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Commentary / Analysis

• Pre-Fab Chip Design Takes Root (Tuesday May. 30, 2006)
  The chip-building industry is turning to a new pre-fab approach, as companies look to simplify the design and creation of new chips at advanced process nodes.
  
  
• FPGA Market Will Reach $2.75 Billion by Decade's End (Wednesday May. 24, 2006)
  The Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) market, with a quickly expanding array of uses, is on a roll, reports In-Stat (http://www.in-stat.com). The value of worldwide FPGA shipments will increase from $1.9 billion in 2005 to $2.75 billion by 2010, the hi
  
  
• Open source is business, not charity, Sun exec says (Wednesday May. 17, 2006)
  Open source is a business model, not a charitable contribution to mankind, according to Sunil Joshi, senior vice president of design tools, performance and OpenAccess at Sun Microsystems' scaleable systems group.
  
  
• Synopsys buy a step toward embedded software development (Wednesday May. 17, 2006)
  One day after Synopsys Inc. announced the $15 million acquisition of virtual platform vendor Virtio Corp., executives sought to play it as a nod toward the converging worlds of hardware and software development.
  
  
• Reducing Power in Next-Gen Processors and IP (Tuesday May. 16, 2006)
  Even as the need to reduce power and heat has become a driving priority for processor designers and manufacturers, better processor performance is the force that continues to push processor evolution.
  
  
• Panel: EDA and IP vendors subservient to consumer (Friday May. 12, 2006)
  If EDA vendors want to participate in the consumer electronics market they will need to step up their efforts to provide system-level design tools, according to an EDA Consortium panel held here Thursday (May 11).
  
  
• IDM model gets bad rap, says 'fab club' exec (Friday May. 05, 2006)
  Integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) are getting a bad rap in the market, especially from short-sighted Wall Street analysts who lack a thorough understanding of the concept of wafer fabs
  
  
• AMD: At 45 nm and beyond ICs require high level HW/SW tools (Thursday May. 04, 2006)
  Advanced Micro Devices Inc. is anticipating system design requirements at the 45-nm node and beyond. The chip maker sees a need to work at higher levels of abstraction; creating a design file that generates both the software and the hardware.
  
  
• Software gains importance for silicon designers (Tuesday May. 02, 2006)
  The convergence of wireless and consumer electronics is creating a huge opportunity for another era of technology growth, according to Doug Rasor, VP worldwide strategic marketing at Texas Instruments, with the cell phone a key growth driver.
  
  
• Fabless Companies Need Fab Links, Say Conference Speakers (Tuesday May. 02, 2006)
  Fabless companies will become increasingly disadvantaged in the wireless telecommunications business as a close correlation between IC design and fab becomes essential, said speakers at the International Electronics Forum in Budapest this week.
  
  
• ARM Gets Physical IP to Match Chip Technology (Wednesday Apr. 26, 2006)
  An acceleration of R&D on its physical intellectual property (IP) side has allowed ARM to bring up its physical IP processes to match the state-of-the-art of its microprocessor process technology.
  
  
• Structured-ASIC faithful plan their next moves (Tuesday Apr. 25, 2006)
  While a few of the structured-ASIC market's key players have retreated, others in the field say they are primed for the long haul and may soon pick up the pace.
  
  
• Outsourcing can boost IC quality (Monday Apr. 17, 2006)
  Face it: Like it or not, design outsourcing is becoming more popular in the semiconductor industry. Those who favor outsourcing chip design outside of the United States point to the advantages of lower cost for both overhead and labor. If design operation
  
  
• IP market a challenge for EDA (Monday Apr. 03, 2006)
  Bill Martin, general manager for Mentor Graphics Corp.'s Intellectual Property Division, made an important statement in a panel discussion on IP quality here last week--and it wasn't anything he said. It was his appearance that mattered, despite reports t
  
  
• IP integration is a quality issue (Wednesday Mar. 29, 2006)
  Enabling silicon intellectual property (IP) integration is as significant a quality concern as designing bug-free IP in the first place, said panelists at the International Symposium on the Quality of Electronic Design (ISQED) here Tuesday. One implicatio
  
  
• Simple designs aren't easy, speaker says (Tuesday Mar. 28, 2006)
  The best designs are simple designs, and the key to successful silicon intellectual property (IP) design is keeping code simple, said Synopsys fellow Michael Keating at the International Symposium on the Quality of Electronic Design (ISQED) here Tuesday (
  
  
• Commentary: EDA patent litigation threatens innovation, growth (Tuesday Mar. 28, 2006)
  The ability of the electronics industry to continue to produce more powerful and cheaper products every two years or less, in accordance with Moore’s Law, depends on a strong and growing EDA sector. Many factors inhibit the growth of the EDA industry, inc
  
  
• Multicore design strives for balance... but programming, debug tools complicate adoption (Monday Mar. 27, 2006)
  The consensus from last week's Multicore Expo here was clear: Putting more than one core on a chip is the best way to elevate performance while keeping power under control. But the advantages of multicore architectures will be lost unless new approaches a
  
  
• Panel confronts multicore pros and cons (Thursday Mar. 23, 2006)
  Panelists at the Multicore Expo here Wednesday (March 22) generally agreed that multitasking and multiprocessing have bright futures, although they identified some challenges as well. One of those challenges is the difficulty of programming next-generatio
  
  
• Next killer product is the patent itself (Monday Mar. 20, 2006)
  Patriot Scientific Corp. had spent nearly a decade trying unsuccessfully to establish a new microprocessor architecture when it decided it needed to do some soul-searching. It hit paydirt when that process revealed its real products: patents.
  
  
• Analysis: Analog is driving Indo-Western partnership (Tuesday Mar. 14, 2006)
  Design houses specializing in analog and mixed-signal design are experiencing a strong demand for their services. The reasons are twofold.
  
  
• ARM's chairman calls for collaboration (Monday Mar. 13, 2006)
  The old methods for product design and development do not scale in an era when market windows are shrinking rapidly and electronics markets are being driven by fashion and style, according to Robin Saxby, chairman of ARM Holdings plc.
  
  
• Structured ASICs Not Dead (Tuesday Mar. 07, 2006)
  Bryan Lewis, VP and chief analyst for Semiconductor Research told Electronic News of LSI’s move that, ''Clearly it is a major impact on the structured ASIC market.''
  
  
• ARCHITECTURES: Config platform caters to video (Monday Mar. 06, 2006)
  After visiting about 60 companies during his first year as CEO of ARC International, Carl Schlachte was fascinated by the large number that had licensed ARC's configurable architecture and then spent time paring it to the bare necessities
  
  
• Design productivity can grow by 8X, says Synopsys VP (Tuesday Feb. 28, 2006)
  Productivity — the cost in time and resources that it takes to complete a chip — is the dominant issue in IC design today, according to John Chilton, senior vice president and general manager for Synopsys Inc.'s Solutions group.
  
  
• Analysis: Chip design outsourcers must embrace IP (Friday Feb. 24, 2006)
  Design services companies have been providing a valuable service to electronic system OEMs and semiconductor vendors for years. But the reasons for outsourcing electronic design are changing.
  
  
• Reconfigurable cores boost processor power (Monday Feb. 20, 2006)
  The first commercial microprocessor, Intel's 4004, debuted in 1971 with 2,300 transistors, a 108-kHz system clock and a 4-bit bus. Since then, chip architects have increased the computational performance and throughput of the 4004's successors by increasi
  
  
• ARM vows to fight for automotive market (Monday Feb. 13, 2006)
  ARM Holdings plc is determined to gain market share in the automotive sector, despite the strength of the PowerPC processor architecture in that sector
  
  
• ARM faces automotive shut out from Freescale, ST (Tuesday Feb. 07, 2006)
  The prospects for processor technology licensor ARM Holdings plc in the automotive seem to have dimmed with the news that Freescale Semiconductor Inc. and STMicroelectronics NV have formed a design alliance for automotive that is based on the PowerPC proc
  
  
• ARM's East hints at Cortex multiprocessor (Tuesday Jan. 31, 2006)
  Warren East, chief executive officer of processor technology licensor ARM Holdings plc, hinted that a core optimized for multiprocessing is being designed within the company’s Cortex range, as he discussed the company’s financial results for 2005