category: Editor’s Note

category: IoT, Security & Automotive

New Terms, New Problems
By Ed Sperling - 20 Oct, 2011 - Comments: 0

At the distant forefront of research there is very little marketing. After all, what’s the point? Until recently, much of this stuff was theoretical physics, and products weren’t even a consideration. It wasn’t until the past decade when we could actually see atoms. We had to theorize them. And it wasn’t until the past few years when we actually began taking stacked die seriously. Bu... » read more

Finer Control, Same Ideas
By Ed Sperling - 22 Sep, 2011 - Comments: 0

Famed lawyer Clarence Darrow once said, “History repeats itself, and that’s one of the things wrong with history.” While that basic theme has been argued throughout the history of civilization—smart people are supposed to learn from other people’s mistakes, not just their own—there's an interesting twist when it comes system-level design. We are using the same technological appro... » read more

A Different Kind Of Design
By Ed Sperling - 16 Sep, 2011 - Comments: 0

Intel’s announcements at the Intel Developer Forum this week that it will be creating physically smaller packages that can run on far less energy raises some interesting questions about the future of all design. We’ve become accustomed to one-chip implementations, whether that’s a monolithic processor or an SoC with lots of processors. In the future, though, there may be multiple chips, a... » read more

Business First
By Ed Sperling - 19 Aug, 2011 - Comments: 0

The move to stacked die poses some interesting technology challenges and promises significant technology benefits, but the real driver is business—and for this market to work, it has to continue being about business. In the past it was technology first, business last. We are now at the stage where it is business first, technology last. Re-use of entire die as subystems, better use of desig... » read more

Stacks And Stacks
By Ed Sperling - 28 Jul, 2011 - Comments: 0

Talking about stacked die is sort of like describing Africa as a country. First of all, it’s wrong—despite some politicians’ statements to the contrary. And second, lumping everything together under a single heading probably adds more confusion than clarity. There are several ways to approach this semantics problem. One is by function. Memory on memory, memory on logic, and logic on l... » read more

The Big Picture
By Ed Sperling - 22 Jul, 2011 - Comments: 0

Business is booming for the makers of processors. Intel posted its five consecutive record quarter, AMD turned a profit, Tensilica shipped its billionth DSP, ARM and MIPS are both reporting strong earnings. So what’s changed? There are several distinct trends driving this upbeat mood: The replacement cycle. After years of putting off purchases through a prolonged and deep downturn, com... » read more

Standards Wanted
By Ed Sperling - 30 Jun, 2011 - Comments: 0

Over the next few years, as the industry moves to stacked die of various sorts—2.5D, 3D, system-in-package, package-on-package, and probably some others we haven’t considered yet—there will be a major need for standards. We will need standards for placement, interconnects, power leakage, characterization of IP and a slew of other things we haven’t even thought about yet. Most compani... » read more

What’s A Subsystem?
By Ed Sperling - 24 Jun, 2011 - Comments: 0

The interchangeability of IP has proved to be a myth. While large companies have been able to tap into their internally developed IP quite successfully, the ability to use commercially available IP has proved to be limited—particularly outside of the standard IP world. That will change, but not in the way most of the small IP companies actually expected. While the barrier to entry for deve... » read more

Phased Loops
By Ed Sperling - 17 Jun, 2011 - Comments: 0

One thing that became clear at DAC this year is that the next big collision won’t be the technology itself. It will be the business infrastructure that supports the technology. The integration of IP, software, subsystems, and ultimately entire die and packages will have a major impact on the chip industry on all levels. For some companies it will be good. For others it will be bad. But for... » read more

Redefining ‘Good Enough’
By Ed Sperling - 31 May, 2011 - Comments: 0

The old definition of a good chip was that it could be manufactured with reasonable yield, it was functionally solid, and it performed at least as well as the market demanded. That definition is changing, however. There will always be a difference between ‘good’ and ‘good enough.’ We all want to own the ‘good’ chips in our electronic devices. But what’s noteworthy are the chang... » read more

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