Who Owns What And Why


Who’s calling the shots these days—and how long they’ll continue calling the shots—is turning out to be as much conjecture as playing the futures exchange. There are so many changes underway that even engineers are crossing boundaries no one ever expected and ending up in companies outside of IC design or moving from seemingly far afield into the design world. Still, there are some c... » read more

Software Takes Control


By Pallab Chatterjee The idea that SoC and system design are a mix of hardware and software, in the form of both application software and firmware, has been in place for more than 60 years. But the emphasis is beginning to shift. The traditional approach has been to create the highest-performance circuit design, with some control options for flexibility, and then use this adaptable "platfor... » read more

Low Power Drives Performance And TCO


By Pallab Chatterjee A common theme at this year’s Custom Integrated Circuit Conference was the reduction of power and power management while increasing data throughput. Historically, the show has featured new techniques for ultra high accuracy and brute force improvements in performance at all costs. The main theme this year was that in a world of mobile endpoint devices, the goal is to get... » read more

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