferro - 22 Mar, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Frank Ferro Speed is the shiny object, the undisputed premium, and in many ways, the ultimate carrot with customers when designing advanced SoCs. There are a few moments when the conversation temporarily shifts to area, or some special feature, but we always come back to speed, or more specifically, frequency. This is without a doubt the first and most important requirement ‘gate’ to pa... » read more

Mobile Mania Redux
By Frank Ferro - 23 Feb, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Frank Ferro As I prepare to hit Barcelona for Mobile World Congress, I get the feeling that this will be a ‘do-over’ of last month’s CES, only without all the HD and 3D TVs. Although wireless infrastructure and applications are a big part of MWC, at the device level, tablets and smartphones will continue to dominate all the discussions. Déjà vu, anyone? Yet the reality is we are in ... » read more

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