Posts Tagged ‘ARM’
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.”
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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, SYSGO, Teledyne LeCroy, TI, Toradex, TSMC, Undo Software, Uniquify, VanGogh Imaging, Vector Software, Wind River, Xilinx, XMOS, Zebra Technologies, Zuse Institute Berlin
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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.
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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, Tanner, TSMC, UMC, VLSI Technology, Xilinx
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Thursday, May 22nd, 2014
It’s just amazing that DAC has become so thoroughly a show about IP that there are two major parties happening in San Francisco in June that have IP in their name: HOT IP Party and Stars of IP Party.
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Tags: AdaptIP, ARM, Atrenta, Cadence, CAST, Certus, DAC 2014, Dassault Systemes, Denali, Design Automation Conference, HOT IP Party, IPextreme, Jim Hogan, Rambus, Semico, SFCASA, Sonics, Stars of IP Party, TrueCircuits, TSMC, Warren Savage
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Thursday, May 1st, 2014
Two things happened as a result of falling and breaking my right arm early on the morning of April 19th in Monterey: I instantly became a ‘Lefty’ for the first time in my life, and I missed Warren Savage’s presentation at EDPS later that day.
Warren is CEO and President of IPextreme, and I kid you not when I say that what he doesn’t know about the IP industry isn’t worth knowing. That’s why I wanted to hear Warren’s talk, and why I was very happy to talk to him this week about my Dick Tracy keychain project.
How do I learn to be a knowledgeable customer of the IP industry, I asked Warren, particularly when my hypothetical wearable is something I could really use right now: An SoC-based gadget, built with oodles of IP, to wear on my left wrist that’s got one small button to remotely unlock my car, one that will start my car, one that will open or close the garage door, one that will tell me if I’ve got enough milk in the fridge, one that will turn the heat up and down at home even if I’m not there, and prosaically, one that will show me the time.
Of course, now that I can’t use my right hand to push the buttons on the device strapped to my left wrist, I no longer want buttons. I want the thing to respond to voice commands – “Unlock.” “Ignition.” “Garage.” “Got milk?” “Set temp.” “Time?” – simple instructions that should only produce results when it’s my voice and nobody else’s.
Warren was extremely informative during our phone call. He understood I wasn’t looking for specific help with my design, but how to shop for the IP to go into my design. I started by telling him that my research into IP has so far included conversations with:
CAST – Hal Barbour, Nikos Zervas, and Paul Lindemann
Sonics – Grant Pierce, Raymond Brinks
Adapt IP – Mac McNamara
S3 – Dermot Barry, Darren Hobbs
To further clarify the information gleaned from these people, my questions for Warren were very succinct, as were his answers.
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Tags: Adapt IP, ARM, CAST, EDPS, Faraday, GSA, Imagination Technologies, IPextreme, S3 Group, Sonics, Synopses, Unichip, Warren Savage
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Thursday, April 24th, 2014
This week, Cadence announced its intention to acquire Jasper Design Automation. The news precipitated a tsunami of commentary, some of which is included in this blog: Atrenta’s Piyush Sancheti deems the move to be a good one; Cadence’s Craig Cochran and Michal Siwinski second the motion; and Elmer, whose clairvoyance regarding a Jasper acquisition was criticized by Oz Levia last fall, asks if the Cadence move is more a matter of window dressing. Finally, I offer a brief prediction regarding one possible long-term effect of this M&A.
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Tags: Apache, ARM, Atrenta, Cadence Design Systems, Charlie Huang, ChipVision, Craig Cochran, Daisy Systems, Denali, EDAC, GE, Kathryn Kranen, Mentor Graphics, Michal Siwinski, Piyush Sancheti, Quickturn, Real Intent, Sente, Sequence, Tensilica, Valid Logic, Verisity
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Thursday, March 20th, 2014
Thanks to a lot of hard work and perseverance on the part of various thought leaders in the IP industry – folks like Mike McNamara, Warren Savage, McKenzie Mortensen, Clark Chen, Devin Persaud, Tiffany Sparks, Yervant Zorian, and Farzad Zarrinfar – at last, IP has become an anchor tenant at DAC.
A situation that’s been far too long in coming, given that these days there are approximately 30 companies in the EDA industry, but upwards of 500 in IP. The fact is, if DAC didn’t make itself available to showcase an industry with 10x more possible exhibitors than EDA, where’s the future of the conference anyway?
I had a chance to speak with ‘Mac’ McNamara on Tuesday of this week about the IP Initiative he’s heading up for DAC 2014. [The others on the list above are on the committee.] Mac’s a legend in the EDA community based on his expertise and leadership roles at Chronologic, SureFire, Verisity and Cadence, where he headed up the company’s C-to-Silicon Compiler and Virtual Systems Platform. Mac left Cadence in 2012, and has served since then as CEO of Adapt IP, an IP startup that boasts both John Sanguinetti and Lucio Lanza on its board.
During our conversation, Mac said that anyone planning on attending the Design Automation Conference this June in San Francisco will want to be there on Monday, June 2nd. That is, anyone who’s interested in the IP industry.
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Tags: Adapt IP, ARM, Cadence, Chronologic, Clark Chen, DAC 2014, Design Automation Conference, Devin Persaud, Farzad Zarrinfar, Global World Congress, Hot Chips, Houssein Yassaie, Imagination Technologies, IPextreme, John Sanguinetti, Lucio Lanza, McKenzie Mortensen, Mentor Graphics, Mike McNamara, SureFire, Tiffany Sparks, TSMC, Verisity, Warren Savage, Yervant Zorian
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Thursday, February 27th, 2014
It makes it worthwhile to show up for work on days when you get to have a conversation with people like the folks of Sonics, a System IP vendor based in Silicon Valley. Articulate and knowledgeable, they have a nuanced understanding of how the IP business works, its challenges and opportunities.
When I spoke to them last week about my ongoing project to assemble IP for the chip in my Dick Tracy keychain, President & CEO Grant Pierce and VP of Operations Raymond Brinks were both on the call. We started by talking about how IP is priced.
Per Pierce: “The conditions under which various customers buy and use IP can be quite different. We have some customers who are fairly sophisticated. We sell [such customers] licensed IP, offer some initial training, and then off they go. After that, apart from an occasional email, we have little contact with them. There are customers, however, who are opposite in the extreme.
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Tags: AMBA, ARM, Cadence, Drew Wingard, Grant Pierce, IP, Nokia, OCP-IP, PIF, Raymond Brinks, Sonics, Tensilica, TI
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Wednesday, January 15th, 2014
It’s clear that these are heady days in EDA and IP. The numbers have been up and to the right for a number of quarters now and everybody’s feeling good about things, including Mentor Graphics CEO Wally Rhines. He was doing the rounds last week talking up EDAC’s Market Statistics Service report on the industry for Q3_2013; the report was published this week on Tuesday.
On my phone call with Rhines I found him exuberant, so I started with a comment to which Rhines was not allowed to respond; he was speaking for EDAC in that conversation and not for his own organization. “Wow,” I said. “Mentor is really doing stupendously if your stock valuations are any indication, up over 40 percent in the last year.”
Rhines said nothing, but did chuckle, so I continued: “Wow again, then, for the overall EDA and IP industries. Having said that, I’ve noticed – perhaps not for the first time – that Synopsys does not officially submit numbers for these quarterly MSS updates. What’s up with that?”
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Tags: ARM, Cadence, EDA Consortium, EDAC, Mentor Graphics, MSS, Wally Rhines
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Thursday, January 9th, 2014
Since the ginormous Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week is widely touted as the biggest event since the invention of humankind, it’s hard to admit two things: a) I wasn’t there, and yet b) I’ve been asked to compose a blog about it. Somewhat of a challenge, but not an insurmountable one.
To attend to the task at hand, I slogged through the blogosphere to see what people who were there this week had to say about it all, after knocking in and around the largest conference on the planet.
Turns out their take-aways are pretty consistent: Among the 3000+ exhibitors, there were more toys on display than you could play with in a month of Sundays, drones are everywhere and somewhat creepy, TVs are getting bigger, electric cars are getting more so, everything’s wearable, and the only things left that are truly private and un-recordable in the mania of this digital age are your thoughts, and those are probably under assault in an evil lab somewhere. [Note to self: don’t sell them for a penny.]
Another way to approach CES, if you blog about EDA and IP, is to go to the roster of EDAC and see who on that list was exhibiting this week in Las Vegas. The results are rather surprising – only ARM and Cadence.
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Tags: ARM, Cadence, CES, EDAC, John Bruggeman, Mentor Graphics
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Thursday, December 19th, 2013
This has been a complex year. Some stories were ferocious: the unspeakable double punch of earthquake and typhoon in the Philippines; the ongoing civil war in Syria; the Snowden/NSA revelations; the military coup in Egypt; the Boston Marathon bombings; the shopping mall attack in Nairobi; the shootings at the Washington Navy Yard; the discovery of kidnapping victims in Cleveland. Some stories were about historic change: a new pope; the death of Nelson Mandela; a choppy roll-out for the Affordable Healthcare Act.
Some stories were about trends: a decrease in unemployment; an increase in the financial markets; a marked uptick in housing values; the majority now carrying smart phones. Some stories were about SIP: Synopsys let loose a slew of IP-related press releases; Cadence acquired Tensilica and did the same; TSMC continued to portray itself as a foundry that just happens to have 3000+ IP cores in its arsenal; ARM remained the 800-pound gorilla.
Some stories were about EDA: Mentor talked non-stop about customers in the transportation sector and out-performed the Nasdaq, Dow, S&P500, CDNS and SNPS. FinFETs were all the rage, players big and small declared their readiness to embrace the technology, and Berkeley Prof. Chenming Hu accepted the Phil Kaufman Award. DAC celebrated 50 years and moved to Austin. EDAC had a party, celebrated EDA’s golden anniversary, and helped prepare a place of honor for design automation in the Computer History Museum. The industry sent a collective shout-out to Gary Smith.
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Tags: Ann Mutschler, ARM, Brian Bailey, Brian Fuller, Cadence, Chenming Hu, Computer History Museum, Ed Sperling, EDA, EDAC, FinFETs, Gabe Moretti, Gary Smith, Jeff Chappell, Katherine Derbyshire, Life of Pi, Mark LaPedus, Mentor Graphics, TSMC
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