Foundries See Mixed Future


Amid a tumultuous business environment, the silicon foundry industry is projected to see steady growth in a number of process segments in 2017. As in past years, the foundry market is expected to grow faster than the overall IC industry in 2017. But at the same time, the IC industry—the foundry customer base—continues to witness a frenetic wave of merger and acquisition activity. Basical... » read more

Watch Out: Reality Is Set To Explode


Walk into any store right now (December 2016), and you can probably find a VR headset for $20. These will be a popular gift item this holiday season, but ultimately it may hurt the market if consumers have bad experiences with these bargain-basement VR headsets. There exists a considerable amount of confusion regarding the virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality industries. Sem... » read more

Blog Review: Dec. 7


Mentor's Harry Foster looks at verification results findings in terms of schedules, number of required spins, and classification of functional bugs, in the latest installment of the Wilson Research Group verification study. Cadence's Paul McLellan provides an overview of the portable stimulus standard currently being worked on at Accellera. Synopsys' Anika Malhotra checks out JESD204B, a ... » read more

Printed Cars, Smart Stints, Personal Breathalyzers


The MEMS and sensor market continues to be a hotbed for innovation, new opportunities and, as with most new frontiers, there are also some disparate views on market dynamics and strategies. All this was evident at the 2016 MSIG Executive Congress last week in Scottsdale, Arizona. First, I’ll cover the pioneering and fun subjects. In addition to the Technology Showcase demos and member pres... » read more

IP Market: CPU Still The Largest But Security Leads In Growth


The 3rd Party Semiconductor Intellectual Property (SIP) market has seen great innovation in the products it offers to System-on-a-Chip (SoC) designers over the last ten years. If any market segment in the semiconductor industry typifies the intense evolutionary pressures that the entire electronics market has undergone, it is the 3rd Party SIP market. Most of these evolutionary forces are dr... » read more

The Week In Review: Design


Tools Synopsys updated RSoft, its software for the design of photonic devices. The updates include increased integration with the company's TCAD products as well as faster simulations and additional ways to customize photonic device analysis. IP Mentor Graphics, Northwest Logic, and Krivi Semiconductor collaborated on DDR4 SDRAM IP to integrate design and verification into a single flo... » read more

Smartphone Security: For Your Eyes Only


Fans of the Olympics here in the United States were treated to a great Samsung commercial throughout the broadcast. The commercial stars the genius, multi-award-winning actor Christoph Waltz, showing how Americans can multitask with the amazing new Galaxy Note7. Yes, THAT Galaxy Note7. The 90-second long commercial is a delight to watch, but it must have cost Samsung some serious bucks to produ... » read more

Blog Review: Sept. 14


Are wide bandgap lll-V power devices feasible? Applied's Ben Lee considers the challenges, and potential rewards, of silicon carbide and gallium nitride. DVCon India chair Gaurav Jalan chats with keynote speaker Alok Jain about the challenges of verifying complex SoCs, the unique verification needs of the IoT, and what might lie beyond UVM. From power intent abstraction to automatic power... » read more

Stepping Back From Scaling


Architectures, packaging and software are becoming core areas for semiconductor research and development, setting the stage for a series of shifts that will impact a large swath of the semiconductor industry. While there is still demand from the largest chipmakers for increased density at the next process node, the underlying economics for foundries, equipment vendors and IP developers are f... » read more

Are We Looking At The IoT Through Rose-Colored Glasses?


There’s been a lot of anticipation and promise associated with the explosive growth expected from the deployment of the Internet of Things. The prospect of 30 billion to 50 billion connected devices and all the associated electronics brings rosy visions of a return to double-digit semiconductor industry growth rates. Let’s take a look at the realities of the impending impact. MEMS, ... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →