Will Open-Source Work For Chips?


Open source is getting a second look by the semiconductor industry, driven by the high cost of design at complex nodes along with fragmentation in end markets, which increasingly means that one size or approach no longer fits all. The open source movement, as we know it today, started in the 1980s with the launch of the GNU project, which was about the time the electronic design automation (... » read more

Executive Insight: Grant Pierce


Grant Pierce, president and CEO of Sonics, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to discuss new ways to increase energy efficiency in SoCs. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: Looking out at the semiconductor industry there are a lot of changes underway right now. What are the biggest impacts from your perspective? Pierce: The amount of data that is being captured or sen... » read more

Data Analytics To Drive IC Shift


The adoption of predictive analytics has the potential to drive the next round of IC industry innovation and growth. Much of the necessary data handling technology is now available from other sectors. However, to fully capitalize on the possibilities, the IC manufacturing world faces particular challenges in figuring out how to get a high yield of actionable information from its streams of vari... » read more

The Road To 5nm


There is strong likelihood that enough companies will move to 7nm to warrant the investment. How many will move forward to 5nm is far less certain. Part of the reason for this uncertainty is big-company consolidation. There are simply fewer customers left who can afford to build chips at the most advanced nodes. Intel bought Altera. Avago bought Broadcom. NXP bought Freescale. GlobalFoundrie... » read more

Why IP Subsystems And Why Now?


At the recently concluded DAC 2016 conference in Austin, Texas, I had the opportunity to participate in a tutorial on IP Subsystems on Wednesday the 8th. Also participating were Marco Brambilla, Director of Engineering at Synapse Design and Drew Wingard, CTO at Sonics. The reality today is that device complexity in many applications has risen to levels that require increasing amounts of disc... » read more

High Performance And Scalable Sensor Connectivity With MIPI I3C


The MIPI Alliance is working on a new standard called I3C (or SenseWire) that incorporates and unifies key attributes of I2C and Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI). MIPI I3C enhances the capabilities and performance of each approach with a comprehensive, low pin count and scalable interface as well as architecture. It supports sensor interface architectures that mobile, mobile-influenced, and em... » read more

Menta Embeds FPGA Programmability


What constitutes a startup can be a matter of the market segment you are going after and the type of product that you are building. Within [getkc id="7" kc_name="EDA"], we often think of the lifetime of a company being just a few years between when an opportunity is identified, to a product being built and getting the first few customers and then getting gobbled up by one of the big three. But ... » read more

System-Level Verification Tackles New Role


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss advances in system-level verification with Larry Melling, product management director for the system verification group of [getentity id="22032" e_name="Cadence"]; Larry Lapides, VP of sales for [getentity id="22036" e_name="Imperas”] and Jean-Marie Brunet, director of marketing for the emulation division of [getentity id="22017" e_name="Mentor Gr... » read more

Executive Insight: Simon Segars


Simon Segars, CEO of ARM, examines the future of mobile computing, how it intersects with the IoT, why ecosystems are vital, and how computing is evolving. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: Most analysts say the growth rate of mobile is slowing. The big buzz phrase now is Internet of Things. How does ARM's role change with that shift? Segars: Mobile is still changing and... » read more

Alternative To x86, ARM Architectures?


Software developed by professors and graduate students from the University of California at Berkeley? That will never fly in the semiconductor industry, right? Maybe they said that about SPICE, four decades ago. The jury is still out on RISC-V (pronounced risk-five) the modular, open-source instruction set architecture created in this decade by Cal professors and students, yet the ISA is gai... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →