Posts Tagged ‘ARM’
Thursday, October 17th, 2013
A brief sampler of recent announcements on the IP front reveal distinct themes in the marketplace. IP development and integration require a viable ecosystem of suppliers and tool vendors; automotive, audio and mobile apps continue to be important targets for IP developers whose customers seek better safety, longer battery life, and truer sound (particularly for sporting events and concerts of aging rockers); IP interfaces remain crucial; and platform-based design totally depends on further enhancements in IP technologies.
Additionally, acquisitions definitely pan out for the companies smart enough to snap up the good ones: Synopsys/ARC, Cadence/Tensilica, and Imagination/MIPS.
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Tags: Altera, ARC, ARM, ASSET InterTech, Cadence, CAST, Dolby, Freescale Semiconductor, Geir Skaaden, Geoff Lees, Imagination Technologies, IPextreme, Jack Guedj, John Couling, John Koeter, Martin Lund, Mentor Graphics, MIPS, Nikos Zervas, Pete Hutton, Suk Lee, Synopsys, Tensilica, Tom Halfhill, Tony King-Smith, TSMC, Warren Savage, Xilinx
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Thursday, August 1st, 2013
Bill Martin, President/VP of Engineering at E-System Design, has sent another thoughtful response to a blog regarding IP, in particular my post last week about the astonishing increase in the valuation of ARMH over the last 5 years.
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Years ago, Chris Rowen had a clear vision where EDA and IP would start to merge, given the complexities of both. He knew both could have a large impact on the resources and risks associated with creating an SoC. His vision was so compelling, Chris resigned from a great group within Synopsys to form his start-up, Tensilica.
At the time, EDA/IP/Customization were all difficult problems to resolve. By building larger blocks that automatically reconfigured and combined other aspects (examples: SW compiler/debugger for code that could add/delete instructions and a verification suite that reconfigured themselves based customers’ usage), the solution Chris created at Tensilica addressed SIP/Embedded SW/VIP and EDA.
Quite an ambitious undertaking, but over time as his solution was honed and matured, the industry saw the end result – a few months ago the large acquisition of Tensilica by Cadence. In fact, the deal was part of a trend. Look at the various EDA and IP acquisitions since 2008, those exceeding $100 million:
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Tags: Ansoft, Apache, ARM, Bill Martin, Cadence, Chris Rowen, Denali, E-System Design, IPextreme, Magma, Synopsys, Synplicity, Tensilica, VirageLogic
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Thursday, June 20th, 2013
Despite their marked contributions to DAC in Austin, the folks in the IP world have not been resting on their laurels, but have continued to generate developments of both a technical and business nature.
** Synopsys and OCZ Technology Group announced OCZ “achieved first-pass silicon success” in its newest NAND flash Vector SSD using Synopsys’ DesignWare DDR2/3-Lite PHY, Embedded Memories, STAR Memory System, and Professional Services.
The companies say the OCZ Vector SSD was designed “to deliver superior sustained performance through its new, high-performance Indilinx Barefoot 3 flash controller supporting the SATA-3 protocol. Synopsys’ design consultants worked closely with OCZ’s engineers throughout the implementation of their chip, delivering expertise and advanced methodologies in IP integration, physical design, and physical verification that enabled OCZ to complete their implementation in less than six months.”
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Tags: Andes Technology, Arasan, ARM, BDA, Beyond Semiconductor, Cadence Design Systems, CAST, Cavium, eMemory Technology, Evatronix, GDA Technologies, Imagination Technologies, MIPS, Mixel, NVIDIA, OCZ Technology Group, Synopsys
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Thursday, May 30th, 2013
** IPextreme announced it will collaborate with its Constellations program members and other key players in the semiconductor IP ecosystem to host the Stars of IP Party on June 4th, an event coinciding with DAC 2013 in Austin, Texas. The company says Stars of IP celebrates “all things semiconductor IP” and seeks to build relationships among IP provider companies and customers, thereby strengthening the ecosystem. Co-hosting with IPextreme are Atrenta, CAST, Certus Semiconductor, Recore Systems, Sonics, Synopsys, and True Circuits.
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Tags: Alma Technologies, ARM, Atrenta, Brett Cline, Cadence Design Systems, CAST, Certus Semiconductor, Charlie Cheng, CircuitSutra, Constellations, Cosmic Circuits, DAC 2013, Forte Design Systems, Grant Pierce, IPextreme, Kilopass Technology, Martin Lund, Michael Mo, Recore Systems, S.C. Chien, Sonics, Synopsys, True Circuits, UMC, Umesh Sisodia
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Thursday, March 28th, 2013
The best part of attending a conference like SNUG is plunging into a room of hundreds of anonymous lunch munchers and striking up a conversation with a stranger. Over the course of the meal, you’ll learn a little bit about somebody’s career, their expertise, and their concerns.
This week’s networking lunch at the Santa Clara Convention Center was no different. I had a chance to converse for 30 minutes with a lunch companion at a table full of strangers. By the end of the meal, I had heard first-hand about a really big problem for small IP vendors attempting to succeed in the current market – they can’t. According to my lunch companion, it’s nigh-on impossible to compete against ARM.
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Tags: ARM, GlobalFoundries, SMIC, SNUG, TSMC, UMC
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Thursday, March 21st, 2013
If you thought about going to the Synopsys Users Group meeting next week in Silicon Valley, there’s at least one topic that would make it worth your time: This week ARM and Synopsys announced “optimized 28-nm Synopsys Reference Implementations for ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore and Cortex-A7 MPCore processor clusters, as well as the CoreLink CCI-400 cache-coherent interconnect.”
The reference implementations are currently available, and include “scripts, floorplan, constraints and documentation” – scripts that are built on Synopsys’ tool Reference Methodologies and are optimized for high-performance cores. Clearly attending SNUG would clarify what you need to know to use all of this, but first apparently you need to understand ARM’s big.LITTLE processing. Which is what?
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Tags: ARM, ARM big.LITTLE processing, SNUG, Synopsys, Synopsys Reference Implementations
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Tuesday, March 12th, 2013
As the trading day in New York draws to a close, it would appear that some analysts are correct; the market’s not too pleased about yesterday’s announcement that Cadence is acquiring Tensilica. Shares of CDNS are trading down well over 3% today. But you know, the market’s stupid. They understand zip zero nada about EDA or IP, and really why should they?
After all, EDA and IP providers make the black magic that they do look so easy. And, they’re constantly telling people that what they do isn’t rocket science. But it is! The EDA vendors make the tools that IP vendors use to create their products, and designers use to integrate said IP into the larger designs. It’s called an eco-system and it is rocket science.
It’s also on the level of brain surgery, quantum physics, and a bunch of other esoteric science and engineering disciplines that require a lot of education and and a lot of OJT, and even then is really hard to do. How many traders on Wall Street, or the analysts who track it all, really understand what EDA and/or IP are all about? Exactly!
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Tags: ARM, Cadence, CDNS, Chris Rowen, EDAC CEO Panel, Lip-Bu Tan, Simon Segars, Synopsys, Tensilica
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Thursday, February 28th, 2013
If you’re free on the evening of Thursday, March 14th, you should plan on attending EDAC’s annual CEO Forecast Panel. It promises to be full of executive content, albeit perhaps a bit light on forecast content, but oh well. That’s the nature of life in the Publicly Traded Fast Lane these days.
Along with the CEOs of Mentor Graphics, Cadence, Synopsys, and Nimbic, the president of ARM will also be on stage, Simon Segars. Segars is no stranger to public speaking. You can hear his recent ARM TechCon 2012 keynote here. But it’s not what Segars will say on stage at the DoubleTree Hotel in San Jose on March 14th that matters. It’s his body language, and you’ll only be able to read that if you’re in the room.
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Tags: Aart de Geus, ARM, Cadence, EDAC, EDAC CEO Panel, Lip-Bu Tan, Mentor Graphics, Nimbic, Raul Camposano, Rich Valera, Simon Segars, Synopsys, Wally Rhines
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Thursday, November 1st, 2012
You didn’t have to crank up Queen to hear the refrain in the background when ARM CEO Warren East stepped on stage in Silicon Valley this morning to deliver his keynote at the 2012 edition of ARM TechCon. No matter how you slice the pie, ARM is the champion of the world. They know it, they know that you and I know it, and we know that they know that we know it.
Yet despite all that knowing, the guys from ARM seem like a pretty likable bunch. A month ago, I heard ARM CTO Mike Muller give the keynote at the Sophia Antipolis Microelectronics Forum, where he left the same impression with his audience on the Cote d’Azure that Warren East left with his audience this morning in the heart of Silicon Valley: ARM puts cooperation above competition, partnering above posturing, and the well-being of the world above the well-being of the bottom line of ARM or the pocketbook any of its employees.
ARM may be the champion of the world, but it’s for a reason. They’re very good at what they do, they’ve had the luck and foresight to be in the right place at the right time over the last 2 decades, and they are as concerned as the rest of us about the plethora [read “billions”] of digital devices descending on the world which threaten to drive us all to the brink of destruction by way of global warming, polluted environs, or both.
Okay, that’s my qualitative take on this morning’s keynote. Following is a more quantitative version.
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Tags: A50 processor series, ARM, ARM TechCon, Freescale, George Gray, IBM, Internet of Things, Judson Althoff, Linaro, Linus Torvalds, Mike Muller, Oracle, Queen, Samsung, ST-Ericsson, TI, Warren East
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Thursday, October 18th, 2012
The MIPI Alliance was founded in 2003 by STMicro, ARM, Nokia and TI. In 2004, Intel, Motorola, Samsung and Philips joined. Today, there are over 240 companies in the Alliance, 18 working groups, and over 5000 participating individuals. Following his presentation during the general session at SAME Forum in Sophia Antipolis, I had a chance to speak with STMicro’s Joel Huloux, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the MIPI Alliance.
Huloux differentiated between the work of the MIPI Alliance and OCP-IP: “OCP-IP is more related to the inside of the chip. It is very useful for interconnect when you buy IP to put in your design. If you look at MIPI Alliance, however, we do not deal with internal bus processors, or networks. We deal with the interface which is external to the chip, particularly in a mobile device, the interface between the chip and the display, camera, and so on. There is no competition at all between OCP-IP and MIPI Alliance.”
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Tags: Apple, ARM, Google, Intel, Joel Huloux, Microsoft, MIPI Alliance, Motorola, Nokia, OCP-IP, Philips, SAME Forum, Samsung, STMicro, TI
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