The Week In Review: Design/IoT


Intel completed its $16.7 billion acquisition of Altera this week. Check out our analysis of why this may be the most important M&A deal of 2015 for the semiconductor industry, and the challenges faced in making it work. NXP uncorked its latest multi-protocol NFC frontend, incorporating ISO/IEC 15693, Felica, MIFARE and ISO/IEC 14443A/B. According to NXP, it delivers four times more outp... » read more

Behind The Intel-Altera Deal


Intel completed its $16.7 billion acquisition of Altera this week, wrapping up what is arguably the semiconductor industry's most important M&A transaction of 2015. Time and numbers will tell exactly how important. There are two big challenges to making this deal work. One involves a big shift in direction away from simply shrinking features to include new architectures and packaging approac... » read more

Blog Review: Dec. 30


It's been a quiet week on the blog front. If you're looking for a bit of downtime while you enjoy the New Year, we present thoughts on what's happened this year and what may be to come from last week's System-Level Design newsletter: Editor in Chief Ed Sperling finds acquisitions and the leading edge of design defined 2015, but other changes are ahead. Technology Editor Brian Bailey obser... » read more

System Bits: Dec. 29


Optoelectronics built using existing manufacturing Using only processes found in existing microchip fabrication facilities, researchers at MIT, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Colorado have produced a working optoelectronic microprocessor that computes electronically but uses light to move information. The researchers reminded that optical communications prom... » read more

Defining Sufficient Coverage


Semiconductor engineering sat down to discuss the definition of sufficiency of coverage as a part of verification closure with Harry Foster, chief scientist at [getentity id="22017" e_name="Mentor Graphics"]; Willard Tu, director of embedded segment marketing for [getentity id="22186" comment="ARM"]; Larry Vivolo was, at the time of this roundtable, senior director of product marketing for [get... » read more

The Week In Review: Design/IoT


Acquisitions Synopsys acquired Australia's Goanna Software, a security company focused on static code analysis tools for improving code quality. Synopsys said the acquisition is part of its strategy to improve software sign-off, but the acquisition also expands Synopsys' presence in Australia and the Asia/Pacific region. Terms of the deal were not made public. Synopsys has been steadily build... » read more

Blog Review: Dec. 24


Jeff Ravencraft, the President and COO of USB-IF, sat down for a video interview with Cadence's Jacek Duda to discuss the the role of the organization and what's in the works for USB. Check out the second part, too. Have all the avenues been exhausted in the search for greater layout productivity? Synopsys' Graham Etchells sees no revolutionary technology in the area since CALMA, but highlig... » read more

System Bits: Dec. 23


Building MEMS at one-hundredth the cost The microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) market was $12 billion business in 2014, dominated by a handful of devices, such as accelerometers that reorient the screens of most smartphones. However, researchers at MIT pointed out that potentially useful MEMS have languished in development because they don’t have markets large enough to justify the initia... » read more

Bridging Hardware And Software


Since the advent of embedded systems there has been a struggle between hardware engineers trying to understand the mindset of their software counterparts, and vice versa. That struggle is alive and well today—and it's costing everyone money. This divide is rife with passion, territoriality and misunderstanding. It has delayed tapeouts, created errors and inefficiencies that take time and e... » read more

Verification Grows Up


Semiconductor Engineering sat down with a group of verification experts to see how much progress has been made in solving issues associated with the profession. Panelists included Mike Baird, president of Willamette HDL; Jin Zhang, VP marketing and customer relations for [getentity id="22147" comment="Oski Technology"], and Lauro Rizzatti, a marketing consultant and previously the general manag... » read more

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