Archive for November, 2017
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 No Comments »
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 No Comments »
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 No Comments »
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 No Comments »
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