Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Thursday, December 28th, 2017
When Sales Force entertains, they really entertain. And so it was in the first week of November in San Francisco when 175,000 people came to town to be part of the company’s DreamForce confab.
I made the mistake of being on the Streets of San Francisco on Tuesday, November 7th, and was witness to the madding DreamForce crowds – particularly the lucky 50,000+ of them headed to AT&T Park where Alicia Keyes and Lenny Kravitz were waiting to entertain the VIPs of the SalesForce world.
Although the traffic was debilitating on that Tuesday night, the sheer scale of the SalesForce presence (now very obvious in San Francisco as their towering mega-temple is about debut) provided such an interesting compare and contrast to my adventures on the following morning.
On Wednesday, November 8th, I had the good fortune to attend a Press and Analyst briefing at a low-slung building in Silicon Valley.
The hosts of that event were the leadership and evangelists of a small, laser-focused group called Silicon Catalyst – an incubator that intends to pave the way for the semiconductor super stars of the future. The folks at Silicon Catalyst hope that one of the companies in their carefully vetted portfolio may become the SalesForce of tomorrow, the mega-force in technology that dominates cities, skylines, and baseball parks.
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Tags: ACP Semiconductor, Active Layer Parametrics, AEPONYX, Alex Wright-Gladstein, Ayar Labs, Chaos Prime, ClopTech, GMK, Mamoon Rashid, Nick Kepler, On Semiconductor, One Silicon Chip Photonics, Power Down Semiconductor, ProbiusDX, Raul Camposano, REX Computing, Rich Goldman, Rick Lazansky, SalesForce, Silicon Catalyst, Spark Microsystems, TI, Xceler Systems, Zeno Semiconductor
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Thursday, December 21st, 2017
San Francisco-based Methodics has been addressing both the enterprise data management and IP reuse/lifecycle management markets for over 10 years.
The company’s strategy of integrating their lifecycle management tools with products like Perforce version control software and Subversion from Apache, means they dovetail with industry standard solutions. As a natural outgrowth from that, Methodics’ IP-related offerings also work at the enterprise level, helping the customer’s distributed team coordinate and catalog IP use, and keeping track of third-party IP use as well.
In my recent phone call with Methodics CEO Simon Butler, it was clear the company is seeing the fruits of their many years of hard labor come to fruition.
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Tags: Apache, Cadence, DAC, ESD Alliance, Mentor Graphics, Methodics, Perforce, Simon Butler
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Thursday, December 14th, 2017
It’s an honor and a pain to interview a CEO, particularly the CEO of a publicly traded company.
An honor, because the CEO’s organization has decided your track record as a journalist warrants a few minutes of time with the company’s leadership. A pain, because the more highly paid the CEO, the larger the organization, the bigger the market cap, the less unvarnished the truth you’ll hear during the interview.
It’s guaranteed, while interviewing a high-flying CEO, that you’ll hear that everything is great with the company. The customers love the company’s products, can’t live without them, and assist and insist on helping the company produce its next release.
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Tags: Davos, Google Camp
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Thursday, December 7th, 2017
This week on Thursday, December 14th, the second annual edition of REUSE 2017 will unfold in Silicon Valley. It’s a gathering crafted specifically for the vendors of IP blocks, and now whole sub-systems, those pieces of the puzzle which allow the vendors’ customers to design and produce electronic products more efficiently and with better results.
It goes without saying that IP is a pivotal part of the semiconductor supply chain today. Organizations like Arm and Synopsys reap huge benefits from being among the principal suppliers of that IP. But there are hundreds of IP companies in the world – big, medium, and small – that also provide IP.
Potentially, they could all be participating in something like Reuse 2017. Arm, for instance, is participating in the conference, along with dozens of smaller companies. Synopsys, however, is not.
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Tags: Achronix, Aldec, Andes Technology, Aphion, Archband, ARM, Avery Design Systems, CAST, Certus Semiconductor, ChipEstimate.com, City Semiconductor, Corigine, DAC, eFabless, FlexLogix, Intel, Intrinsic ID, IP-SoC, Menta, Mixel, Mobile Semiconductor, Mobiveil, Moortec, NSCore, NVM Engines, OmniDesign, Open-Silicon, QuickLogic, Reuse 2017, RISC-V, Samsung, Semi IP Systems, SiFive, Silicon Creations, Silvaco, Sintegra, SmartFlow, Sofics, Sonics, Surecore, Synopsys, True Circuits, Uniquify
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Thursday, November 30th, 2017
San Jose-based Sonics is a long-established IP vendor specializing in On-chip Networks [NoC] and Energy Processing Units [EPU]. Co-founded by CEO Grant Pierce and CTO Drew Wingard, the company has 150 parents and has “supported customer products that have shipped more than 4 billion SoCs.”
Currently Grant Pierce is an exceptionally busy man. Not only is he leading Sonics, he’s also serving as Chair of the ESD Alliance. It’s a fortunate circumstance to have Pierce leading the Alliance; his point of view is exactly what’s needed to help shape what was originally an EDA-focused organization into something that embraces the full set of constituencies driving electronic system design today. Pierce is strongly committed to new technologies and the small companies that drive the innovation.
Pierce and I spoke by phone in late November. He is clearly very enthused about the company and the ESD Alliance.
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Tags: Aart de Geus, ARM, Design Automation Conference, Drew Wingard, EPU, Gary Smith, Grant Pierce, IoT, Joe Costello, MIPS, Moortec, NoC, Reuse 2017, Robin Saxby, SoftBank, Sonics, Tallwood
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Thursday, November 16th, 2017
Dr. Gabriel Saucier has a lot to be proud of. The Grenoble-based organization she founded, Design and Reuse, is celebrating the 20th anniversary of its flagship conference: IP-SoC.
To celebrate, IP-SoC 2017 is showcasing two of the biggest names in the IP industry – Synopsys CEO Dr. Aart de Geus and ARM founder Sir Robin Saxby. That’s pretty news worthy and a distinct reflection of the significant role Design and Reuse has played for more than two decades in promoting the wide-spread development and reuse of semiconductor IP.
Of course, it’s also worth noting that de Geus and Saxby will not be the only speakers with deep expertise in the technology.
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Tags: Aart de Geus, ARM Holdings, Design-and-Reuse, Gabriel Saucier, Grenoble, IP SoC 2017, RISC-V, Robin Saxby, Synopsys
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Thursday, November 9th, 2017
Simon Segars has been CEO of UK-based ARM Holdings since 2013. When he first joined the company in 1991, he was employee No. 16, and was there when the company went public in 1998.
Last year, Japan-based SoftBank purchased ARM for $32 billion, just a few days after the Brexit vote, and took the company private. This year, SoftBank sold 25-percent of ARM to Saudi Arabia, in a deal that was part of the company’s (and kingdom’s) Vision Fund juggernaut.
Simon Segars has more than survived all of this change. He is still CEO of the most ubiquitous IP provider in the world, and now also has a seat on the Board of Directors of SoftBank.
As I prepared for my phone call with Segars last week, I was pretty sure he would decline to answer the bulk of the questions on my list. Surprisingly, however, he answered all of them, with ease and on the record. We started with the most astonishing news of all: ARM has changed its name.
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Tags: Advanced RISC Machines, ARM Holdings, ARM TechCon, Bob Gardner, EDA Consortium, ESD Alliance, Masayoshi Son, RISC-V, Saudi Arabia, Simon Segars, SoftBank, SoftBank Vision Fund
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Thursday, November 2nd, 2017
U.C. Berkeley Prof. Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli has just been named non-Executive Chairman of UltraSoC, an IP provider based in Cambridge. He was in Rome when we spoke this week by phone about the news.
UltraSoC CEO Rupert Baines was also on the conference call, dialing in from the UK, while I was in Silicon Valley. The conversation began with a discussion of Sangiovanni-Vincentelli’s ongoing research work in Singapore.
Three sentences, four geographies: What more proof is needed that the semiconductor industry is indeed global?
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Tags: Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, Atlante Ventures, Cadence, CEVA, Coadasip, Elvees, HiSilicon/Huaweei, Imagination, ISO 26262, Lauterrbach, MIT, Movidius, Netspeed, NRF CREATE, RISC-V, Rupert Baines, SiFive, Singapore, Sondrel, Synopsys, Technical University of Munich, U.C. Berkeley, UltraSoC
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Thursday, October 26th, 2017
When Cliosoft Founder and CEO Srinath Anantharaman and I spoke recently, it was an energetic conversation. Not surprising, given that the company has 250+ customers worldwide, and exhibits at conferences around the globe.
Adding to the momentum for Cliosoft: In May, the company announced designHUB: “A collaborative IP reuse ecosystem that enables companies to efficiently reuse all types of IP, including semiconductor IP, scripts, PDKs, documents, methodologies, etc. within the company, along with the user experience.”
Anantharaman is clearly enthused about the possibilities designHUB presents for the company’s customers, and is equally enthused about Cliosoft itself.
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Tags: CDNLive, Cliosoft, DAC, Design Reuse, designHUB, IP Reuse Ecosystem, Srinath Anantharaman
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Thursday, October 19th, 2017
The Electronic System Design Alliance began life as the EDA Consortium over 25 years ago. Early last year, EDAC morphed into the ESD Alliance thanks to the efforts of many, not the least being ESD Alliance Executive Director Bob Smith, now in his third year serving in that role.
As currently I am mid-way through the process of speaking to the leadership of all of the member companies in the ESD Alliance, it was good to talk recently with Smith and discuss his vision for the future of the organization. His enthusiasm mirrors that of the many companies I have spoken with so far.
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Tags: ACM/SIGDA, Bob Smith, CELUG, Design Automation Conference, EDA Consortium, ESD Alliance, Flexera, Graham Bell, IEEE-CEDA, Jim Hogan, Julie Rogers, Larry Disenhof, License Management & Anti Piracy, Nanette Collins, Paul Cohen, San Jose State University, Sashi Subramanian, Sharon Hu, Stephanie Chou, Steve Pollock
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