Posts Tagged ‘ARM’
Thursday, June 9th, 2016
When SRC’s Bill Joyner took the podium this past Sunday evening at the 53rd DAC in Austin, he did something that’s never been done before: Present a panel about careers that wasn’t part of a Workshop for Women in EDA.
Up until 7 o’clock on June 5, 2016, a conversation about career perspectives was such a non-technical topic, it could only be found in Marie Pistilli’s beloved workshop, a venue where work/life balance, Academia vs. Industry, and how to promote your brand within the organization were thoroughly discussed every year for 15 years at DAC.
Now IEEE’s Council on EDA, CEDA, has made the bold decision to pick up where Marie’s workshop left off, sponsoring this week’s event and broadening the audience and the appeal.
Joyner had four people on his panel, a generous two hours to hash out various universal questions, and enough of a sense of humor to offer to wear the necktie he’d brought with him to add gravitas, or not to wear the tie to appear hipster and cool. He quickly decided to go without the tie, and the ensuing conversation went something like this.
(more…)
Tags: ARM, Bei Yu, Bill Joyner, Cadence, CEDA, Chinese University of Hong Kong, IBM, ICCAD, IEEE Council on Electronic Design Automation, Mentor Graphics, Pranavi Chandupatla, Reveal Design Automation, Semiconductor Research Corp., SRC, Zaher Andraus, Zhuo Li
1 Comment »
Thursday, May 12th, 2016
IP will be well represented at DAC according to Adapt IP Michael “Mac” McNamara, and he should know. He’s helped build the IP Track at the show and is concerned that everyone understand the IP-related content in Austin this year will be deep and wide.
Mac and I spoke by phone recently. He’d read a blog a posted here in April expressing skepticism about IP coverage at DAC. Therein, I suggested the content set for Austin in June was inadequate, given the important role IP plays in chip design today.
A thoughtful McNamara wanted to respond to this critique; he wanted to evangelize for the quality of the content at DAC – particularly as he is Vice Chair of the conference this year and will be General Chair in 2017. [Cadence’s Chuck Alpert is General Chair here in 2016.]
(more…)
Tags: Adapt IP, Anne Cirkel, ARM, DAC 2016, Design Automation Conference, DesignCon, DVCon, ICCAD, IPextreme, Mentor Graphics, Michael McNamara, Synopsys, Warren Savage
No Comments »
Thursday, April 14th, 2016
IP now dominates design automation, evidenced in no small measure by ARM’s seat at the head of the table for the ESD Alliance, ESDA being an important sponsor of the Design Automation Conference. Everyone seems to agree that IP reuse is the only way complex mega-systems of the 21st century can be designed, so not surprisingly the DAC program now reflects that reality. There are sessions every day categorized as being IP-related, but are those designations accurate?
I would argue that a lot of the content that’s sitting in the IP Track at DAC is really just about design, and not specifically about IP-based design. To prove that point, below is a complete listing of the sessions in the IP Track that’s set to air between June 6th and 9th at DAC in Austin. Those that are legitimately about IP are bolded, sessions that actually talk about using IP. Those not bolded are ‘just’ about design, or are merely high-level nattering about superficial issues associated with IP reuse.
Conclusion: the number of IP-related sessions are far fewer than one would hope. If IP is this important, why aren’t there more sessions that are really about IP? Is there a conspiracy here?
Fortunately, this next week I’m talking at length with Warren Savage. As CEO of IPextreme, his knowledge about the technology and business of IP is pretty encyclopedic. I will run my conspiracy theory past him: DAC wants you to believe they believe in IP, but in fact the conference is still more about design automation, not about using silicon IP to enhance the process. EDA vendors still rule the roost at DAC.
(more…)
Tags: ARM, Design Automation Conference, ESD Alliance
1 Comment »
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 »
Wednesday, September 30th, 2015
The news is good out of EDA this week: The industry continues up and to the right.
EDAC’s Market Statistic Services produced the numbers: “The EDA industry revenue increased 8.5 percent for Q2 2015 to $1906.5 million, compared to $1757.9 million in Q2 2014. The four-quarters moving average, which compares the most recent four quarters to the prior four quarters, also increased by 8.5 percent. Companies that were tracked employed a record 32,806 professionals in Q2 2015, an increase of 4.9 percent compared to the 31,259 people employed in Q2 2014, and up 2.1 percent compared to Q1 2015.”
Mentor CEO Walden C. Rhines provided the commentary: “The industry’s strong, and exceptionally good in CAE, where the concentration is emulation, functional verification, and test, [while] IC physical design also reported solid growth. Geographically, all regions except Japan saw revenue increases, especially Asia/Pacific. The PacRim was strong in Q2, North America was strong, and Europe was pure gold.”
“The numbers are also very good in IP,” he continued, “especially in EDA combined with IP. The external companies, dominated by ARM, showed unusually large growth in Q2, and the internal IP companies are also showing excellent growth.”
(more…)
Tags: ARM, EDA Consortium, Mentor Graphics, MSS, Wally Rhines
1 Comment »
Wednesday, September 9th, 2015
ARM must be doing something right when among the eight corporate sponsors for their upcoming Silicon Valley users conference in November, the top three companies in EDA are listed as Diamond or Platinum.
Cadence is Diamond, undoubtedly, because company President & CEO Lip-Bu Tan is co-chair of EDAC, and ARM CEO Simon Segars is on the EDAC Board. But why would Mentor and Synposys spend good money being Platinum sponsors of ARM’s show when they could put that particular chunk of disposable income into their own user conferences, or even DAC? Particularly since Mentor and Synopsys sell IP, as does Cadence, so in some ways the three EDA companies may actually be competing with ARM.
There are three possible answers: A) Mentor, Synopsys, and Cadence serve as channels for ARM products. B) Mentor, Synopsys, and Cadence want to see, and be seen by, ARM’s enormous worldwide customer base. C) ARM has the winning hand in today’s semiconductor supply chain, so either the Big Three in EDA pony up to help sponsor ARM TechCon, or the UK-based IP behemoth won’t cooperate in the EDA world; they won’t offer pointers or tool-development advice for the third-party design software that EDA vendors sell and ARM customers [might] buy.
(more…)
Tags: ARM, ARM TechCon 2015, Cadence, EDA Consortium, Jane Austin, Lip-Bu Tan, Mentor Graphics, Pride and Prejudice, Simon Segars, Synopsys
No Comments »
Wednesday, August 12th, 2015
Autumn used to start in September, but now classes and conferences commence in August and vacation ends just that much sooner. Here’s a list of various events you should consider attending between now and the end of the year, with thanks to conference organizers for the associated descriptions.
Scanning the range of topics, it’s clear the combined IP and EDA industries have an increasingly broad range of interests: IoT, autos, wearables, software security, verifying/integrating IP, power, device physics, memory, embedded processors and software, sensors, MEMS, a range of standards, networking, both the professional and technical kinds, and “synergistic collaborative design” both up in the cloud and down below on solid ground.
(more…)
Tags: 3D ASIP, Aart de Geus, ARC Processor Summit 2015, ARM, ARM TechCon 2015, Autonomous Cars 2015, Cadence, CDNLive, Connect Security World, DVCon Europe, DVCon India, GlobalFoundries, ICCAD 2015, IEDM 2015, Intel Developer Forum, MemCon 2015, Mentor Graphics, Mentor Graphics Forum, PCB West 2015, Si2Con, SMIC, Synopsys, TSMC, TSMC 2015 OIP Ecosystem Forum, Wally Rhines, Wearable Technology Conference
No Comments »
Wednesday, April 1st, 2015
Early Monday morning, Synopsys announced several new bits have been added to their impressive bucket of IP blocks, a new family of DesignWare processors targeted at vision applications. With an honorable pedigree – descent from the ARC technology that came to Synopsys via the 2010 acquisition of Virage Logic – the processors announced on March 30th are designed to be embedded in SoCs, specifically to meet a growing need to digitally “distinguish smiles from frowns, faces from cars, baby carriages from trees or dogs, and even sky from ground.”
These needs were articulated in a March 26th phone call with Synopsys Senior Manager of Product Marketing Mike Thompson, who enthusiastically explained, “The vision market will grow dramatically over the next several years. The next 10-to-15 years will be seen as a paradigm-shift period in how we interact with technology.”
That’s why he’s delighted Synopsys will surpass other players in driving that shift: “There are already a few vision processors available [on the market], and they are largely programmable. We took a slightly different approach, however, with the new DesignWare EV Processors we’ve developed.
(more…)
Tags: ARC, ARC MetaWare Development Toolkit, ARM, Convolutional Neural Network, DesignWare, DesignWare EV Processors, Google, John Koeter, Mike Thompson, NEST, OpenCV, OpenVX, Synopsys, Virage Logic
No Comments »
Tuesday, March 24th, 2015
We’re only gifted with so many hours of life here on earth, so why would anyone waste them listening to the same lengthy keynote twice in one month? That was the thought that raced through my mind when Synopsys’ Aart de Geus stepped up onto the stage in front of 500+ SNUG attendees at the Santa Clara Convention Center yesterday morning and clicked on his title foil.
“Shift Left,” it said.
“Oh no,” I said. For pity’s sake, this was the exact same talk co-CEO de Geus offered up less than three weeks ago on March 3rd at DVCon in San Jose. I looked around for the nearest exit.
Then, cooler heads prevailed. Mine.
Wait a minute, I said. Three weeks ago I sat in the back of a ballroom at the DoubleTree, listening over the heads of 350 people at DVCon, and typed everything the good doctor said into my tablet, verbatim. I’ve already done the heavy lifting here, I thought. I’ve got his script on my tablet, I’ve seen the slides, and I’ve heard the jokes.
Does Synopsys believe an entirely different audience attends DVCon than that which attends SNUG? Why else would they present the exact same talk at the two venues? Perhaps no one at SNUG actually does verification? Why not compare the SNUG talk to the one at DVCon?
So, with that much entertainment guaranteed I sat back and enjoyed the show.
(more…)
Tags: '66 Toronado, Aart de Geus, ARM, Chronologic, DVCon, EVE, finFET, Hardi, IoT, Legos, SNUG Silicon Valley, Springsoft, Synopsys, Synplicity
No Comments »
Thursday, November 20th, 2014
Randy Smith bring a lot of humanity to his role as Vice President of Marketing at Sonics, and a lot of frequent flier miles. The day after we spoke by phone last week, he was set to fly to Japan for a week on business. When I asked if Japan was a new destination for him, he laughed.
“I’ve been to Japan over 150 times,” he said, “and because of that, I have lifelong business relationships there, having worked closely with customers, EDA vendors, design services and IP providers. That’s why my business card used to say ‘Randysan Marketing’. I always look forward to going to Japan, because it gives me the opportunity to touch bases with customers there and to [reconnect] with colleagues.”
(more…)
Tags: ARM, Cadence, Dan Nenni, Lucio Lanza, Mark Templeton, Randy Smith, SemiWiki, Simon Segars, Sonics, Synpsys
No Comments »
|
