category: Editor’s Note

category: IoT, Security & Automotive

Business Must Go On
By Ed Sperling - 12 Feb, 2009 - Comments: 0

Intel’s decision to invest $7 billion in 32nm fabs is possibly the best example yet that in spite of a drop in projected sales, technology companies need to invest in the future. We live in a cyclical business, and cycles begin and end.   Intel is better positioned than most semiconductor companies. It has the largest R&D budget—it’s hard to think of IBM as a chip company, even t... » read more

Break Out The Pocket Dictionary
By Ed Sperling - 05 Feb, 2009 - Comments: 0

Convergence and complexity at the design level are creating communications problems, something that became particularly evident during a couple panels at DesignCon this week. In one panel, which was focused on design for manufacturing, the crux of the problem was trust and expertise. On the trust side, the issues that have been talked about for years of foundries sharing data with fabless co... » read more

What’s Next In ESL?
By Ed Sperling - 21 Jan, 2009 - Comments: 0

The easy stuff is over, not that anything was ever really easy in the semiconductor world. But getting the most from a chip in terms of lowering power and boosting performance will no longer be a function of the silicon alone.   Most software engineering has been done with existing languages and operating systems, but the well-known versions are aimed at general-purpose computing. They’r... » read more

Who’s Out, Who’s In
By Ed Sperling - 21 Jan, 2009 - Comments: 0

The EDA world is either doing better than most segments of the economy or coming apart at the seams, depending upon your perspective and your definition of exactly what an EDA company is. But at least one trend seems clear: As we push into the world of system-level design from chip design and SoCs instead of ASICs, the high-level trend is broader companies with more complete integrated packag... » read more

Difficult vs. Differentiating
By Ed Sperling - 15 Jan, 2009 - Comments: 0

“Just because it’s difficult to do doesn’t mean it’s a differentiator.”   That succinct and rather meaty statement belongs to Aart de Geus at Synopsys, but most executives in the chip world have been spouting these kinds of revelations for months. There’s a fundamental shift underway, which is evolving from focusing on a single chip to seeing that chip as part of a system. The ... » read more

Where Is The Real Value?
By Ed Sperling - 08 Jan, 2009 - Comments: 0

If customers aren’t willing to pay for EDA or ESL tools, then something is clearly missing from the equation. It’s not that there isn’t value in the tools. Clearly, you can’t get the job of creating a system on chip done without them. But the real value has shifted.   These shifts have occurred at various points throughout the history of semiconductors. The big question is whether ... » read more

Predictions for 2009
By Ed Sperling - 17 Dec, 2008 - Comments: 0

Once a year editors take on the job of setting the following year’s agenda and mapping significant changes before they happen. The nice thing is that by the time the year is over, most readers don’t remember what we said. Frequently, even we don’t remember what we said, but that’s beside the point.   Here are a half-dozen predictions for the upcoming year, reflecting changes in bot... » read more

What Happens When Ecosystems Stumble?
By Ed Sperling - 05 Dec, 2008 - Comments: 0

Economics and design generally are one step removed from each other, but the compression effect of the current design process, combined with extremely low stock prices and a shortage of hard cash are pushing these areas together like never before.   This is new ground, so the ultimate result is somewhat speculative. But given all the factors at play, it appears this downturn coupled with c... » read more

Vectors of Change
By Ed Sperling - 03 Dec, 2008 - Comments: 0

Downturns have a way of changing things forever—sort of like the earthquake of 1812, which permanently re-routed the Mississippi River in three places. And while the common thinking is that things will go back to where they were before, they never do.   For one thing, the trend isn’t just smaller, faster, cheaper. It’s also shorter development cycles. Incredibly complex chips now tak... » read more

What’s That Echo?
By Ed Sperling - 20 Nov, 2008 - Comments: 0

Multicore chips are one piece of the solution to creating chips at advanced process nodes, but they aren’t the whole solution. Don’t take my word for it. The powers that be—very large chip makers with big development budgets—are fretting over the future of multicore programming. The question being whispered is, ‘If it doesn’t work, what then?’ That’s a many-billion-dollar ‘i... » read more

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