Author's Latest Posts


3 Challenges Of Delivering Configurable Semiconductor IP


Over time, commercial IP products have morphed from single function blocks to 100% configurable IPs where no two instances are the same. In this article I point out the challenges of creating configurable IP, and the best-known practices to address them. IP Configurability Spectrum Throughout the history of chip design, there has been a spectrum of configurability that has been built into i... » read more

SoC Assembly And IP Reuse


I had the honor and opportunity to present at the 2014 Electronic Design Process Symposium in Monterey last Friday. This annual workshop is run by the IEEE Computer Society of Silicon Valley and the IEEE Council on Electronic Design Automation. There were more than 30 participants each day. Most of them very experienced people with lots of technical and business responsibilities. It was ... » read more

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 And The Progress of Technology


Cable news has been continuously deluging us with lots of speculation regarding the fate of Malaysia Airlines flight 370. Most of us are drowning in a sea of jargon as TV talking heads express incredulity that, “with all our modern technology, a plane disappeared…” Although the disappearance of flight MH370 is a terrible tragedy, I see the larger context of our progress in commercial a... » read more

Time to mend the EE / CS divide


There’s been a lot of news out the last few weeks about the future of our industry, and although these news flashes may seem unrelated, they are quite correlated. First, there was the disturbing news in Mark LaPedus’ article here on Semiconductor Engineering, “EUV Suffers New Setback,” portending a rough ride for the commercialization of EUV lithography. EUV will be needed to create ... » read more

Internet Of Things Hype: The Sound And The Fury


“It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” —William Shakespeare, Macbeth Bill was referring to life in the above quote, but he may as well have been referring to the hype surrounding the Internet of Things (IoT) and how it is going to create a new era of innovation in the semiconductor industry. I’m skeptical, and I will tell you why. We’ve bee... » read more

Industry-Shaking Changes Ahead


I’ve been closely following the increasing power of system OEMs (such as Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft) over players in the semiconductor industry with an eye toward understanding how this will affect others in the semi value chain. However, I haven’t paid as much attention to the root causes of why these changes are occurring. McKinsey & Company has provided our industry food f... » read more

Gartner Recommends Network-on-Chip (NoC) Technology For SoC Design


In their latest Hype Cycle for Semiconductors and Electronics Technologies report, Gartner Research has taken the bold step of recommending that all enterprises involved in advanced SoC design should seriously evaluate network-on-chip (NoC) technology based interconnect fabric IP: “The technology has continued to receive a good amount of publicity along with continued adoption by leading S... » read more

There’s A New Paradigm In Town


I recently wrote an article in the October 9th issue of EETimes that appears to have rattled the semiconductor industry a bit. Entitled “Wake Up, Semi Industry: System OEMs Might Not Need You,” the article conveyed the fact that many system-level OEMs now have the capability — and desire — to develop their own application-specific chips. This may be news to many. But a simple review... » read more

What Can Go Wrong?


It’s no surprise that most corporate system-on-chip (SoC) design teams are dispersed throughout the world, with different functional teams often located in different countries and continents. For example, we have many customers whose SoC architecture is defined in the United States, but subsystems such as graphics and signal processing are designed elsewhere. Companies choose this approach in... » read more

The Single Platform Strategy


By Kurt Shuler For semiconductor companies in high-volume or emerging growth markets, the days of using multiple platforms to address different segments are over. The new era of using a single platform to address several different segments is rapidly taking hold. Adding fuel to this transition is the greater flexibility that design teams have to spin derivatives of those single platforms. T... » read more

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