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

Ticket to Ride


Welcome to the newly named eSilicon blog. We’ll discuss topics of general interest related to the semiconductor industry here. Our blog title does however take us off the hook to have complete, rational and defensible points of view at all times. Let’s begin… Do you like a roller coaster ride? Some do and some, well, get sick at the thought. I’m here to tell you that if you’re invo... » read more

How To Speed Up Verification


Software requirements have changed the tapeout process in today’s SoCs so much that it isn’t uncommon to hear a design can’t be released because Android hasn’t booted. “It’s one of those things where you really understand that what used to be classic hardware verification that said ‘the chip is done’ is heavily impacted by if it actually does software things,” noted Frank S... » read more

A Connected Resolution


Let me first start off with wishing everyone a belated but great New Year! I wish everyone good health and a lot of friendship. And hopefully all those software driven devices around you will make your life better. At least that is the goal and the promise from the industry. I’m a big believer in the benefits of a “connected” future. The Internet of Things really has the potential to i... » read more

10 Years Later—Will Project Delays Stop Faster Technology Innovation?


Every January I enjoy looking back 10 years to learn from the past, consider implications for the future, and have fun picking the worst prediction that did not come true. This year I even can combine my annual trip to the garage where I keep some January issues of IEEE Spectrum with reviewing my own blogging. Five years ago in 2009, I did my first “10-year-lookback” that I called “Bac... » read more

Localized, System-Level Protocol Checks and Coverage Closure Using Veloce


Broadcom recently developed a unified, scalable, verification methodology based on the Veloce emulation platform. In order to test this new environment, they ran a test case, which proved that they can take assertions, compile them into Veloce, and verify that they fire accurately. In so doing, they were able to provide proof of concept for their primary goal: the creation of an internal flow t... » read more

Blog Review: Jan. 29


ARM’s Ellie Stone returns from the Mobile Games Forum in London with some insights about where the future competition will come from. No. 4 on her list is the big surprise. Cadence’s Brian Fuller has unearthed an old black & white AT&T video that makes you wonder how they created wire. So that’s what happens when you heat a semiconductor with a Bunsen burner. What’s the real val... » read more

Rapid Distortion Analysis For Intercept Point Calculations


Distortion effects have an important impact on the performance of RF circuits, including mixers, low-noise amplifiers (LNAs) and power amplifiers (PAs). At high frequencies, particularly with narrowband circuits, it is common to characterize the distortion produced by circuit nonlinearities in terms of an intercept point (IPn). Under small signal input conditions, from where intercept points ar... » read more

Virtual Prototypes For Early Software Development


This white paper examines tthe challenges of developing some of the hardware-dependent software layers - namely boot ROM code, OS bring-up, driver development - used in fast-evolving mobile devices and how to use virtual prototypes to: Start developing software far in advance of hardware availability Break the gating dependencies between layers in the software stack to enable parallelized... » read more

System Bits: Jan. 28


Collaborative software for linking performance, cost Researchers from Georgia Tech have created a web-based tool that lets physically-separated participants collaborate on model-based systems engineering projects. Referred to as the Framework for Assessing Cost and Technology (FACT), the program utilizes open-source software components to allow users to visualize a system's potential expens... » read more

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