Solar In Context


What made Apple’s iPod a winner was business context. There were plenty of other MP3 players on the market and Apple’s wasn’t particularly noteworthy from a technology standpoint. But rather than just sell another portable music machine, the company created something its competitors didn’t have—iTunes. In fact, it was iTunes that made the iPod, not the other way around. The same th... » read more

Blog Review: July 31


By Ed Sperling Wherever you turn in IC design, there’s always someone talking about future problems involving the interconnect. Cadence’s Brian Fuller puts the latest speech by North Carolina State professor Paul Franzon in historical perspective—or at least in the shadow of the last dire prediction by Intel’s Mark Bohr two decades ago. Incidentally, Bohr’s warning turned out to be r... » read more

Blog Review: July 24


By Ed Sperling Mentor’s Harry Foster unleashes part six of the Wilson Research Group functional verification study, this segment digging deeper into the time spent in verification. The numbers have surpassed time spent on the design side, which either means the front-end tools are getting better or the verification problem is becoming more difficult. Cadence’s Brian Fuller interviews I... » read more

The Week In Review: May 31


By Ed Sperling Mentor Graphics and GlobalFoundries teamed up to deliver 20nm design kits that include Mentor’s place and route tool, including verification and conflict resolution engines for double-patterning violations. The 20nm process is used for GlobalFoundries’ 14nm finFETs. Mentor also received 16nm finFET certification from TSMC for the same tools plus its physical verification pl... » read more

The Week In Review: Feb. 25


By Mark LaPedus Is China set to bail out a U.S. government technology darling? Two Chinese automotive companies, Geely and Dongfeng Motor, are reported to have bid between $200 million and $350 million for a majority stake in Fisker, the maker of plug-in hybrid cars. If that happens Fisker—which has $192 million in U.S. federal government loan guarantees—could be headed to China, according... » read more

Mobile Memory Madness


By Mark LaPedus The insatiable thirst for more bandwidth in smartphones, tablets and other devices has prompted an industry standards body to revamp its mobile memory interface roadmap. As part of the changes, the Joint Electron Devices Engineering Council (JEDEC) has scaled back the initial version of Wide I/O technology and pushed out the introduction date of a true 3D stacked architectur... » read more