category: Editor’s Note

category: IoT, Security & Automotive

Apple’s Re-aggregation Anomaly
By Ed Sperling - 28 Jan, 2010 - Comments: 0

Apple’s new iPad is an interesting device not so much because of what it offers to consumers—that’s certainly interesting in its own right—but because of how Apple built the device and why. Apple has been scouring the market for seasoned semiconductor engineers of late. The process started two years ago when the company hired a team of former engineers from the late Digital Equipme... » read more

Journey To The Center Of The Ecosystem
By Ed Sperling - 14 Jan, 2010 - Comments: 0

From the outside it looks like business as usual, but the race for board seats on the GSA has become particularly competitive this year. GSA originally was created as an organization for fabless companies, but you wouldn’t know that looking at its membership roster. It has evolved into a who’s who of the entire semiconductor supply chain, including everyone from foundries like TSMC and... » read more

Start Your Engines
By Ed Sperling - 14 Jan, 2010 - Comments: 0

For all intents and purposes, the downturn appears to be over. Like the California drought, it takes time to refill the reservoirs, but at least the economic base level is rising. All of the leading indicators in the semiconductor market point upward and to the right. iSuppli reports that distributor inventories are below average, which is particularly interesting given that the electronic... » read more

The Bigger Picture
By Ed Sperling - 11 Dec, 2009 - Comments: 0

The pace of change in system-level design is no longer confined just to technology. It now hinges largely on whether enough engineers can make the leap from RTL or synthesis or verification or any other specialty to systems engineer. This is no small feat. It requires re-tooling and learning of modeling and other concepts that until now have been largely at the architectural level. It may ... » read more

5 Reasons For Change
By Ed Sperling - 04 Dec, 2009 - Comments: 0

One of the most intriguing trends to watch these days is in the area of diversification and differentiation. As we emerge from the worst downturn in the history of semiconductor design—in fact, the only time EDA has ever shown negative numbers other than accounting changes—companies are looking for new avenues of revenue growth that are significantly different than where they drew their r... » read more

With ESL, You Are Your Ecosystem
By Ed Sperling - 01 Dec, 2009 - Comments: 0

Where are the weak links in the ESL ecosystem?   That question isn’t idle speculation. With complexity in many SoC designs reaching well beyond the level of human comprehension—even beyond the capabilities of the most brilliant engineers or architects—chip developers on all levels need to know what can go wrong from both a technology and a business standpoint.   No company can dev... » read more

Compression Effect
By Ed Sperling - 19 Nov, 2009 - Comments: 0

For all the talk of restricted design and increasing complexity, it seems that what’s really happening is that restrictions are being lifted off one group and placed on another. This happens from time to time in system-level design, usually at an inflection point in the overall system development process or at the start of a new process node. For the past couple decades, much of the crea... » read more

Services To Render
By Ed Sperling - 17 Nov, 2009 - Comments: 0

Tools companies, value-chain producers and IP providers have fared pretty badly in the past when it comes to services. They’ve been paid for their products, but even software was considered a giveaway. And services were an extra that no one even considered charging or paying for, except in body-shop types of arrangements for hitting tapeout deadlines and last-minute debugging. That’s cha... » read more

Why Intel Is Settling With AMD
By Ed Sperling - 13 Nov, 2009 - Comments: 0

There’s more to the Intel-AMD settlement than meets the eye. While Intel will be paying out $1.2 billion to AMD as part of the settlement—and that’s a large chunk of money in anyone’s book—it’s a relatively small price to pay when it’s amortized over 10 years and can open the door to even bigger markets for Intel. And that’s just what this is, a down payment on the future. ... » read more

Where Do We Go Next?
By Ed Sperling - 06 Nov, 2009 - Comments: 0

Jim Hogan and Paul McLellan opened an interactive, thought-provoking discussion at ICCAD this week on how EDA needs to change to be successful in the year 2020. The conclusion of this well-known duo--Hogan, the VC, and McLellan, the blogger, in their current incarnations--pointed toward optimization and software signoff, given the amount of software that is now moving into designs and t... » read more

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