EDACafe: IP Showcase

IP Showcase

Archive for January, 2016

ARM: The Musical, at last

Wednesday, January 27th, 2016

The book that Sir Robin Saxby has been waiting for has finally been written: “Mobile Unleashed: The Origin and Evolution of ARM Processors in Our Devices”.

Authored by SemiWiki’s Dan Nenni and Don Dingee, the book “delivers an informative look at events and technology that powered the mobile device industry to worldwide adoption.”

When I spoke with Dingee by phone this week, he said the book represents an enormous amount of work: “Sixteen months of intense research, 270 pages and over 800 footnotes.”

Other books have been written about ARM, he acknowledged, but this one is different: “People ask if this is a technology book or the story of ARM and I say, in truth it’s a little bit of both.”

(more…)

Tags: ARM, Dan Nenni, Don Dingee, Google, Huawei, Intel, MediaTek, Mentor Graphics, Microsoft, MIPS, Motorola, Nokia, Qualcomm, Sir Robin Saxby, TI, Wally Rhines
No Comments »

Mentor CEO: a Shout-out to Marketing

Thursday, January 7th, 2016

If you ask Wally Rhines, CEO at Mentor Graphics, about concerns that there has been too little disruptive change and, therefore, too little high-profile investment in the EDA industry over the last several years, he says: “It true that startups always like to see a spike up in growth.

“However, the biggest companies would like to see something closer to steady growth. Volatility is not as good for the bigger companies as it is for the smaller companies.”

If you ask: “But how viable is a high-tech industry when there’s no increase expected in VC funding for the foreseeable future?”

Rhines replies: “Yes, it’s true. VC funding in EDA has declined over the last 10 years, with the money often going instead into social networking. There is still ongoing investment today in EDA, however, but it’s angel funding, not VC funding.”

(more…)

Tags: EDAC, Mentor Graphics, Wally Rhines
No Comments »