category: The Early Edition

category: IoT, Security & Automotive

The IC Supply Chain: The Day After Tomorrow
By Atrenta - 12 Sep, 2013 - Comments: 0

Last month, I wrote about the implications of hacking in a connected world. Judgment Day from the Terminator franchise came to mind. All that paranoia is still “out there” a bit, I admit. Let’s bring it down to a more pedestrian level in this post… Plenty has been written about the disaggregated, distributed, worldwide semiconductor supply chain. Design groups all over the world work... » read more

Chips And EDA: The Day After Tomorrow
By Atrenta - 08 Aug, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Mike Gianfagna Summer blockbuster movie season is in full swing, and there’s a lot of science fiction content musing about what the future will look like. That got me thinking about what a “Day After Tomorrow” movie that dealt with EDA and the semiconductor supply chain might look like. OK, no studio is going to pick up this story, I get it. But for those of us in this business, the p... » read more

SEMICON Season And The DAC Dilemma
By Atrenta - 11 Jul, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Mike Gianfagna Amid great fanfare and excitement, SEMICON West started this week. While not as old as DAC (43 years for SEMICON vs. 50 years for DAC), it is a broad and ambitious conference. Billed as “the flagship annual event for the global microelectronics industry,” the conference treats topics such as: Wow, that phrase it taken directly from a SEMCON West email blast, and ... » read more

Hierarchy And Pain Management
By Bernard Murphy - 10 Jun, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Bernard Murphy Hierarchy is unavoidable for any large design. It partitions development and verification complexity into digestible chunks. It enables parallel development on different parts of a system. It promotes reuse. And it provides a graceful method to partition for implementation. And yet, there are times when hierarchy gets in the way. The biggest drawback with hierarchy is that... » read more

DAC Is Where?
By Atrenta - 09 May, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Mike Gianfagna DAC season is upon us. I gave up counting the number of DACs I’ve attended a long time ago—when I turned 29 for the third time, I believe. This year, DAC is special in a few important ways. First of all, it’s the 50th DAC. Yes, the show has indeed been around that long. It started as a workshop with a bunch of engineers debating algorithms. For an industry that is arg... » read more

Start Early, Cover All The Bases
By Bernard Murphy - 11 Apr, 2013 - Comments: 0

Design for low power always has challenged designers and design tools. You need to have accuracy, because you are estimating implementation-centered parameters, but you need to start early, before implementation, if you are to have any hope of meaningfully reducing power. Sure, you can always play with body-bias, but that is a crude control. Real reductions after architecture always come throug... » read more

Guesswork, And Other Design Paradigms
By Bernard Murphy - 14 Mar, 2013 - Comments: 0

PPA for soft IP seems like an oxymoron. How do you determine the implementation characteristics (PPA — Power, Performance and Area) for something that has not yet been implemented? Flying blind until implementation would be a rookie move. More likely you are going to estimate based on a prior implementation. Not a bad approach if the IP hasn’t changed significantly and the target library is... » read more

Uncommon Goals
By Atrenta - 14 Feb, 2013 - Comments: 0

I had the opportunity to attend the Common Platform event recently. This is a technology and business showcase sponsored by Global Foundries, IBM and Samsung with major support from ARM, Cadence, Synopsys and Mentor. Wow, that’s some serious sponsorship. The event was well run and provided a good balance of technology details and business outlook. The wine at the evening reception was decent ... » read more

Low Power: A Solved Problem (?)
By Atrenta - 17 Jan, 2013 - Comments: 0

The Consumer Electronics Show simply begs to be written about. I had the good fortune of attending the show in person a few years back. I’m now addicted to it. A lot of those reading this will be familiar with the Design Automation Conference. If you are, think of how many people are riding in the elevator vs. how many are in the grand ballroom (any venue will do). That’s a good way to unde... » read more

No Road, No Roadmap
By Atrenta - 06 Dec, 2012 - Comments: 0

Happy holidays! It’s almost that time of year. Well-wishing and celebration are customary around now. I’ll get to that in a moment. But so are retrospectives and prognostication. Let’s focus on those for a moment. What has 2012 brought us, and what lies ahead? While there have been many technology advances and exciting new product introductions this past year, one fact shines through a... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →

  • Sponsors

About

Navigation

Connect With Us

Copyright ©2013-2024 SMG   |  Terms of Service  |  Privacy Policy