Mobile Market Dynamics Are Changing

By Ed Sperling - 17 Dec, 2015 - Comments: 1

Ever since the introduction of the iPhone in June 2007, increasingly advanced SoCs have dominated the semiconductor supply chain, from tools to design houses to foundries. Android's introduction in 2010 only cemented the market. Together they created massive demand for power-efficient chips that were dark most of the time, feature-rich, and which could respond within milliseconds to any command... » read more

Scare Of The Month: Whitebox Cryptography

By Ernest Worthman - 03 Dec, 2015 - Comments: 0

A debate has been raging for some time about whether hardware is more secure than software. This story should provide plenty of fuel for debate. A few years ago, something called White Box Cryptography (WBC) was developed. This is a rather novel approach that attempts to implement cryptography algorithms in software, rather than hardware. The idea is to keep the cryptographic assets secure a... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Nov. 25

By Mark LaPedus - 25 Nov, 2015 - Comments: 0

Asteroid mining and metrology The U.S. House of Representatives has approved a new space bill. The bill, entitled H.R. 2262— U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness, includes a provision that discusses the rights for companies that mine any materials on asteroids. In simple terms, the bill recognizes the right of U.S. companies to own asteroid resources that they mine in space, accordin... » read more

Upcoming Hurdles For The Semiconductor Industry

By Ann Mutschler - 12 Nov, 2015 - Comments: 0

Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss upcoming challenges and hurdles to overcome for the semiconductor industry with Vic Kulkarni, senior vice president and general manager, RTL Power Business at Ansys; Chris Rowen, Fellow and CTO, IP Group at Cadence; Subramani Kengeri, vice president, Global Design Solutions at GLOBALFOUNDRIES; Simon Davidmann, CEO of Imperas Software; Michael Buehle... » read more

Inside Mesh Networks

By Ernest Worthman - 11 Nov, 2015 - Comments: 0

Ad-hoc wireless mesh networks will be the great enabler for the IoE. Part one discusses the technology behind them. Mesh networks have a huge upside when it comes to the Internet of Everything, but there are also some big issues that have to be resolved. “One of the real challenges with mesh networks is there is not a lot of control of the devices that are joining and leaving the networ... » read more

What Markets And Winners Will IoT Produce?

By Brian Derrick - 05 Nov, 2015 - Comments: 0

IoT is trending. However, a consistent definition of IoT can be tough to find in the deluge of marketing, which often overlooks the fact that Internet-connected devices have been around for decades. Many established tech companies have developed and deployed a wide variety of products, both building out the IoT and beginning to define it. Intel in particular has published a slew of excellent vi... » read more

The Week In Review: Design/IoT

By Jesse Allen - 30 Oct, 2015 - Comments: 0

Tools Aldec introduced Hybrid Emulation including support for ARM Fast Models. Aldec says the capability to link an SoC emulation hardware platform with a virtual platform allows both software and hardware teams to work on the most up-to-date version of the project, long before first silicon is available, or even much of the RTL or IP has been completed. eSilicon's online quoting tools fo... » read more

Think In Blocks

By Brian Fuller - 15 Oct, 2015 - Comments: 0

It always seems to come back to LEGOs, doesn’t it? Earlier this year I wrote about Google Project Ara, the so-called “LEGO” smart phone architecture unveiled in April. Project Ara uses the MIPI Alliance UniPro and M-PHY protocols as the backbone for a modular electronics architecture inside a smart phone “endoskeleton.” Using electro-permanent magnets (they don’t need a perma... » read more

The Next Killer Apps

By Ed Sperling - 08 Oct, 2015 - Comments: 1

The search is on for the next killer applications that will turn connected devices into the next smart phone or PC. Billions of dollars are being poured into startups and established companies, creating a spectrum of new ideas they're trying to bring to market. Whether those investments pay off with a single application, or whether they lead to new ideas that fuse together multiple markets, ... » read more

Executive Insight: Lip-Bu Tan

By Ed Sperling - 01 Oct, 2015 - Comments: 1

Lip-Bu Tan, president and CEO of Cadence, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about consolidation, Moore's Law, and where the opportunities are in the IoT and automotive markets. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: What are the big concerns for the semiconductor industry in general, and EDA in particular? Tan: Top on my list is all the consolidation that's goin... » read more

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Knowledge Centers
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