Posts Tagged ‘AMD’
Thursday, May 4th, 2017
It’s not been pretty of late in the world of IP. Imagination’s valuation tanked when it was revealed in early April that the company might be losing Apple as a customer. Imagination says it’s going to fight this development, but a different ending to the story of David and Goliath comes to mind in that declaration.
Then this week, that same Imagination announced it was selling MIPS – a company it bought back in 2012 with great fanfare for [a mere] $60 million. [It’s true, MIPS’ patent portfolio was worth a lot more.]
Also this week, TSMC announced it is charging a former employee with IP theft: The former employee is alleged to have stolen manufacturing data from TSMC specifically related to Nvidia and AMD chip production, taken it across the Straights of Taiwan, and turned it over to his new employer in the PRC, HLMC.
(more…)
Tags: AMD, Apple, HLMC, Imagination, MIPS, NVIDIA, TSMC
No Comments »
Thursday, September 22nd, 2016
Geoff Tate, founding CEO at Rambus, is busy – again. These days he’s leading the charge with a new FPGA-based enterprise that, per Tate, wants to be “the first to the party” – a party that’s all about providing FGPA-based IP to a market increasingly in need of these products.
When Tate and I spoke by phone recently, he offered the Flex Logix elevator pitch, and then focused on the company’s August press release.
“We are like the ARM of FPGA,” Tate said, and then laughed. “No, we are not expecting to be acquired by SoftBank anytime soon.”
“However, ARM was the first to successfully embed processors,” he said, “and at Flex Logic we are [doing that] with FPGAs.”
(more…)
Tags: AMD, ARM, Cadence, Cheng Wang, Cypress Semiconductor, Dan Markovic, Eclipse Ventures, eFPGA, Flex Logic, Geoff Tate, Lux Capital, Mellanox, Mentor Graphics, Microchips, National Semiconductor, Pierre Lamond, Rambus, reconfigurable RTL blocks, SoftBank, Synopsys, TSMC 40ULP, UCLA
1 Comment »
Thursday, October 2nd, 2014
This blog requires a long, tall cup of coffee: Go get one, put your feet up, and plow on through. ARM TechCon 2014 took place this week at the Santa Clara Convention Center, and as an indication of what the industry feels is important right now, the following is a complex snapshot of press releases issued by various TechCon exhibitors highlighting their progress in the days leading up to and including the show. Listed first are the three main ARM press releases, then the other exhibitors are showcased.
By the way, the answer to what the industry thinks is important today? If the following is any indication, it’s IoT all the way down, with a dollop of FinFET and low-power thrown in for good measure. And if you don’t know IoT means Internet of Things, you haven’t been listening – particularly as Freescale says in their Press Release: “Analyst research firm Gartner estimates that the IoT will include 26 billion units installed by 2020, and by that time, IoT product and service suppliers will generate incremental revenue exceeding $300 billion, mostly in services.”
Another possible conclusion from the following: If you’re still holding out hope the Design Automation Conference is anchor tenant of the conference year, you should let that go. The amount of news these companies are releasing around ARM TechCon far out weighs what they’re releasing around DAC.
** ARM announced on October 1st “two new physical IP implementation solutions for its silicon partners to help simplify the path to implementation for their FinFET physical designs. ARM Artisan Power Grid Architect will reduce overall design time by creating optimal SoC power grid layouts, while ARM Artisan Signoff Architect increases accuracy and precision in managing on-chip variation over existing methodologies. These new physical IP implementation solutions strengthen the commitment from ARM to enable delivery of real silicon with the speed consumers are demanding.”
** ARM announced on October 1st, mbed OS, a free operating system for ARM Cortex-M processor based devices that consolidates the fundamental building blocks of the IoT in one integrated set of software components; mbed Device Server, a licensable software product that provides the required server-side technologies to connect and manage devices in a secure way, that also provides a bridge between the protocols designed for use on IoT devices and the APIs that are used by web developers; and mbed.org, the focus point for a community of more than 70,000 developers around mbed. The website provides a comprehensive database of hardware development kits, a repository for reusable software components, reference applications, documentation and web-based development tools.
** ARM and TSMC announced on October 2nd a new multi-year agreement that will deliver up ARMv8-A processor IP optimized for TSMC 10FinFET process technology. Per the Press Release: “Because of the success in scaling from 20SoC to 16FinFET, ARM and TSMC have decided to collaborate again for 10FinFET. This early path-finding work will provide valuable learning to enable physical design IP and methodologies in support of customers to tape-out 10FinFET designs as early as Q4 2015.”
(more…)
Tags: Acacia Communications, Airbus Defence and Space, Aldec, Altium Ltd., AMD, ANSYS, AppliedMicro, ARicent, ARM, ARM TechCon 2014, Arteris, ASSET InterTech, Atmel, Avago Technologies, Aviva Energy Corp., Cadence, Carbon Design Systems, Cavium, Cisco, Codasip, Doulos, Esterel, Express Logic, FreeBSD Foundation, Freescale, Gartner, GlobalFoundries, Green Hills Software, HP, IAR Systems, Intel, Internet of Things, IPSO Alliance, Lauterbach, LogMeIn, Mentor Graphics, Micrium, MontaVista Software, Mouser Electronics, Open-Silicon, P&E Microcomputer Systems, Rambus, Real Intent, Renesas Electronics, S2C, Samsung Electronics, SatixFy Ltd., SeeControl, SEGGER, Si2, SOMNIUM Technologies, Sonics, Spansion, STMicro, Synopsys, SYSGO, Teledyne LeCroy, TI, Toradex, TSMC, Undo Software, Uniquify, VanGogh Imaging, Vector Software, Wind River, Xilinx, XMOS, Zebra Technologies, Zuse Institute Berlin
No Comments »
Monday, July 28th, 2014
There are three kinds of written word in the world today: books, newspapers/magazines, and all of the rest of it which now lives on the shifting sands of an ever-evolving electronic substrate. Even today, however, even as those ‘effervescent electrons’ garner more and more readers, it’s books-on-paper that continue to hold the most caché, the most gravitas-laden sense of permanence, and the most awe-inspring-for-the-ages kind of wow factor: Really? You wrote a book? Wow!
Hence, when a 220-page book-on-paper called Fabless: The Transformation of the Semiconductor Industry was made available to the EDA community at the 51st annual Design Automation Conference this past month in San Francisco, it was worth noting for several reasons: For the gravitas of the offering; For the permanence of the tome; And for the price, which thanks to eSilicon Corp. was free to all for the taking.
Written by SemiWiki.com gurus Daniel Nenni and Paul McLellan, this Fabulous Fabless book-on-paper was handed out during a buzzy networking event on the spacious East Side of Moscone Center early one evening during the week of DAC in June. At that noisy, ebullient reception, the libations were flowing liberally and so was the printed word.
Anyone milling about in the crowd quickly became the proud owner of Nenni/McLellan’s cheery, well-written history of the world – that special world consisting of everything termed “technology” since 1947 – and could even get signed copies, if they were able to elbow their way across the room to where the authors were perched side-by-side at a table with the express purpose of applying ink-to-paper on the front piece of their book.
(more…)
Tags: Altera, AMD, Apple, ARM, Arteris, Atrenta, C&T, Cadence, Calypto, CEVA, Chartered, Cliosoft, Coventer, Daniel Nenni, Docea, eSilicon, Fabless Semiconductor, GlobalFoundries, GSA, Imagination Technologies, Intel, Jasper, Mentor, Paul McLellan, SemiWiki.com, Sidense, Silvaco, Solido, Sonics, Synopsys, Tanner, TSMC, UMC, VLSI Technology, Xilinx
No Comments »
Thursday, April 11th, 2013
Years ago, an editor/mentor advised me never to cover legal battles between companies in this industry. He’d always say, “There’s no good to be had from covering this stuff. The story’s always so much more complicated than anybody every fesses up to, so just don’t go there.”
So, how about this? Shall we accentuate the positive and decentuate the negative? You think that’s stupid, naive, not gritty enough? Well, y’all know where to go if you want to accentuate the negative and decentuate the positive. Y’all know where to go if you want the rumors and innuendo.
If, however, you’d rather start off your week with something a bit more upbeat, stick around.
(more…)
Tags: AMD, Barracuda Networks, Cadence, Dana Reyes, Emerson Hsiao, Fairchild Semiconductor, Faraday, Fujitsu, Host Analytics, James Lindstrom, Kilopass, Linh Hong, MagnaChip Semiconductor, MAZ Brandenburg, Samsung, Shanghai Haier IC, Sidense, Tatsuya Yamazaki, Tom Schild, TSMC, ZMDI
No Comments »
|
